There were a lot of interesting things in this book, mixed together with things that I found frustrating or annoying. Topperman interleaves the story of her emigration from Canada to Poland with her Polish-born husband, and the story of her father's and mother's families who originated there.

For most of the book, I was thinking - WHY did you move to Poland? She clearly didn't go there with any kind of plan for establishing a life or making a living. What I came away with was guesswork - it was the EU country both she and her husband qualified for citizenship in, so it was a springboard for living in Europe more generally; and maybe the fact that her parents were born there might have had something to do with it. But I'm not sure. And being a US citizen in difficult times, it's Canada where I'd love to go, so someone abandoning Canada seemed almost like the ignorance of privilege.

Luckily, the rise of the extreme right in Poland coincided with a job offer her husband received back in Canada, so they got out before it might have become too dangerous or frightening to live there. This inside view of Polish politics in the 2013-2017 time frame was chilling, and it sounds like it will become increasingly dangerous to be Jewish or gay or liberal there.

But that isn't the book I expected to read, I thought I was going to be reading just the book about her family's history, which was quite interesting, and not a lot of chapters with jumbled up chronology about her food confusions in Warsaw or how shop staff behave or random thoughts about her childhood vacations in Europe. And I was REALLY annoyed by her offhand comment that most women "don't wear a full face of makeup. Where, I wonder, is that Polish pride? [in being stylish]" Um... I can't even. I'm not sure why wearing a glopped-on mask of products is a sign of pride.

So, if you already have a reason to be interested in the history and contemporary condition of Poland, this will be a book for you, and the lives of Topperman's parents and grandparents, as well as the demise of a lot of her mother's family in the WWII camps, are evocative and complex. But you'll have to put up with a lot of nattering about her poorly thought through move to Poland. I hate to give it a 3 because it grew on me as I went along, but I'd be hesitant to recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read an advance copy of this book.