Polonaise ranges over four decades of life for an aristocratic Polish family, the house of Kornowski. We see them fall from eminence, we see communism and fascism wash over them, we see them in permanent Parisian exile and, in an ironic denouement we find the family fortune 'rescued' by immersion in dissipated English aristocracy.
Krystyna blushed. 'I'm only ever happy in the present,' she said. 'The past has unpleasant memories, and the future has fears.'Read's prose is spare and efficient as he skips over the decades. That spareness can make the occasional diversions into immorality all the more effective. A good read. 7/10.
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