whippycleric 's review for:

Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg
3.5
challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I enjoyed this short book and the writing reminded me of "The Discomfort of Evening". The structure is quite different being a series of vignettes rather than a novel, but the coming of age story of a young girl in a religious and relatively poor background has strong parallels. Each entry was evocative and unique but with some common threads throughout. I can clearly see why this book could have a profound effect on some people, though for me it's not that impacting. This is for obvious reasons, I don't really relate to the protagonist, a young girl in a religious family growing up in communist Poland in the 1980s, myself being a man from a non religious family raise in capitalist 1990s UK. I'm also not a big fan of vignettes / short story collections as opposed to novels but can see the quality in this collection. It's a good book which I enjoyed reading but isn't really for me.