The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel by Magdalena Zyzak (Guest review by Tarren Young)

The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel 
by Magdalena Zyzak
Guest review by Tarren Young

I have been pondering on how to give this book a proper review for several days now.

I received this book as a gift  at Christmas. I’m thrilled that “Santa” knows my tastes fairly well. I also know where Santa found the book. Santa stopped off at the Dollar Tree late one night after a long day in his workshop, to pick up a few odds and ends, and decided to meander through the books. Now, one does not typically associate high “literary” works of writing with Dollar Stores. But, if you are willing to browse through them with a little bit of patience and diligence, there are often some rare gems to be found.

I did not read the reviews of this book until after I had already started this book. (I rarely do, because I do not want the reviews to sway me one way or another...despite the fact that that is the sole purpose of the reviews.) At first, I was rather disappointed to see that it received terrible reviews, right down to “how does this crap get published?” because I was thoroughly enjoying the story!

This is her first published novel (if I am understanding right, she has moved into film directing) and the inside flap clearly states, “Magdalena Zyzak’s rolicking debut is a literary mash-up: equal parts bawdy farce, picaresque adventure and comic love story.” It makes me wonder if the people who have reviewed the book completely forgot the part about it being a farce and comical love story?

Granted, the time frame is 1939, and the characters are about to experience an event in a dark time in history. The characters are so secluded in the country that, really, that they can’t help but be their under-educated selves and, for them to be any other way, would be a disservice. I am also fine with there being some bawdy humor touching up against a dark time in history, because we all have found light and laughter even during some dark times.

The story revolves around Barnabas Pierkiel, although the other characters like to attempt to overthrow the stage occasionally which makes for a laugh out loud read for me. I often read passages aloud to my husband or would have him read the passages if there were little ears around (yes, sorry, this is not a PG rated book.) The narrator relates the story of Barnabas and the disastrous family he comes from . . . a long line of men who have somehow, seemingly become cursed to lose their limbs and shortly thereafter their lives, due to random, unpredictable, unfortunate kinds of events. How Barnabas tells his story, when he actually gets the chance to tell his own story, often left me laughing so hard tears were streaming down my face. You both feel sorry for him as he seems so uneducated, yet at the same time, one of the most educated in his very rural (very made up) country, Scalvusia.

Going back to the aforementioned stage-stealing characters and the quirky narrator, the story does change from first to third person perspective, often in the same chapter, but for me it was never abruptly. It was similar to the narrator in Lemony Snickett’s, A Series of Unfortunate Events. Who knows? Maybe that series is what inspired her to write the story in the way that she did. Sadly, even though I did not find an issue with this, many reviewers did.

Trying to stay on topic for our book club theme of crime for January, I really wanted this to be my book choice. I am a very slow reader and I read this book in two weeks, which is fast for me. I am not going to say there were not any crimes in this book, as there most certainly were! At first, I thought, how boring would that be if it was all just petty crimes? But the petty crimes add up eventually, interlocking like puzzle pieces and fitting together in the end...mostly. You may have to slam that last piece in with a sledgehammer because it’s a bit warped, but, it’ll fit.

Two gypsy sisters (supposedly) are renting a house as they decided to stay behind when their caravan went through the town a while back. Barnabas is madly in love with the oldest of the two sister’s Roosha. Sadly, every time Barnabas tries to make an impression on her, it doesn’t go well. He is usually tripping over something or being slammed into by someone. She turns her nose up at every attempt, and for good reason - she is supposedly a mistress to one of only handful of prominent men in the town. Or, at least the man she is mistress to thinks he is a prominent man. Personally, I think he’s a pompous jerk, but that’s just me. Alright, every once in a blue moon he’ll have a redeeming quality, but still a pretty arrogant windbag.

It is these gypsies that eventually fall prey to the hideous “crime” from the community. Other people fall prey as well to minor crimes such as being beaten up and having things stolen from them. But the biggest crime is blaming the gypsies for an event that the people of the town want to see as murder when it is actually a suicide.

Perhaps the people want to have a scapegoat because it is the pastor of the town who commits suicide. It is often hard for people of religious backgrounds to understand why a religious figure would do that, and therefore, they think, it must have been murder. The mayor’s wife heads up a committee to root out the gypsies and have them pay for their crime.

Despite the anger I felt at the characters trying to blame innocent people for crimes they did not commit, I did really enjoy this book. That is, right up until the last two chapters. The last two chapters really, to me, did not connect to the story in any coherent way. Abstractly, I’m sure that they do connect, but it drove me a bit insane that the ending of the story felt completely disconnected from the rest.

Overall, I would rate this story probably about a 3.75 stars. If the last two chapters and epilogue had been more coherent and less disparate, I would have probably rated the story as four stars. If this author published another book, I would probably read it to see how her style has or has not changed.