Dagmara Dominczyk

Anna has spent most of her life outside of Poland, but she seems to feel the greatest connection to herself when she is back in the town she called home in her childhood, and where she returns most summers. It is in this town of Kielce, Poland that Anna meets her closest girlfriends (and frenemies) Kamila and Justyna. The three girls create an unlikely bond when Anna comes to visit her grandmother when she is 12, and remain penpals in between Anna’s visits back to Poland.

This is the world show more we enter in The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk. The book moves back and forth in time and from the viewpoint of the three friends. Anna brings a sophisticated world view from living in many places before settling in the United States, eventually becoming an actress. Kamila is the awkward, desperate to please friend who flees to the United States when her marriage falls apart while Justyna is the wild child who never leaves Poland. A shocking tragedy brings the three friends back to each other.

I found this book really special. It could be because I am of Polish descent that I felt a connection to this book, but I really enjoyed Dominczyk’s writing and character development. Each of the girls had flaws but were lovable in their own way. You could feel and believe their friendship and their betrayals. The ending is a little too neatly packaged, but I was ever able to look past it because the overall work was so solid.

This review can also be found on my book blog www.BaileysandBooks.com show less

"The Lullaby of Polish Girls" is an engrossing read replete with vivid settings on both sides of the Atlantic. It is at once the Polish version of "Just as Long as We're Together" and gritty portrayal of alienation and the immigrant experience.

Dagmara Dominczyk's "The Lullaby of Polish Girls" is the coming-of-age story of three young women from the small town of Kielce, Poland, told in the present (2002), when they are about age 25, and at various points in the past, starting in 1989, when they were 12. Anna, who has a promising acting career within her grasp lives in the United States, but returns periodically to visit; Kamila flees to the States to join her o immigrant parents and escape from an unlucky marriage; and Justyna, show more the wildest and most irresponsible of the trio,stays put and, ironically, makes a good marriage until tragedy strikes. How the girls interact with the young men in their lives, their flawed parents, and mostly each other is the meat of the story. Only the grandmothers seem to have their heads screwed on straight enough to cope with the demands of daily life. The girls make a lot of bad choices; they smoke too much, drink too much; and they may have too much of youth's rudderlessness, but they feel a pull to Kielce wherever they are. At critical times in their lives--in the end, at *the* critical time--they face challenges together. This is Dominczyk's first novel, and it is clearly heart-felt. She gets many things right. The handling of the Polish language is adept and lends nice verisimilitude. The switches in time are perfectly clear. My minor quibbles are three: it doesn't sound right for Polish girls in the 1990's to be talking like Valley girls; there are a few places where the reader isn't sure who is talking; and the preprint has a few editing mishaps that should be corrected in the final version (the wrong "their"; "compliment" instead of "complement," for example). More important, the death of Justyna's dog doesn't heighten tension the way it ought--and probably was intended to--because I didn't recall the dog's even being mentioned previously. Perhaps this was edited out at some stage, but the lack of a firmly established presence of the dog in her life make its demise fall flat. The girls' troubles are in some part an outcome of the limitations in their environment and in some part of their own making. Despite their setbacks, and all coming-of-age heroes face them, these three interesting characters still look to the future with hope. show less

Really liked this book. The characters are authentic and raw and the story has good interest and pace. Anna, Kamilla and Justyne meet when Anna goes to Poland for a summer and then returns each year. Covers their lives through to early to mid twenties. The friendships are very realistic and the atmosphere in Poland is very stark and the people very human.