Kości, które nosisz w kieszeni

For a long time, Polish literature shied away from portraying reality, especially in its small-town variety. Luckily, a few fresh new voices have cropped up in recent years, reclaiming this reality that was so ignored by the mainstream. Łukasz Barys’s debut joins this trend, and is also one of its finest exponents.

At only twenty-four, this prose writer and poet (already lauded and awarded) takes readers on an unsentimental journey to his home town, Pabianice. Though Barys’s talent for language can call to mind magical realism (despite the prevailing greyness), the reality here is far from magical – decay, misery and death reign supreme. Our main protagonist is Ula, a student at the local middle school. She lives with her grandma, who has one foot in the grave, and her mother, who works as a cashier and keeps bringing home new “daddies”. She also takes care of her younger siblings. Cemeteries give her a moment’s respite, and her sense of connection with the dead lets her forget a bit about the lack of warmth at home. Ula’s story lets Barys address several issues that are key to today’s discourse (in and outside of literature): class divisions, poverty and exclusion, but also a teenager’s personal struggles with their body and family. The main asset in Barys’s novel is the language, which is poetic, packed with metaphors and literary and pop-culture references, and firmly rooted in today’s Polish and real speech; his gentle irony and wit allow him to disrupt the funereal tone a bit. Debuts like The Bones You Carry in Your Pocket happen once a decade in Polish literature. Łukasz Barys is now working on his second novel. All signs seem to show that the coming years will be his.