Taksim

Taksim isn't a novel, it is life. It's not only an amazing meditative experience, an exercise in mindfulness perhaps, but it's also a visceral travel journal of a region I've been absolutely fascinated by ever since I traveled through parts of it, such as Hungary and northern Romania, and read up on the history of these places. If you share my interests, then this book is also a gold mine on that front. It's also a portrait of a Europe in decay, of changing times and of those left behind.

However, most of all what I want to focus on, is that there is so much texture and atmosphere between the pages, something I'm beginning to appreciate more and more in literature. You can smell the thrash and tobacco, feel the texture of mud and leather, see the lights shining from the gas station, taste the cheap alcohol and potatoes, and you can really hear the voice of Wladek through your right ear. I think Stasiuk succeeds at what Woolf was trying to do with Mrs. Dalloway, but through poetic minimalist prose and dark gritty realism similar to that of Cormac McCarthy; to channel life through literature as it really is. There are also some great overall themes on the impact of stories and narratives on individual lives, how they are sometimes more real than what we experience in the present, and sometimes the only thing we have to hold on to.

Stasiuks subjects are a pair of Poles traveling in and around the Carpathians, to backwater towns and gypsie outposts, selling used clothes from the back of an old Ducato van that barely runs. There's an almost post-apocalyptic feel to it all. Our protagonist is a stoic and broken-down man in his late forties who does all the driving and listening, while Wladek is a man whose mouth runs constantly and whose eyes seems to be focused on everything but the present. There are no chapters, no real beginnings and ends, just a stream of different memories, experiences and stories. Some are exciting, some are just plain boring, and others are full of melancholy. Isn't that what life is? The ride continues.