The Faithful River

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This novel is not just about love and passion and strength and bla bla bla, but about the socioeconomic classes and separations that existed in Poland under Ruski occupation, and overall dominated central and eastern Europe - we have the struggle between the idealist and the realist - and the aristocratic conditions its under- same conditions that eventually lead into the Great War - not necessary from any Russian influence but from the socioeconomic separations between the peasants and liberal Bourgeois - two extreme ends with virtually nothing in-between. The book has a tragic ending filled with "hope", a young girl refuses a pay off for her "poverty" from the same upper class that abandons her just after she got done protecting them. At the end a pesant cook says "they did you a bad turn, i can see - they hurt you good and proper - they did you wrong good and proper.", to the girl. The man who's life she saved fell in love with her, the man was a Duke, she was a peasant. He would marry her, bla bla bla, but at the end she was left ALONE with nothing but her dignity, abandoned after having risked so much. This book is thin and will probably take one or two reads to finish, nonetheless it weaves a strong clear message into the story. This book has almost nothing to do with 1836 historically, the whole story takes place in a manor house, and the uprisings are just a device to facilitate the message. It rather focuses on general attitudes held across western Europe moving into the late 19th early 20th century that eventually also lead to chaos in the East. This book is good and should be considered a Eastern European classic. Zeromski creates a flow that is exceptionally simple and rather tricky to correctly understand since the literate insensitive person does not catch the message and typically confuses this book for something else.

After completing my reading of the Faithful River by Zeromski I am reminded of "The English Patient", the movie starring Ralph Fiennes from several years back. Zeromski does a magnificant job of setting the ambience for this work and the reader is transported into the mind of the Soldier as he struggles to live. This book is exremely well transalated by Bill Johnston and is a pleasure for any one to read.

I am fascinated by war novels. ("All Quiet on the Western Front" is one of my favorites.) And this book was very good. I've just finished reading it once through, and I immediately went back to read it a second time. When I first got it, I opened it up, read the first paragraph, and then stopped to say "Wow." There have been many (translated) foreign novels that I've read that are somewhat halting and broken as far as the language is concerned. ("All Quiet on the Western Front" included.) That was not the case with this novel. It was very fluid and smooth . . . very much like the river of the title. I originally checked this book out from a library, and liked it so much that I've come online to try and purchase it. I hope you like it as much as I did.