The Loves of Faustyna: A Novel - Softcover

Fitzpatrick, Nina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140241329 ISBN 13: 9780140241327

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1995

Synopsis

When a cloud in the shape of human buttocks appears over Krakow in 1967 and lingers over the city, residents believe the world is coming to an end. For demure, bookish psychology student Faustyna, this is unthinkable - because if the world ends she will die a virgin. Within hours she is off to the Europa Hotel to bare her own shapely bottom during a tryst she arranges with a Russian dignitary, beginning a riotous sexual odyssey that takes her up and down the social scale and across the political spectrum of Communist Poland in its dying decade. In the years that follow, Faustyna finds herself playing many roles - housewife, lover, mother, and psychologist - in a country that has gone mad. Baffled and perplexed, she finds that the only way to survive is to throw herself into the great collective insanity. But through the triumphs and tribulations she is always, hilariously, Faustyna.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Though the publisher's blurb for FitzPatrick's second novel calls it "a riotous sexual odyssey," readers will quickly ascertain that what's most at stake is not sex but politics, and though the blurb refers to the narrator's "shapely bottom," readers will be pleased to encounter a yet more provocative mind. Set in Poland during the Communist years of the 1960s, The Loves of Faustyna echoes the passion and humor characteristic of Milan Kundera's stories of life under dictatorship, when pursuits of love and friendship become entangled necessarily in dissent, interrogation, subterfuge and incarceration. "To all outward appearances we were a modern society," says Faustyna of a nation besieged by secret police, "But in truth... we were once again a neolithic tribe reduced to fornication, food-gathering and ritual incantations." Pregnant with her daughter, Julia, Faustyna quips that the girl has two fathers, one a soldier in the army and the other a worker for Solidarity. At last arrested for treason, Faustyna's lyrically comic look at prison erupts in confusion about precisely with which side she is supposed to have been collaborating. The result is a novel that trains a wistful, intelligent gaze at someone trying to be a woman when her very personhood is at risk. Passages in which hatred is likened to "inherited despair" and in which the narrator muses on "the overwhelming maleness of violence and power... its eagerness to sheath itself in metal and leather and brass buckles," reveal an author of remarkable wisdom and clarity. National advertising.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

'This book constitutes a valuable resource for postgraduate students and researchers. Mos t... of the chapters succeed in providing a clear and comprehensive introduction to the various approaches and/or methods, thus enabling the reader to make an informed decision about whether or not they wish to pursue the topic further. The book as a whole is also very well referenced and this makes it a source of essential information for students and researchers with an interest in qualitative health psychology' - Health Psychology Update 'The book as a whole provides a useful introduction to large-q Qualitative research in health psychology, and makes a convincing argument that qualitative research is far more than just a polite excuse for people who can't handle structural equation modelling. Like the field it describes, the book is discursive, at times personal, and intentionally partial in its perspective. Researchers, both novice and experienced, postgraduate students, and health psychology practitioners will find this a fascinating, and at times, challenging volume' - British Journal of Health Psychology

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140241329
• ISBN 13: 9780140241327
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96