The Bronski House

Several years ago, Marsden, a British travel writer (The Crossing Place: A Journey Among the Armenians), accompanied his friend Polish poet Zofia Ilinska, nee Bronska, to Mantuski (now part of Belarus), the border village where she grew up; she left it, at age 17, on the outbreak of WWII, escaping with her mother, Helena, just ahead of the invading Soviet army. The author movingly describes Ilinska's emotional return to her childhood home, but of far greater interest is the portrait he draws of Helena's life. Distilling her diaries, letters and papers, to which Zofia gave him access, Marsden effectively evokes her adolescence, love affairs and marriage, which took place in an insular, upper-class Polish Catholic world changed forever by revolution and war. Helena lived through several episodes of poor health, the death of her husband and the dispersal of close relatives before she escaped to Lithuania with Zofia in 1939. This meandering memoir is for those who would enjoy a bird's-eye view of life in early-20th-century rural Poland. (June)