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"Music, family and heritage are the spirits that give life to Keith Maillard's new novel."
"Maillard makes the connections seamless, and his prose is often as buoyant as the polka music he describes."
"Jimmy's irreverent voice remains strong. . . . [A] stylistic re-creation of a turbulent era in our history."
"[Maillard] gets so many things so right . . . . I guarantee, you'll have a ball."
The year is 1969, and young Jimmy Koprowski returns from his stint in the airforce to Raysburg, his blue-collar Polish American hometown where nothing much happens beyond working at the steel mill, going to Mass, and getting drunk at the local PAC. Jimmy's efforts at rebuilding his life result in sleeping off hangovers in his parents' attic and drifting into a destructive affair with a married woman.
But things change when his younger sister Linda decides to start an all-girl polka band, and Jimmy falls for the band's star clarinetist, Janice, whose young life is haunted by tragic events that happened before she was born. The threads of Jimmy's family life, the legacy of WWII Poland, and the healing power of music, language, and tradition all begin to converge.
At once gritty and compassionate, moving and witty, The Clarinet Polka showcases the emotional and perfectly pitched voice of a lost soul finding his way.
Review: "Maillard succeeds in giving Jimmy a distinctive voice . . . he's an older but less cerebral version of J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield." - The Charleston Gazette, 3/23/02
Review: "Deeply and authentically rooted in Polish-American culture...This is a remarkable novel from an important writer." - Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Review: "Rings utterly true . . . with a wicked sense of humor that keeps a reader hanging on his every word..." - Detroit Free Press 2/23/03
Discussion Questions:
Discuss Polish stereotypes and how they are dispelled, reinforced, or explained in The Clarinet Polka. How do characters like Jimmy, Patty, Linda, and Mary Joe acknowledge and deflect these attitudes?
Discuss the friction between first-, second-, and third- generation Poles in South Raysburg and how this friction ties into European ideas of class, and how it lessens during the process of "Americanization." What does it mean to "be an American" to each of these generations?
Describe the life/death cycle of an ethnic community as portrayed in The Clarinet Polka. Is there a fundamental contradiction between becoming an all-American boy or girl and preserving ethnic culture? Compare Raysburg's Polish community with other American ethnic communities with which you are personally familiar.
Discuss the effects of war on Czeslaw, Georgie, and Jimmy. Do you think that Jimmy suffers from a form of "survivor's guilt," having gone to Guam but not Vietnam? How do Georgie and Czeslaw come to terms with the horrors of war and their own survival?
The Clarinet Polka is a love story with a happy ending. Is this realistic? Discuss the love story's parallels with the folk-tradition polka lyrics that thread through the book. Discuss the archetypal pull on Jimmy, of the "bad" married woman and the "good" virginal girl.
What is the importance of Polish Catholicism, prayer, and specifically the role of Our Lady, in the Polish psyche? What are the similarities between Christian spirituality and the principles put forward by AA that enable Jimmy to come to terms with his alcoholism?
Some people feel that alcoholism is too boring or depressing a subject for a novel. Do you think alcoholism is realistically portrayed in The Clarinet Polka?
The author has used Raysburg as the setting for his previous books, including Gloria, which was set in the 1950's. Talk about the role of Raysburg in the book, and how the town is like a character in the story.
About the Author: Keith Maillard was born and raised in Wheeling, West Virginia, the inspiration for the fictional town of Raysburg which serves as the setting for The Clarinet Polka and Gloria (shortlisted for Canada's Governor General's Award). His previous eight novels include Two Strand River and Alex Driving South. He now lives in Vancouver with his wife and two daughters and teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia.
Anonymous
Posted June 20, 2004
i've read a lot of books but this one really is an example of a good book to read. very entertaining, every character has it's own story behind and you'll love the main players, how they encountered their own fears and fight their own battles. i highly recommend that you take time to read it and absorb it's content, such a good story.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted September 5, 2003
It's hard to imagine a frequently very funny book about hard-core alcoholism, but Maillard pulls it off triumphantly. Jimmy Koporowski becomes a mythical Everyman for all of us who have screwed up badly once - well, maybe more than once - in our lives, journeying to the bottom and back to bring us all a little redemption, a little hope, a little love. I laughed, I cried, I feel enriched.
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