The House With the Stained-Glass Window

The House with the Stained Glass Window / Zanna Sloniowska
trans. from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
London: MacLehose Press, 2019, c2015
240 p.

This beautiful cover was one reason that this book has been on my TBR for a while. Also, the fact that it's about Lviv, and the interplay of history in that changeable city. 

It's also the story of three women, grandmother, mother and daughter, living in an apartment with a large stained glass window in the stairwell, which plays a part in the story. They are a Polish family, who have lived in Lviv since it was Lvov, and even Lemberg. But Marianna, the mother in this trinity, is drawn to the Ukrainian cause. 

Marianna is a beautiful opera singer, well known and adored by many, but she becomes part of the demonstrations against Soviet governance in the late 1980s. And as she's speaking at one in 1988, she's shot dead. 

This event shakes the family of women, and the unnamed daughter takes over the story. She recollects her mother, the interactions in their household, and the mysterious life her mother had outside the family circle. She meets a Polish man who has come to look at the stained glass window; it's a notable one that he's trying to save. It turns out that this melancholy man is one of Marianna's former lovers, and somehow he and the daughter fall into an affair despite his being so much older than her. 

The story relates a lot of history, takes us on a tour of Lviv in all its incarnations, and has some intriguing elements. However, I found the choice of narrator underwhelming. The daughter is boring, frankly -- her mother, grandmother (and even the frail great grandmother) are women who have all done something, who have opinions and backstories, so this contemporary story of the daughter in an affair with her mother's former lover just feels a little banal. 

I had great hopes for this novel, and it wasn't bad. There are many elements that I enjoyed, like the history, the setting, the stories of the past. But it didn't seem to go anywhere in the end, I was disappointed in the limp conclusion that felt like the story just stopped, rather than tied up. I liked it for many reasons, but found it didn't quite reach the heights I'd hoped for.