Dorota MasłowskaReseñas

This book made me want to do more drugs.
The narration reads tight, just behind your sternum, right behind your eyes and in front of your brain. It’s a fast, bloody picaresque that follows the narrator Nails through a few brutal days, its narration style slipping between persons and time and people addressed. Most characters are treated as isolated, unpredictable, each action interpreted as hostile or overlaid with excess layers of meaning by the leaping associations of the narrator. The consciousness of the narrator comes across impossibly clearly.
I’m not sure what happens at the end of this book: the conscious unreliability of Nails slips into a sort of delusion, and then the last pages happen. The best part by far were the last ten or so pages, entirely different in tone, told by a plural female first person narrator, but read like a prose poem, plot impossible. It was cool, a relief almost, to be free of the hot urgency of Nails, but frustratingly incomprehensible.

Styl Masłowskiej jest, jak zwykle, efektowny, ale nie brakuje potknięć i błędów logicznych. Nie po raz pierwszy mam wrażenie, że jest to zasłona dymna, która ukrywa brak głębi. Autorko, chcesz analizować kulturę niską z pozycji propagatora kultury wysokiej? Upewnij się, że znasz różnicę między 'nota bene' a 'nomen omen'. Dla mnie ta książka to lekkie, łatwe i przyjemne czytadło.

A spunky, drug-addled tale from Poland and a teenage author. That a teenager wrote this book is absolutely mind-boggling to me. I can't wait for what comes next.

The title translated into English means either the Peacock of the Queen, or the Puke of the Queen. It’s a Polish satirical/grotesque novel written as one long hip-hop/rap poem by a very talented 23 year-old-girl. If I were to compare it, it resembles some songs of Tom Waits with bits and pieces of newspaper ads and real newspaper articles mixed into a song, but with conversations and a plot.
Once you get used to the amount of profanity there, the whole thing is very entertaining and amazingly insightful. It’s a satire on Polish music industry, and gives a rather repulsive, albeit not untrue, image of it.
The book actually got the most prestigious Polish lit award last year, and I can see why.
It hasn't been translated into English yet, and I don’t think it will translate well- it’s too much culture based, and there are too many puns there (see the title itself). Her previous book, Snow White and Russian Red, has been translated into English, and from what I can see here on TheLibraryThing reviews, has appealed to some young people in Europe. She wrote it when she was 19!

Ein Drogentrip in einer polnischen Stadt. Hat mir gut gefallen: Kreative Sprache, ganz heute.

Roman très difficile à lire mais bizarrement interpelant; jeunes paumés en Pologne, drogués et antisociaux; langue vive et saccadée