With such a surfeit of novels around by Irish twenty-something female authors writing on the subject of being - well - Irish, twenty-something and female, it's refreshing to discover one with a broader creative scope. In Malinski, Siofra O'Donovan's debut novel, she weaves together the stories of Stanislav and Henryk Malinski, two Polish brothers separated by the tragic circumstances of the second World War. In doing so, she takes a bit of a risk - so many novels have been written about the period that it's hard not to feel "here we go again". Still, O'Donovan rises to the challenge, delivering a well-crafted, intelligent story.
Stanislav, the elder of the two brothers, spends the years of the war and those following in Krakow, in the apartment of his devout, deranged aunt. Abandoned, as he sees it, by his mother and brother, he endures the unrelenting hardships of the Communist regime with a combination of weary acquiescence and bitter resentment. Henryk, meanwhile, is imprisoned with his mother in the family home by Nazis for the duration of the war, fleeing afterwards and eventually settling in Ireland.
There (or here) he is reborn as Henry Foley and becomes a rakish, boozing academic who spends his life in denial of, and tortured by, the demons of his childhood. The novel pivots around the imminent reunion of the brothers in Krakow following the death of their mother and the collision of memories and emotions which ensues.
There is much to admire in O'Donovan's novel: her treatment of memory and the tricks it can play give the story its shape; her writing is confident and her descriptions powerful, often beautiful. One might quibble that there's a bit too much of the dandy Dublin "character" in Henry or that Stanislav is sometimes in danger of becoming a stereotype of the melancholy, stoical Slav, but overall, Malinski is a strong debut that marks O'Donovan as a writer to watch.
Catherine Heaney is Notices editor of Image magazine