Życie, a zwłaszcza śmierć Angeliki de Sance
Life... is a complex, crazy road novel with several plots told in dozens of chapters. The narrative is packed with humour and moves along at the pace of a Kusturica fi lm, as Podsiadło pays tribute to writers like Richard Brautigan, Bohumil Hrabal and Egon Bondy. In a series of immediate, simple episodes laced with absurdity and moving the reader to tears of laughter with his clever wit, Podsiadło writes about things that matter and brings up some essential issues in an offbeat way. He plays with minor scenes from life as witnessed in small towns on the Baltic and on mountain trails, presenting sketches of people, conversations overheard, gestures observed, and winding his own recollections into the narrative. He pokes fun at stuffy officialdom and intellectual limitation, while also showing the beauty and authenticity of the provincial, peripheral and marginal world.
A horseback ride around Estonia, a pilgrimage to Egon Bondy’s house, a father’s funeral, reading a book about boys’ adolescence out loud in a train carriage and the fortunes of Angélique de Sancé, nymphomaniac and heroine of cloak-anddagger fi lms – these are just some of the topics Podsiadło tackles. But peeping out from behind the comical events, we see the profound truth about life, death, separation and the ephemeral elements that are the fabric of existence, and that Podsiadło shows how to turn to full advantage.
