"With
Blood and Scars" by B.E. Andre
Book
Review by Michal Karski
"What did you do in the war, Daddy?"
was a question which became a bit of a cliché back in the fifties and sixties. The
answers came in many and various forms at the time. Those of us living in
English-speaking countries might suppose that individual stories from the
various campaigns of the Allies during World War Two have all been told and
that the subject is quite familiar territory by now. Even so each new decade
provides new viewpoints. The ever-changing focus of history ensures that each succeeding
generation will feel compelled to continue asking the same question and to reassess
the conduct of their fathers and mothers, or, indeed, their grandfathers and
grandmothers. As we have seen recently, the Germans continue to examine the
conduct of their forefathers to this day. But a frequently overlooked aspect of
the entire subject is, of course, that there are Allied war stories which are hardly
known in the West. The world of the Polish Allies who found themselves in
Britain after the war is the background against which B.E. Andre sets her
story.
For ten-year old Ania Walewska, a girl
growing up in "Polska Land", the Polish community in Manchester of
the mid-sixties, and who is at the heart of this engaging first novel, the
question of what anyone did during World War Two is profoundly uninteresting. In
fact, anything to do with those times, particularly as recounted by Ania's
redoubtable grandmother, who is full of ghastly tales of Siberia, is virtually
incomprehensible to the girl and makes her mentally switch off. As for whatever
her father may or may not have done in the war years, all she knows is that
talking about those times makes him angry and upset.
Ania just wants to be out with her friends. She
is a natural rebel, oppressed by the influence and the rigid rules of Polish
expat life, whether she finds herself stuck at home decorating Easter eggs in
the Polish style or bored during the interminable church services or sitting
through extra Polish lessons which are also as boring as they are irritating
and unnecessary. The term 'expat' in this context might be substituted by 'political
refugee' to describe those Manchester Poles among whom this story is set. It's
difficult to call these people simply immigrants because they are from that generation
of Poles who found themselves in the UK and other Western countries as a direct
result of the war and through no choice of their own. They are mostly
ex-combatants from either the Allied army abroad or from the resistance at home
who ended up in German prison camps, and have chosen to stay abroad rather than
to return to communist Poland.
As the novel unfolds, we see that many of this
older generation, have adapted themselves to their new home with reasonable
success. Witek, Ania's father, is a keen Manchester United supporter, for
instance, and enjoys Hollywood musicals and the Marx Brothers on TV while Wanda,
her mother, loses herself in romantic fiction. But parents and grandparents
feel duty bound to pass on their Polish heritage to the youngsters. However
British they may be outwardly, they are in their hearts first and foremost
Polish patriots and they expect their children to feel the same. Ania mostly tries
to please because she is very much bound up with her family. Her father, in
particular, is the dominating and sometimes tyrannical presence whose varying
and unpredictable moods shape her days. When he has had a drink or two with his
ex-combatant friends, he can be positively frightening. Ania goes along with
his requests, when, for example, she is asked to learn to recite a patriotic Polish
poem in order to impress relatives from Poland. But she can't wait to get out
of the house and play with her friends – who are also from immigrant and
foreign backgrounds – and be a relatively normal Mancunian child. The central
part of the story is what the group of young friends get up to out of sight of
the grown-ups and which has consequences resonating down the years.
An older Ania also narrates from a viewpoint
in the present. The paterfamilias who
used to dominate Ania and her siblings' lives is now a terminally ill old man
and Ania, by now a mother of two grown-up children and having had to deal with
some serious health problems of her own, has to put her life on hold while she
faces up to the inevitable. But there is also something very important she
needs to do. She needs to find out something which has been troubling her ever
since her childhood. She has never understood properly what her father went
through in the war. There have only been vague hints and over the years she has
wondered exactly what sort of a man her father was in those dark days in Warsaw.
Old Witek may have been just a teenager in the Polish resistance when the
Germans stormed the city during the uprising in 1944, but Ania knows he feels
remorse at something that happened then. What did he do in the war? Ania needs to confront her father and solve
this mystery before it is too late.
B.E. Andre has crafted a very readable debut
novel and the deceptively straightforward style displays a narrative flair and a
particularly keen sense of dialogue. I could easily imagine this book adapted
for television, for instance, particularly as the group of childhood friends
reflects the various nationalities which were as much in evidence in sixties
Britain as they are today. The device of the dual plotline is never obtrusive
and the pace is brisk with frequent touches of humour in what is essentially a
study of some quite weighty and thought-provoking themes. Indeed it would be
difficult not to be reminded of Wajda's "Kanał" or Agnieszka Holland's
"In Darkness" in one particular sequence.
The voice of the child narrator is convincing:
she is not exactly a much younger, female version of Holden Caulfield – since
there is not quite the same overwhelming sense of alienation – but she is given
a similar kind of critical and amused detachment from the events she describes,
even though she is deeply involved. And although the Manchester setting
provides a rather unexpected background for a story dealing with Polish themes,
nevertheless anyone with any Polish connections will probably find something
they recognize in this book – and no doubt Mancunians will do the same. Those
readers new to "Polska Land", who only know the Poles because of one
popular pope, or because of a moustachioed trade union leader, or through their
local Polish delicatessen or perhaps because they have employed an efficient builder
or plumber, may be surprised to learn about the post-war origins of the Polish presence
in the UK. This novel is a good introduction to a community which is not so
much separate or enclosed or somehow exists in parallel to the mainstream
English one but continues - in spite all the shared values and the interaction
with ordinary British life – to have many of its own traditions and definitely
has its fair share of idiosyncratic customs.
The author even provides a short glossary for
anyone who wants to check up on the occasional Polish word thrown into the mix.
This is a well-constructed first book and an altogether gripping read.
Hopefully it will also be the prelude to many more from this talented writer.
"With Blood and Scars" is available
at Amazon here.
