Cwaniary (a slang term that can be translated as a hustler, rogue, scalawag or wily female) can be seen as the female answer to Leopold Tyrmand's 1955 novel Bad (Zły), a story of a vigilante citizen out to defend Warsaw citizens against the criminal element. Now, 60 years later, a group of young women take the initiative to maintain order in a city that where danger still lurks in the shadows.
Two brazen thirty-somethings, one of whom is pregnant, taking on a tandem of muscled "male chauvinists" and coming out unscathed is a bit unbelievable, but then realism has always taken on a more magical or dreamlike form in Chutnik's narratives, governed by its own rules. This is most apparent in the description of the site of an apartment building that rose up from the ashes of one that had just been demolished. The idea of Stefan Żeromski's glass houses is updated through the lens of a feminst writer whose sharpest tool is irony.
The novel's main protagonist, the queen of the Hustlerettes, is Halina Żyleta - Halina Razor Blade - a sharp-tongued, no-nonsense heroine drawn from the pages of comic books. The comic book theme is extended throughout the book with illustrator Marta Zabłocka's illustrations, complete with speech bubbles that give away the thoughts of such characters as the bespectacled policeman, who declares, "My hobby is realist sung poetry. Specifically, outdoorsy ballads. They let me know what's going on in the neighbourhood... Sometimes I cry because I'm so moved". With such emotive sentiments, it's no wonder it takes a gang of tough girls to take things into their own hands and reinstate justice in a world run by men, where women are more often the victims than the heroes.
The dude put a knife to my throat and "get undressed!" he yells, "take off your panties!" So I yel. help and he says shut your mouth 'cause I'll kill you! And I'm all help again, but he is like no one can hear you here and yes, no one wanted to hear me in a housing estate of 2,000 people, summertime, windows open and all of them fucking deaf all at the same time.
A coincidence saved Halina Żyleta from a terrible fate when a neighbour came outside to throw out some rubbish. The girl, with her panties down to her ankles, in shock, laid on the path to the dumpster, so he just jumped over her. "He didn't want to hear, notice, hell, he had his own problems to deal with: wife, kids and all that". These brief sentences cut through the novel like a knife, in effect making it a swift read, which is generally indicative of a book's strength, yet in this case it leads to a rather sketchy outline of the characters. This makes it difficult for the reader to engage and identify with the characters, to feel for them on a deeper level. For Chutnik's Hustlerettes, the past is like "gum under your shoe, stretching behind you and not letting you take a step forward".
Culture.pl's literary critic Janusz Kowalczyk finds similarities between Chutnik's "scalawag" style and Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy. Lisbeth Salander, the icon of Scandinavian crime novels, was modeled on the childhood heroine Pippi Långstrump, created by Astrid Lindgren. Halina Żyleta, with her anarchist visions and naive approach to reality, could easily be a Polish amalgam of the two.
A note of national pride shines through, or rather a distinctly Varsovian sense of pride in the author's plaintive take on the highway robbery of the real estate market as developers demolish the historic remains of the city's fabric, building innumerable new apartment buildings, shopping centres and banks. She openly disdains the "temporary metropolis" spilling forth "from every bazaar stall and portable toilet" in a Warsaw that's "full of holes".
Sylwia Chutnik (born 1979) is not only a writer, she is also a social activist. She runs the MaMa foundation, which aims to improve the situation of mothers in Poland and a member of several socially-minded groups. She debuted with the book Women’s Pocket Atlas (2008). A year later this publication won her the prestigious Passport Award from the Polityka weekly and has since been translated into Czech, German, Lithuanian, Russian and Slovakian. Her writing is deeply rooted in feminist theories and cultural gender issues, as well as historical and political legacy. In her 2012 book Baby (Dzidzia) takes the broader symbol of Polish martyrdom with the private suffering of motherhood, particularly when the child of that mother is disabled in a tale that unfolds in a dark, sinister way.
Sylwia Chutnik - Cwaniary / Hustlers
Nowa Proza Polska - Wydawnictwo Świat Książki / Grupa Wydawnicza Weltbild, Warszawa 2012
135 x 215 mm, pps. 240, hardcover
ISBN: 978-83-273-0187-1
www.swiatksiazki.pl
The book has not yet been released as an English edition or other foreign-lanuage edition.
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart, based on the original text on Culture.pl by Janusz R. Kowalczyk, November 2012