Samotnia

In The Retreat, Anna Kańtoch tells the story of a crime fiction writer who himself becomes the main character in a deadly mystery. It’s an enthralling story, and at the same time a refreshing play on genre conventions.

Leon Cichy is thirty-four and has a few bestsellers under his belt. Yet despite his professional success, his personal life is a disaster. His wife leaves him, and a month later he rushes into another marriage with a girl he’s just met on vacation. To make matters worse, before his honeymoon is even over, Leon is involved in an accident and he loses his sight.

This is the moment when we meet the protagonist of The Retreat, who is also its narrator. Like Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks, he records his stories on a dictaphone, and each monologue forms the next chapter of the book. As time goes on, Leon starts to have doubts: what really happened on that fateful night when he was struck by a car? And is the woman at his side really Julia, who he married in Italy?

The situation turns even more tragic when people close to him start to be killed, one after the other. Has the crime writer himself become the subject of a deadly plot? Or maybe it’s all a coincidence, and Leon’s suspicions are the result of an addled mind and restricted senses?

Anna Kańtoch has published successful crime novels, thrillers, horror novels, science fiction and also books for children. And as if aware that all stories have already been told, she decides to play with the formula and genre conventions. We therefore get a meta-story about a writer becoming one of his own characters. We also get an original version of first-person narration, in which the protagonist, like in Christopher Nolan’s film Memento, doesn’t know how much he can trust himself. Finally, it’s also a social portrait of contemporary Poland, a society that in a short time has become more affluent, more Westernised and more secular. All these elements come together into a wonderfully entertaining novel that will give readers what they want, but in a fresh formula.