From the Archive: Giant

Aga Maksimowska’s debut novel, Giant (Pedlar Press), is a few years old at this point but it’s worth pulling it out of the archive for those of you who may have missed it the first time around. Nominated for the 2013 Toronto Book Award, Giant follows young Gosia, an eleven-year-old girl living in an adult’s body trying to adjust as a newly arrived immigrant to Canada.The story begins with Gosia and her sister living with their grandparents in Poland; their mother has gone to Canada and their father is mainly absent. It’s 1989 and Eastern Europe is rebelling against the Communist rule in the Autumn of Nations. This upheaval is familiar to Gosia as it matches the turbulence she feels in her own life. As a tall girl who stands out among her fellow students she is often bullied and left feeling like she doesn’t belong.Gosia and her sister move to Canada when her aging grandparents can no longer care for them but the trauma of leaving her motherland and trying to adjust to a new place is just as turbulent for Gosia as her previous situation. While she continues her coming of age as a “giant freak”, now in a strange culture, happiness eludes her. But as time goes on Gosia is able to weave a new life for herself, a mix of the old and the new, just herself.* * *“Aga Maksimowska’s Giant is a story of migration and reinvention. Chronicling the physical and emotional journey of Gosia, the adolescent protagonist, the story begins in Poland, the country of her birth. While navigating the physical awkwardness of growing faster than her peers, she is also obliged to make sense of her mother’s move to Toronto to lay the foundation for a better life for the family. Maksimowka first introduces Toronto as a mythical, unknown place to which Gosia is a reluctant migrant. In the midst of her adolescent angst, Gosia must find her own place in a new country, in the new life her mother has created. Beautifully told, the novel is an honest account of the messiness of growing up, set against the complex backdrop of transplanted traditions, language and expectation.” –Toronto Book Awards Jury Citation* * *An excerpt from Giant:Mama rakes the dead leaves that have fallen on the lawn of Pan Rousseau’s house. It’s a mess. I sit on the steps and watch her, hands under my butt, pressing onto cold concrete. “Babcia rakes leaves at the cemetery, not just on All Saints Day, and tidies up grave of Dziadek’s family members and lights candles.”“So, you don’t like it here, ha?” Mama asks and waves me over.A trick question I don’t know how to answer, so I chew the inside of my cheek instead. She gestures again, and I lumber over to the pile of leaves in the middle of the lawn.“I like that you’re here,” I say eventually, not sure if I mean what I say.She smiles. “That’s good.” She opens a plastic bag so I can scoop the leaves she’s raked into it. “What if I stayed here for a while?” She stretches out ‘a while’ into a time that several words should occupy.“Then I guess I would have to be here for a while, too,” I say, trying hard to sound matter-of-fact, but my voice trembles. My face feels like it will separate from my skull and splat on the ground at any moment.Mama lifts my chin with one finger and leans in to peck me on the forehead. “You’ll like it,” she says. “Eventually.”I can’t tell her I will never like it here.* * *To learn more about this title or to get your own copy, visit Giant.