About this item
Highlights
- Winner of the 2000 Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Prize Necessary Lies tells the story of the discovery of secrets and lies that stitch together empires and individual lives.What are the lies we tell ourselves and others that get us through our lives?
- About the Author: Eva Stachniak was born in Wroclaw, Poland, and came to Canada in 1981.
- 300 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Cultural Heritage
Description
About the Book
When Anna is offered the opportunity to move to Montreal, she jumps at the chance to leave her life in Poland behind. But when tragedy strikes 10 years later, Anna decides to return to a dramatically changed Europe. Probing the depths of betrayal and forgiveness, she confronts her own past and the motives that drove her away from Poland.Book Synopsis
Winner of the 2000 Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Prize
Necessary Lies tells the story of the discovery of secrets and lies that stitch together empires and individual lives.
What are the lies we tell ourselves and others that get us through our lives? In the summer of 1981 Anna is suddenly offered the opportunity to study English at McGill University in Montreal. She jumps at the chance, leaving behind her job, her husband, and her country - Poland. She meets William, a music professor, and falls in love. Back home, martial law is declared. After almost ten years of marriage, William dies suddenly of a heart attack, and Anna is left to pick up the pieces. In the midst of grieving, she discovers more pieces than expected: for the length of their lives together, William carried on a long-distance affair with a woman journalist in Germany.
In search of truth, Anna returns to a dramatically changed Europe, where Communism has fallen, the Berlin Wall has been torn down, and where, once again, history will have to be rewritten. Probing the depths of betrayal and forgiveness, she confronts her own past and the motives that drove her away from Poland; she sees herself through the eyes of her mother, her ex-husband, and most importantly, William's German lover, Ursula.
Review Quotes
...the book that satisfied my three fictive R's: real people, real places, real emotions.--Carmine Starnino "Books in Canada"
[Stachniak's] human comedy is the oldest and best sort. Woven through the inevitable sadness is wonder at the revelation of human complexity and resilience.--Jim Bartley "The Globe and Mail"
It's not easy for a fiction writer to keep up with history when it's this big, but Stachniak and her characters do precisely that - as their own secrets and lies and hard-worn resilience parallel the extraordinary events happening around them. Necessary Lies is a brave and ambitious novel and a worthy winner.--Joel Yanofsky "Books in Canada"
Necessary Lies serves to remind where we are by reminding where many of us have come from.--Olga Stein, Editor "Books in Canada"
Offering a wealth of appealing sensory detail with what Clark Blaise once termed "authorial generosity" (I saw the streets of the cities, the shape and colour of people's clothes, tasted the food), the novel portrays the lives of Central European characters as journeys of survival in an age of tribal atrocities, whether those atrocities were cloaked in Nazism, Communism, or national vengeance.--Julie Keith "Books in Canada"
Themes of personal betrayal, collective denial and historically divided identities initially drive this story. Stachniak's world is convincing and carefully wrought ... Necessary Lies satisfies most with the expressive fluidity of its prose, and its sharp portrait of a woman grappling with a bitter legacy.--Jim Bartley "The Globe and Mail"
About the Author
Eva Stachniak was born in Wroclaw, Poland, and came to Canada in 1981. Her debut novel, Necessary Lies, won the Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and her second novel, Garden of Venus, has been translated into seven languages. Her third novel, The Winter Palace, has been published across the world. Stachniak lives in Toronto.