Picture this: you’re sitting in front of a cozy fire. The howling winter wind is miles away, sharing some dark corner with impending homework and early-morning labs. You want a nice book to curl up with, nothing too cerebral, nothing too extraordinary. Can you see it?

Good. If this is you, then your first step should be putting down Barbara Romanik’s 10 Things to Ask Yourself in Warsaw. Put it down, right now, because Romanik’s debut collection of short stories is anything but relaxing. She bends sentence structure like a blizzard bends trees, tearing from story to story at breakneck speed.

These 13 stories, many of them previously published in an impressive resume of literary journals, are modern and edgy as hell. Romanik’s sparse, profanity-riddled writing sometime reads like a spaced-out teenager’s journal; you’ll be lucky to figure out exactly what’s going on in these stories.

But perhaps that’s not the point. Whether featuring a robotic, Jehovah-praising teddy bear, an old Polish grandmother or a depressed soccer fanatic, Romanik’s stories are teeming with life. The zany characters demand empathy as easily as they demand attention, and they drive these stories forward.

Romanik expertly weaves several unique themes throughout the collection. Almost every story features at least one main character of Polish descent or relation (Romanik herself is a Polish Canadian). The title story speaks of the simultaneous journeys of a Polish immigrant returned home, a young Polish lover and an Italian clergyman, all living very different lives in the context of Warsaw.

Soccer is another recurring theme, along with graffiti and painting. And, interestingly enough, Romanik often chooses to portray male characters in the first person, a task (writing from the other gender’s point of view) often cited by experienced authors as very difficult to do well.

Romanik, however, does it ably. Whether you’re getting bored with the English language or you’re looking for a story that will kick you in the shins and go through your pockets for change, 10 Things to Ask Yourself in Warsaw will be a worthwhile read.

And I’d keep an eye on Barbara Romanik. She’s currently working on a novel, and you’d better believe her writing will make the literary world take notice.

Published in Volume 63, Number 20 of The Uniter (February 12, 2009)