Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing for sending me a digital ARC to review!
This book exceeded my expectations in so many ways but most notably with the blend of genres as the story progresses. Initially, we follow our protagonist, Sasha, as she worries about her relationship with her piano teacher, Ackermann, in what feels like a typical literary novel exploring grief. We do not learn much about Ackermann except for what Sasha, whose opinion is most certainly biased, believes of him, making her somewhat of an unreliable narrator. When Ackermann is found shot dead, we see Sasha wrestle with whether she has the right to obsess over him and the emergence of an almost thriller/mystery-like plot as she begins to question everyone around her about the circumstances surrounding his death.
Sasha as a character is sometimes wildly unreasonable but also strangely relatable for her grief as she mourns a man she loved all by herself. Watching her seek comfort in slightly strange and perhaps morally questionable ways endeared her to me and made the story all the more propulsive to read.
Polek also weaves interesting commentary on faith and religion as we see Sasha both rely on her faith and disregard it for things like her love for Ackermann whenever it suits her. This facet of her character was very interesting but did sometimes take me out of the story as it felt slightly tacked on, as if the story is trying too hard to be didactic. Despite this, I really enjoyed this book, especially in the third part as the story reaches its most absurd refrains.
Almost a perfect 4 star read.

I really liked this! Such a fascinating story and very strong writing. The story details are fresh and specific and you would not expect them to work together but they do. You get the impression you are reading from a very clever and masterful writer. I loved Polek's previous novel, Bitter Water Opera. I think about Part 1 of that book all the time. It's so taut and brisk. I'm sure I'd love Imaginary Museums and I can't wait to read it next. Thank you very much to NetGalley and the publisher - I'm super grateful for the early review copy.

"She'd learned through her practice that some degree of restraint was necessary to communicate legible emotion." Polek is one of the few legitimate heirs (would be dumb to say heiresses...) of Ingeborg Bachmann and Fleur Jaeggy. This is a spectacular novel, unshowy about its erudition, attentive to the physical and psychic reality of the world. I loved Bitter Water Opera too but there is a marked development in Polek's mode of questioning, here, that makes Ackermann feel like a fruitful evolution.

This book mixes literary fiction with mystery in a way that is unique. The main character, Sasha, is grieving her piano teacher Ackermann, and because she's an unreliable narrator, we only see him through her biased eyes, especially once he's found shot dead. The story also explores faith and how Sasha uses or ignores it depending on what fits her feelings at the time. Overall, this is a compelling and well written novel with a main character who feels both frustrating and real, and it gets even more interesting as things take a stranger turn near the end.

Mysterious and suspenseful, this is a beautifully written novel. Sasha is an immediately relatable protagonist as she is grieving her piano teacher, Ackermann. I like how Sasha is unreliable and biased, and we only see Ackermann through her viewpoint. The author does a wonderful job of combining literary prose with a mysterious plot. I will look forward to more from this author.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance e-galley; all opinions in my review are 100% my own.

I was attracted by the gorgeous, moody, snowy setting of this book. It was absolutely a unique read with allegorical atmosphere.
However for me, it fell slightly short on character depth. I would love to know more about Ackermann, Helen to realize it fully.
If anyone loves atmospheric literary fiction, bit of mystery, this book is a wonderful choice.

Bonkers metaphysical Carpathian David Lynchian almost-murder-mystery! Really brisk, brief, intriguing, allusive and possibly allegorical; the descent into the salt mine and the surreal was very cool. Sometimes I wanted to know more about certain characters or situations but I think the gnosticism is part of the novel's design. Brings to mind Fleur Jaeggy, Joy Williams, Leonora Carrington—an interesting blend of the ecological, existential, and earnestly religious; very much doing its own thing, going its own way—if you like the specific, serious, unique novels of Missouri Williams and Esther Yi, I think you will like this.

I finished reading Ackermann a few weeks ago, but I needed time to think about what I wanted to say about it. I messaged Nicolette on Instagram when she first posted about it (we don’t know each other, I simply followed her after reading her first book to keep an eye on her upcoming work). I said I was excited since I had enjoyed Bitter Water Opera and mentioned I would request an ARC. She answered a few days later, just when I had gotten the copy approved and was sitting at a café after work, reading the first chapter. I thought it was a nice coincidence, and I liked that the day was cold and overcast, as if the weather, too, wanted me to read this book. And before I noticed, I had read a third of the novel, unable to stop while I drank my coffee and listened to piano pieces.

What is this book about? I could say… music, desire, grief, nature. So perhaps I should just say it’s about God and some of his creations. About the different ways in which God makes himself present to us, the gifts He gives us. This is, on the surface, a very quiet book. Set in a Carpathian mountain town, we follow Sasha, a woman who finds herself increasingly worried about her piano teacher after he misses one of their lessons. She goes around town meeting different people: coworkers she doesn’t really like, patients from the dental office where she works, a sister who has battled cancer, a childhood friend, a mysterious new guy, always looking for Ackermann. But most of her time is spent alone, contemplating. She contemplates her own life and those around her, and she has contemplated Ackermann for years.

Does contemplating help us understand the nature of things? Does Sasha’s devotion to her piano teacher, to her sister, to God, deepen her knowledge of these things, these relationships? Or has this contemplative existence turned her life into a frozen sculpture that can only survive in the coldness of solitude, away from the warmth of real relationships? Like classically trained musicians who have an ear for isolating sound, Sasha has spent a good part of her life isolating herself, keeping everyone, even her sister, at a distance. The people closest to her are only so because they knew her as a child, but as an adult, her only relationship seems to be the one she has with Ackermann, one that only exists during the time one of their lessons lasts. So it makes sense that when he disappears, Sasha has her life altered in a way that she can’t cope with.

With Ackermann gone, Sasha’s behavior becomes erratic. The book turns into a dreamy mystery, but solving it is kind of irrelevant. I never really felt like I wanted to know what really happened, and I didn’t think I would get any answers. I was focused on the candlelight, St. Brigid’s coat, music notes, the salt mines. I was praying and I was listening to God.

Literary fiction with a side of murder mystery where music, grief and faith matter more than the whodunit. Spare, strange and haunting. As I read it I was reminded by that strangeness of reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. In such a good way. Out February 2027.

Thanks to NetGalley and Astra House for the ARC.

I read this book in one sitting. I had a little trouble getting through to the end of Polek’s prior novel, so I appreciated that there was more of a forward-moving plot, though still nicely subtle and artful even while involving events like corporate/regulatory coverups, investigative journalism, and murder. I was reminded of the work of authors like Amina Cain, one of my favourites, or of The Empusium (though Tokarczuk’s novel veered away from realism). The idea for setting this story in a relatively closed-off village with a few actors was compelling (though I did have trouble figuring out whether these are foreigners who had moved to the area at some point or whether they are locals). The book is a nice mix of a slightly ethereal, allegorical and of the realist. I’m grateful that sublty off-kilter literary fiction is being published in our otherwise quite uninspired cultural moment.

A wonderfully strange, metaphysical novel that reads almost like an unfolding dream. So much is packed into such a short, spare narrative: music, faith, grief, mysticism and a murder that seems to lead somewhere much stranger than a straightforward whodunit. I loved the moody, snow-covered setting and the surreal descent into the salt mine. The whole book has an unusual, dreamlike quality that I found really compelling.

My one reservation was the character depth. I often wanted to know more about the people at the centre of the story, and felt that the brevity sometimes came at the expense of getting to know them properly. Still, I wonder how much of that distance is intentional, given the novel's allegorical nature.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.