Krakow


Fiction - Literary
112 Pages
Reviewed on 01/28/2018
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Author Biography

Sean Akerman is a writer of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Born in the lakes region of central Maine, he moved to New York City in 2006, where he earned a PhD in social / personality psychology from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Over the course of his teaching career, he held faculty appointments at Hunter College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Bennington College. His books include: the novel, Outposts (Threekookaburras); the novella, Krakow (Harvard Square Editions); the poetry collection, The Magnitudes (Main Street Rag Publications); and a study of exile, Words and Wounds (forthcoming from Oxford University Press). He lives in the North Woods near Lake Superior's south shore. Currently, he is seeking representation for a novel manuscript about ten years in the life of a con-man.

contact: akerman.sean@gmail.com

    Book Review

Reviewed by Jack Messenger for Readers' Favorite

The prologue to Sean Akerman’s Krakow discloses the novella’s intriguing premise: a character, who may or may not be the author himself, has found in his New York apartment two short journals written by the previous tenants – a young man and woman whose relationship is crumbling apart. The text of these journals forms Krakow itself, which commences with the man’s account of events and then the woman’s. The journal entries describe the squall of emotions and shifting behaviours of each individual, their complex interactions and inchoate longings, the significant interventions of friends and family, and the pervasive influence of the past – past relationships in particular, but also the Past as a ghostly, monumental weight pressing down on the Present.

Krakow is an intensely literary text that rewards the reader's close attention to the nuances of thought and feeling experienced by the struggling couple, described with hermetic, elusive prose. Akerman is particularly skilled in delineating the distinctive voices of his protagonists, as well as their conflicting perspectives and needs. The woman’s journal entries are especially impressive: her self-understanding and powers of self-expression contrast vividly with her partner’s chopped-up, disconnected evasions and retreats. Krakow is also a New York story: the various quarters of the city, its streets and bars, the girdling ocean, are an enfolding presence, pierced only by a moment’s betrayal in another city and, above all, by a mysteriously significant visit to Auschwitz, the connotations of which are powerfully suggestive. Devotees of the contemporary American literary movement will respond with enthusiasm to this exemplary novella.