Gospodična Nihče

Coming-of-age novels don't get much darker than Tomek Tryzna's debut, Miss Nobody. Beginning in blood and ending in betrayal, this tale of a young Polish girl's journey from innocence to all-too-painful experience limns a searing portrait of adolescence. Tryzna's protagonist, 15-year-old Marysia Kawczak, moves from her small village to the big city of Walbrzych where she finds herself living in a housing project. This country cousin soon gets taken under the wings of two very different peers: the musically inclined Kasia and the precociously sexual Eva. If Kasia represents the spirit in this novel, Eva undoubtedly embodies the flesh and all its temptations; not surprisingly, the two girls dislike each other and Marysia is increasingly torn between them. Told from Marysia's point of view, the novel is a mélange of dreams, fantasies, and perhaps even hallucinations, as when Tryzna's heroine steps into the woods on the day she menstruates for the first time and finds a young man lying on the path skewered by a spear. "Gripping the spear, he wriggles his body, like he's trying to climb up.... He sees me. He begs pitifully, 'Little girl, please help me. Pull this out of me. I can't do it alone. Please, pull it..." Though the symbolism gets laid on a bit thick from time to time, Miss Nobody is a promising first effort from a novelist we're sure to encounter again. --Margaret Prior