Hello Gentle Reader
Lyudmila Petrushevskaya uses the subtitle of this collection: “Love Stories,” ironically. Many people may know Lyudmila Petrushevskaya for her collaboration with the director Yuriy Norshteyn, on the great animated film – often voted “the greatest animated film of all time,” – “Tale of Tales.” A short film of surreal images, and flashes of the fantastic possibilities. When watching it there is often a sense, that it is a dark childhood fairy tale. A twisted recollection of memories; placed in a mismatched order. Yet still one is hypnotized by its sepia tones and muted colours. What Norshteyn and Petrushevskaya cooked up is something magical, surreal, horrifying and all too wonderful to place any words on it. Readers may have already been acquainted with Petrushevskaya novella “The Time: Night,” shortlisted in nineteen-ninety two for the Russian Booker Prize. More recently English readers may know Petrushevskaya from the collection of short stories: “There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby,” with the subtitle “Scary Fairy Tales.” This was a New York Times bestselling book, and published by the large publisher Penguin Books. One can only imagine these “Scary Fairy Tales,” to be elegiac and surreal as “Tale of Tales.”
Yet Lyudmila Petrushevskaya was not always so critically acclaimed, and well received by readers alike. The Soviet censors in charge of party approved ‘reality,’ found Petrushevskaya’s work to be unacceptable. The work was not politically dissident from the party’s ruling ideology. Her work did not touch taboo subjects. She did not criticise leading political leaders. What Petrushevskaya did, with an unflinching eye was, depict the domestic horrors of a state that had abolished the self and the individual. Petrushevskaya was accused of blacking reality. Her Pessimistic realism was not approved. For that she was banned from publication. Yet Petrushevskaya did not stop writing. She wrote plays when she could. Made a living of articles and whatever else she could do. Yet throughout it all she continued to write. She saw the truth, behind the attempted forcefulness of the censored reality. There were no Snow Queens, in furs and porcelain skin that sparkled like blue ice. There were no strong jawed Proletariat women, who conquered the bourgeoisie, with turnip and sickle in hand. Yet neither of these are true. They did not live in icy castles, of sculpted snow and ice statues. Nor did they live in some picturesque farmhouse or garret. What these characters looked like, were the typical Russian and Eastern European woman. Hard as a stone. Headscarf wrapped around their faces. Black circles for eyes. A mouth that appears not to know how to smile. All wrapped up in blacks, and browns and greys. They lived in communal cement apartments. So thoroughly divided and subdivided, as well as cut up, that only corners remained for people and families to live. Forget privacy and a moment of peace. Petrushevskaya herself lived as a child under her mentally ill grandfather’s desk. It is in these same cement dwellings – these crowded burrows – Petrushevskaya writes about the misplaced love, office trysts, one night stands, accidents, and failed relationships. She writes about ungrateful children; monstrous parents; quarrelling lovers. All stuck in cauldrons of cement, cramped like ghoulish pigs in gestation crates.
In an interview Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, once talked about Russia as being a home of women Homers.
“Russia is a land of women Homers, women who tell their stories orally, just like that, without inventing anything. They're extraordinarily talented storytellers. I'm just a listener among them.”
This may explain why the writing of Petrushevskaya often has the feeling of being orally told. The stories have a precise economic use of words. The seventeen stories in this collection, roughly amount to about ten pages each. The entire collection is split up into four sections. Each sections deals with the theme of love and family – all with ample supply of fatalistic bleak realism that Petrushevskaya delivers it with. Yet don’t be fooled. There is a lot of ironic humour within this collection. Despite it all though these are realistic stories, of loveless lives – unromantic relationships, murky fates all wrapped up in a barbwire bow of unhappiness. They are prickly dead roses.
“This is what happened. An unmarried woman in her 30s implored her mother to leave their studio apartment for one night so she could bring home a lover.”
This is what you expect from a great deal of this collection: precise and blunt form of storytelling. Ms. Petrushevskaya plays are famous for their use of colloquial speech, as well as more formal and educated speech. There is no wonder why; the stories sometimes come across as if one has been hit over the head with a cast iron skillet. The first story “A Murky Fate,” (where the above line comes from) is short and somewhat pondering kind of story. Does this woman, who brings home this narcissistic toad of a man, truly love him? What is she after? These questions are asked, and show why the title, is adequately called “A Murky Fate,” – is this woman just one more woman who has found tragic love and have lost it? Her fate is unclear, as are a lot of the characters and their helpless pathetic lives.
