Mnogość rzeczy

The Multiplicity of Things is a contemporary psycho-social novel. A romance, a book about love, but despite its having all the motifs characteristic of popular literature, I would be loath to list it in that genre. The themes of devotion and obligation moved in it set the novel rather in the higher regions of the literary world.

The book enchants the reader with its atmosphere, engaging him or her with the unhurried rhythm of events, meditations, even retardations. As such, it calls to my mind the prose of Javier Marias, and that’s a good recommendation. In the prose of Marcin Pilis, the narrative is the important thing – the very process of narration. This does not mean, however, that the story is mere pretext or schematically conceived. The meeting of two people gives birth to love between them, and its reaction thereto – destructive evil. And the whole drama springs from hatred. In effect, the union of this pair of protagonists ascends to a different level of reality. What is consciousness, what is the presence of a second person, what can love be, and how are we to react to that which destiny hands us? That is the theme of the novel narrated in a wise, profound way by Pilis, full of hope and faith in man.

But without piercing even the surface of this artwork, we note that the prose is abundant in beauty. The author shuffles temporal plains, mixes narrations, spellbinds us with his language, with the construction of the narrative, with returning leitmotifs (primary numbers taken from mathematics, or the voice of a woman long remembered). In a very successful manner, the author introduces terminology from mathematics and physics to his description of emotional states and life events. He is able to grasp a vibrant, imagistic process of the memory. He does not despise the fantastic, as he attempts to image forth a contact on another level of consciousness. Doing so, he introduces the theme of theatre and the play of actors – the Shakespearean motif of the world as a stage.

This is an excellent book by the author of Cisza w Pogrance [Silence in Pogranka], a novelist to be reckoned with, a rising literary star who does not wish to avoid human problematics, but is rather devoted to serious issues.