Warsaw Spring

Heather Kirk's WARSAW SPRING is designated for 'young adults'. This 'old adult' enjoyed it thoroughly and admires Kirk's success, particularly in the character of Eva, the narrator. She is eighteen years old and totally alienated from everyone in her Edmonton world. Her mother, Magda, her step-father, George, even her beloved Polish grandmother, Babka, all of them are completely outside of Eva's understanding and sympathy. Kirk is good at the dialogue that Eva engages in with others -- and especially good at her own internal dialogue. When she runs away to Poland to find her relatives, and, she hopes, her father whom she has never seen, she begins a rocky maturing journey that was to me completely convincing. The climax for Eva is a dual experience -- being taken to see the former hell of Auschwitz where unimaginable evil was done to millions, and then the wonderfully moving blessing of the Pope's inspirational progress through his beloved homeland. We leave Eva in the process of her maturing, often stumbling but already a very different young woman from the former cynical, angry, self-despising rebel. She demands and earns our sympathetic involvement. One volume is not enough to satisfy this reader -- her springtime is an engrossing story. I look forward to her summer blooming