Each story is blunt, and straight to the point. Often it feels like the stories are noted down jots, of gossip exchanged in the subway; over tea or coffee; during dinner, and in the dingy laundromat. The woman cooing around each other, the desperate and failed loves of those that they know those that they raised. Others cackle and caw about their hapless and ungrateful children. Constantly getting themselves into trouble. Or how they guffaw about their grandchildren – though they disapprove of their mothers, who their delightful son had married – surely he could have done so much better. Not wasting his time with the neighbourhood tart. Throughout it all one can picture Petrushevskaya this black clad figure, sitting slightly off to the side. Jotting down some notes, or carefully listening to how these women tell their stories. They tell them quickly. Tell them bluntly. They get to the point. They are not up to wasting time. Each of them is impatiently waiting to tell her own story, or her own piece of gossip. Each one listens to the news that transverses the streets. Slips inside the cracks; echoes in the alleyways. It blows on the close lines. It can be heard drunkenly muttering and arguing with itself in the mirror; it rides the subways and buses. It’s all around. It is the story of the everyday. These are the stories that Petrushevskaya picks up in the dead night. She works away, telling the stories of the everyday; of their trials and tribulations.
“Milgrom,” shows how subdued the author can be as well, describing the mundane with a slight poetic flare:
“A girl is sewing herself a dress for the first time. She bought three meters of cheap fabric (just over a ruble a meter), but the fabric turns out to be surprisingly pretty, black with bright bursts of dots, like a nighttime carnival.”
But one must always note that, there is no mincing of words. One gets straight to the point. This is one of the strengths of this collection, but also a bit of a hindrance. If one had to add some criticism, is that Petrushevskaya tells her stories, in a sense of an oral tradition. But sometimes she misses out on what she could achieve. Petrushevskaya could in fact, write some beautiful bleakly realistic stories, with a poetic flare with her well-chosen economic use of words, and not have such a strong authorial presence. It sometimes stifles the characterization, and almost feels like the objective is very well tinted with the subjective. It leaves me to wonder how this same style (if it is used) flares in longer formats like a novella or short novel. That being said, what Petrushevskaya does succeed at is, how these bleak little lives, have a glint of light in them. Such as “The Goddess Parka,” or even “Two Deities,” which does end in some grizzly grim forbearance. Yet still there is that stark bleakness to their lives, with the slightest glimmer of hope, which fills the pages with its light, because of the circumstances that surround. Yet still these stories carry with it the oral tradition of folk tales, and fairy tales – with an acute sense of speech, and understanding of day to day living.
The best story by far of this collection though is “Young Berries.” It appears to be autobiographical in tone, and discusses young love, of a young girl for her tormentor; but also faces down her tormentors, her alienation, and finds her voice, as she begins to write. Yet it is the precise use of language, of orally telling a tale, and poetic juxtaposition and metaphor as well as imagery, that leads for this story to succeed so well.
“The circle of animal faces had never crushed the girl; the terror remained among the tall trees of the park, in the enchanted kingdom of young berries.”
As childhood is sense through the lenses of animals and a forest. A kingdom of young berries. It almost carries on those descriptions a surreal image. Petrushevskaya goes on to describe how this young girl continues a monologue within her head in order not to be shunned and alienated and kicked aside. In cruel circumstances, we give birth to savage mongrels of wolves and mangy foxes.
“Excreted was the word for such children. The girl herself had known excreted kids in her schoolyard. The excreted were outside the commune, up for grabs – anyone could abuse them in any way. The thing to do was stalk them, then slam them into a wall in plain view. The excreted wore the look of dumb cattle; two or three stalkers tailed them.”
So is a brief study of someone being the tormentor – the wolf or the fox; or the dumb cattle or chicken that is to be chased and taken down like a hunted animal. The weak are prey for the strong. The strong can only survive.
Throughout “Young Berries,” there comes more poetic passages, which shows Petrushevskaya at the height of her power:
“The girl pulled on her new boots and trudged through the snowy park to meet her mother – her time in paradise was up; she was going home. At the winter palace, among crystals and corals of frozen trees, Tolik was living the final hours of his reign.”
The last story of this collection “A Happy Ending,” shows Petrushevskaya’s irony. A woman wounded by emotional abandonment of her son, and her philandering husband; inherits an apartment. Yet with cruel irony, Petrushevskaya places the man in an infantile situation. He cannot cook for himself; he cannot clean himself; he doesn’t even know how to use the telephone.
In the end Lyudmila Petrushevskaya has written the small odysseys of the women. The women in the line for bread and potatoes; the women on the subway or in the bus; the women knitting or gossiping over tea or coffee. She writes of the ghostly flaps of laundry lines and the clothes left out to dry. She tells the stories of shrewd mothers; drunken fathers; and ungrateful children. She recounts childhood torments, and victories, and love found and lost. Written in a strikingly blunt tone.. All seasoned with a good dose of scathing irony. It has its pitfalls and its criticism. Yet for the most part, it’s a well-rounded collection, which depicts a harrowing landscape of bleak and stone cold people, who get by on survival, and live by telling their stories. That live in their gossips and the tales they hear. They comfort one another with that sense that each one is not better off then another.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary
