A very real journey to enlightenment

I recognise the types of characters in this book and they are very real, some very self interested and some excruciatingly nice people - the kind of people we should all get the chance to meet, but as in this story, we always meet both good and bad. The characters are often a mixture of charming, loving, deceitful, kind, manipulative, generous, entitled, conscientious and jealous and more,

Monika grows throughout the book, which also seems to be reflected in her narration, But somehow she also seems to stay so innocent. And for me, it is this innocence, the humour and pride in the whirlwind of not so innocent other characters, al of which contribute to her evolution to enlightenment, without changing her real true-self, that really makes this book so enthralling.

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An emotional journey

This book is breathtaking. From the outset you are hanging on to every word as Monika starts a new life in England - in search of the English dream. From chapter to chapter Monika faces setbacks and adversity interspersed with romantic interludes. There are situations where through either necessity or naivety she plunges headlong into both work and relationships with untrustworthy characters, whilst having to fight for respect and recognition. Along the way there are genuine and helpful angels who turn up at crucial moments when least expected, and when Monika most needed them. The book is narrated by the author and the emotion in her voice shows that she is recalling episodes in her past life that have had an enormous effect. This is a true story and leaves you in no doubt that it comes from the heart.

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A fabulous read a better listen!!!!

In 2020 I decided to buy the book....I was taken by the excellent English and to be honest I was struck by the honesty of the journey the author shares. It was an honest and very open trip through a clearly bright young lady's ultimate dream.

However when I decided to listen to the Audio Book I was absoulutely stunned and inspired by the very personal resume of this amazing lady.....she paints every location with absolute accuracy so much so that you can feel it, you can smell it and even breathe it......she speaks about her encounters with men with such honesty you cannot help but nod your head and say yes I have been there I did that too. A very thoughtful, provocative and emotionally charged book...read or heard. Highly recommended.

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Looking for Love

"Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional:many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left top 'find their feet' among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow an d the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity".

This is not Monika Wisniewska. It is, of course, George Eliot. But Eliot came to mind when I listened to Ms. Wisniewska's memoir. In some ways I am not the best person to review this book. I do not believe in God. Ms. Wisniewska does. Ms. Wisniewska is fond of quoting Rumi, whose sententious chicken soup simply irritates me. Words like 'destiny' and 'fate' mean nothing to me. Neither do phrases like 'meant to be' strike any kind of chord. I have never believed in the idea of 'the one', the 'soul mate'. But lots of people do, and there is definitely a market for memoirs of this kind.

Quite why Ms. Wisniewska titles her book '...in Pursuit of the English Dream' I don't know. Certainly, much of her story take place in England. But the real pursuit here is the author's pursuit of love. England itself only becomes a major character towards the end of the book, when M. Wisniewska recounts her experience of being a Polish woman in the country that chose Brexit and unleashed the kind of xenophobia that made her feel so unwanted. Reading this part of her book made me feel ashamed to be English. I wanted to apologise to her on behalf of every decent Brit.

But the bulk of this memoir is concerned with Ms Wisniewska's pursuit of love. And any of those thousands of men and women out there who share the author's view that there is (or should be) a soulmate out there, the one love which is meant to be, will devour this story. Ms Wisniewska tells the stories of several attempts to find such a love. Spoiler alert - they all fail. But it is how they fail that is the real interest here, how the author experiences that failure, and what she thinks she has learned from that failure.

Roland Barthes famously said that an autobiography is a novel that dares not breathe its name. And the question therefore arises - how reliable is Ms Wisniewska's account of these failed relationships. Did these men simply behave badly? How would THEY tell the story of their relationship with Ms. Wisniewska. I suspect that her version of events is pretty reliable, But we are all better at biography than we are about autobiography. And we are all better at history than we are at current affairs. I can't even begin to answer this question where Ms. Wisniewska is concerned. But her book did provoke questions of my own. One in particular.

Did she over-invest in one particular kind of love? C.S. Lewis wrote about four kinds of love:- storge (the affectional relationship between Parent and Child), philia (roughly equivalent fo friendship or fellowship), eros (romantic love), and agape (love of humanity). For Lewis, only the fifth love, the love of God can hold all these forms of love in balance and perspective. Ms. Wisniewska's memoir is almost exclusively devoted to romantic love. There is a touching account of her relationship with her Mother, but scarcely a mention of Children. At one point, in the sad aftermath of the central relationship in the memoir she does very briefly consider 'what if', but if Children did (or do) constitute an important element in her dream, the evidence is not to be found in this memoir. There is mention, too, of friends, but only in relation to the help that they did or did not provide during her times of trouble. Agape only figures in its opposite - Ms. Wisniewska's utterly understandable experience of alienation following the Brexit vote in 2016. Perhaps under this heading I should also mention that Ms. Wisniewska does occasionally incorporate elements of travel-writing into her narrative - Prague, Vienna, Paris.... I could wish that her obvious admiration for splendid architecture, expensive jewellery, haute-cuisine, and heroic folk from history had been tempered by a visible awareness of the suffering side of history.

There are times in this memoir when the author does seem to acknowledge that it is a grave error to seek completion in a romantic relationship. That if one must love, one should love from desire, not need; from strength, not weakness; from fullness, not emptiness. And then another potential soul-mate loves into sight, and the lesson seems to have been unlearned. At critical points in the narrative I found myself thinking - Stop, you're doing it again, this is only going to end in tears. And yet that is one of the attractive things about this memoir. There is an unguarded quality about it. Ms Wisniewska exposes her vulnerability, and she risks the criticism of those who think they are wiser than her.

Towards the end of the book Ms Wisniewska claims that, in order to be fulfilled as a person, it is necessary to love oneself unconditionally. This is her protection from disappointment, and I very much hope that it works for her. I'm not sure that it would work for me. I prefer the balance between Lewis's four loves.

But that doesn't mean that Ms. Wisniewska is wrong.

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tedious story of a 'princess' on the hight horse

I was hoping it will get better, but it didn't. Really regreted the purchase. I normally love autobiographies and true stories, but this one was too much. A story of a princess with high expectations chasing her unrealistic ideas of love and relationship. Most content very superficial and shallow.
I did like the narration, I always appreciate the author reading their own story.

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