I'd like to say sorry, but there's no one to say sorry to Stories

The vital English-language debut from Grynberg, a photographer, psychologist, and oral historian, features 31 first-person vignettes narrated by Jews and gentiles in Poland who belong to the generation born after the Holocaust. Through these monologues, the speakers struggle with survivor's guilt as they come to terms with the horrors of the ghettos and the camps as experienced by their family and friends. Common themes among them are wanting to forget the past so as to belong to the living and feeling alienated in the present by both family and fellow countrymen. In "An Elegant Purse," the speaker is determined to find her grandparents' graves. As it dawns on her that her mother was Jewish, she has a new purpose: "I'm learning how to be a daughter all over again." "Procession" tells the story of a woman whose grandfather mistakenly believed the French would protect his family, but they were arrested and everyone, except the narrator's mother, died in Auschwitz. As a photographer, Grynberg knows the value of capturing a moment in time; through these narratives, the reader sees, as translator Bye notes, "something we might not have seen with our own eye." These views of a tragic past are brought sharply into focus. (Feb.)Correction: This review has been updated to better reflect the range of first-person accounts contained in the book. It has also been corrected; an earlier version misgendered one of the character.

A series of monologues describing Jewish life in contemporary--and not-so-contemporary--Poland. Grynberg, a photographer and psychologist as well as a writer, is known in his native Poland for his oral histories: collections of interviews with Polish Jews about their experiences. His first work of fiction--and his first work to appear in English--makes use of those interviews as a jumping-off point. The book takes the form of a collection of fictionalized monologues, each no longer than three or four pages. In several of them, the speakers are surprised to learn that they themselves are Jewish when older relatives reveal the truth that, for years, they'd been hiding. In one, a boy only learns he's Jewish after his grandmother sends him off to a Jewish summer camp. In another, three little girls pretend they're hiding through the war in a cellar, where their antisemitic father is surprised to find them. In a note at the end of the book, Grynberg's translator, Bye, describes the book as "not so much polyphonic as clamorous." It's an apt description; the collection, in which dozens of voices clamor to be heard, is a moving and often wryly funny portrait of Polish Jewishness. Grynberg has zeroed in on a particular generation--one that is once or twice removed from the Holocaust, the children or grandchildren of survivors. Taken as a whole, the collection traces the commonalities as well as the differences among all these experiences. And while the result can be grim, Grynberg's deft, light touch also provides a sense of levity, hope, and even laughter. At times witty, at others devastating, Grynberg's first foray into fiction is a major triumph. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.