The Lullaby of Polish Girls By Dagmara Dominczyk

[amazon_link id=”1780878214″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]’The Lullaby of Polish Girls’ is Dagmara Dominczyk’s debut novel.

Anna lives in Brooklyn. But she didn’t always. She grew up in Kielce. Poland, where the summers were long and the politics communists. When her parents were indicted for their alliance with anti-government forces, Anna had to flee her homeland, leaving her closest friends behind. Now an adult, she lives in the US and has lost touch with the girls she once knew, the ones she missed so much as a teenager that she’d sneak back into Kielce hidden in the back of a car just to share another summer. When she learns that one of them has suffered a terrible tragedy, she hurries home to Kielce. But when she arrives, she’ll find more then she’d ever imagined. It’s finally time to face everything that happened during those childhood summers long ago.

The story is written through a series of flashbacks between the past and the present when the three lead ladies were young girls and become close friends. The three girls, Anna, Justyna and Kamila are three very different characters, bringing their three stories together. As they all battle with the conflicts and troubles that they are faced with, illicit affairs, murdered husband and general feelings of misery gave this story quite a bleak and depressing view to it.

To be brutally honest, I found that I couldn’t warm to any of the characters and this is a rare thing to happen, as I normally find someone who would entertain me but with this story, I found the women all very hard characters, who seemed to lack in emotion or genuine care for others. One character in particular I had a strong dislike for, Justyna had quite a volatile temper, wicked tongue and was always swearing in the story. I imagined she was solely created to shock the reader with her constant flow of crude language and if this was the case, then mission accomplished. But then on the other hand, I did find myself feeling some empathy and sympathy towards the young, catty woman, as she had been dealt quite a bad hand in life, so sometimes her behaviour and language was justified and other times it was just uncalled for. Although the other two women, Anna and Kamila featured as much as Justyna in the story, I didn’t think that they stood out as much and occasionally I lost track with them and this sometimes made for confusing reading.

With a brilliantly vibrant cover, ‘The Lullaby of Polish Girls’ is an interesting and intense coming of age story of friendship and young love that oozes despair and regularly made me appreciate the smaller things in life.

You can buy [amazon_link id=”1780878214″ target=”_blank” ]The Lullaby of Polish Girls from Amazon [/amazon_link]and is avaailable to buy from good bookshops.