The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov: book review

The Physics of Sorrow (2011, English version 2015) is the semi-structured memoir of Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov. He calls it a ‘time capsule’ which is quite appropriate.

Using Greek mythology and the Minotaur half-man half-bull theme throughout, this is a collection of family stories, but not in a linear way, except that it starts with birth and ends with death. In between, it moves randomly from generation to generation, un-born to aged, and from various viewpoints to singular viewpoints, and into the future. For example, Gospodinov mentions 4 June 2022 with the news headline: Strange Epidemic of Amnesia.

The story ‘Bread of Sorrow’ is about his grandfather, also called Georgi, whom his mother tried to abandon in 1917 when he was three years old. She is referred to as Granny Calla, or Witch Calla, with eight children, who left Georgi, the youngest, in an old mill. It was his eldest 13-year-old sister Dana who went back to the mill to rescue him. Granny Calla’s punishment was to live a long life—to 93 years—seeing her son every day, for he never left her side. Georgi, on his death-bed when he is 82 years old, passes a paper to the 27-year old author, a Bulgarian journalist—a secret about the 1945 war.

The knowledge about his grandfather affects the author’s own life. The theme of abandonment threads in and out of the memoir, along with themes of basements, horns, darkness, labyrinths, and fear. But there are happy, funny tales too.

There are also philosophical segments, particularly about the physics of sorrow: ‘sorrow’s state of aggregation is gaseous … No, sorrow is not helium, krypton, argon, xenon, radon … it has an odor and a color. Some kind of chameleonic gas …’

The Physics of Sorrow is a different kind of memoir—inventive, revealing, thought-provoking, with interesting insights and random ideas. The ending is sublime – on a par with the best writers of all time.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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