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There Once
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales
The literary event of Halloween: a book of otherworldly power from Russia's preeminent contemporary fiction writer
Vanishings and apparitions, nightmares and twists of fate, mysterious ailments and supernatural interventions haunt these stories by the Russian master Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, heir to the spellbinding tradition of Gogol and Poe. Blending the miraculous with the macabre, and leavened by a mischievous gallows humor, these bewitching tales are like nothing being written in Russia-or anywhere else in the world-today.
Vanishings and apparitions, nightmares and twists of fate, mysterious ailments and supernatural interventions haunt these stories by the Russian master Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, heir to the spellbinding tradition of Gogol and Poe. Blending the miraculous with the macabre, and leavened by a mischievous gallows humor, these bewitching tales are like nothing being written in Russia-or anywhere else in the world-today.
206 pages, Paperback
First published September 29, 2009
About the author
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
87 books327 followersLudmilla Stefanovna Petrushevskaya (Russian: Людмила Стефановна Петрушевская, Людмила Петрушевская) (born 26 May 1938) is a Russian writer, novelist and playwright.
Her works include the novels The Time Night (1992) and The Number One, both short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize, and Immortal Love, a collection of short stories and monologues. Since the late 1980s her plays, stories and novels have been published in more than 30 languages. In 2003 she was awarded the Pushkin Prize in Russian literature by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation in Germany. She was awarded the Russian State Prize for arts (2004), the Stanislavsky Award (2005), and the Triumph Prize (2006).
Her works include the novels The Time Night (1992) and The Number One, both short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize, and Immortal Love, a collection of short stories and monologues. Since the late 1980s her plays, stories and novels have been published in more than 30 languages. In 2003 she was awarded the Pushkin Prize in Russian literature by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation in Germany. She was awarded the Russian State Prize for arts (2004), the Stanislavsky Award (2005), and the Triumph Prize (2006).
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July 14, 2019
The soul will never return to that former time, that other life. It needs to drag along in this current one, unfortunately. Because it’s the former life that’s always dearest to us. That’s the life coloured by sadness, by love – that’s where we left everything connected to what we call our feelings. Now everything is different: life just carries on, without joy, without tears.
Playing with the familiar beginning of many a fairy tale, the title of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s short story collection There Once Lived a Woman who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's Baby fairly sets the tone of her storytelling, which is however not as much scary as it is sinister and dark. As the title indicates, her stories, which she groups in four sections ( ‘Songs of the Eastern Slavs’ ‘Allegories’, ‘Requiems’ and Fairy Tales’), are not of the saccharine kind, though in one of its more tender moments one happens to have seen ‘strange dreams, in which a cloudless joy and love surrounded him, sang lullabies to him, calmed him’. Apart from the occasional wizard, the tales aren’t composed out of the classic fairy stories stock like cruel stepmothers, Prince Charmings or magic carpets but are mostly peopled with sorrowful parents, widow(er)s, orphans and loners (often girls and women), featuring in an grisly fantastical context where the haunting realities of death, sadness, debilitating illness, loneliness and penury blend with insanity and apocalyptic dreamscapes . Set in the claustrophobic confinement of a flat, or focussing on survival in a dense forest, the stories rather than on character draw powerfully upon an ghastly atmosphere, reminding me of some of the painterly dream worlds of the Czech photographer Jan Saudek. In some stories a touch of surreal humour brims through, or a slight reference to Kafka, metamorphosing a man into a dysentery germ (‘Marilena’s Secret).
Many stories are marked by living in times and under a regime where people could ‘vanish’ any moment, cruelly snatched from life and from their loved ones - once dead, in Petrushevskaya’s supernatural world some of those unfortunate souls are allowed to solace the ones left behind by sending them messages d’outre tombe or helping them.
While I thought the despair, the bleakness and the suffering most of these sad and grim stories are soaked in quite overwhelming, what stood out for me were the sporadic moments in which Petrushevskaya proffers a faint glimpse of hope (as the poignant closing story, The Black Coat, beautifully illustrates) or when she shifts into a more melancholic and lyrical register touching on the rickety and wheezing power of love, sometimes prevailing against all odds, embodying the bare indefeasible essence of life throughout the most miserable life conditions, misfortune and family tensions.
Love manifests itself in various forms, from a wayward love for a cat (as relatable always a plus), a fatherly love conquering the death of his daughter ( The Fountain House), a spouse, finally able to express her love (‘My Love’), the loving arms of death after a long illness (‘Two Kingdoms’), the selfless care for a Thumbelina (The Cabbage-patch Mother), to the unassuming love of a mother for her son persisting despite the outrageous behaviour of the son (A Miracle). Through these scarce poetical moments in her overall flinty, aloof and sober prose, I could sense why Petrushevskaya denotes her fiction as ‘Orchards of Unusual Possibilities’(if nothing else as a shadow of a blossoming apple tree hovering over the collection).
An unflinching belief in the power of love, and that singular moment of vital resilience (like found in ‘There’s Someone in the House’), the decision to choose life rather than death, are what moved me most in this what I thought of as a rather uneven collection.
Stubbornness won out in the end, the stubbornness that protects us from the will of others, that defends our right to live our life the way we want. Even if it means life will turn out worse than anyone planned, will turn into a poor life-but it’ll be one’s own, however it is, even without music, even without talent.
Reading her stories are often compared to Angela Carter’s (comparisons which are rather unfavourable to Petrushevskaya) makes me even more eager to discover the woman author I had already in mind for the ‘C’.
Playing with the familiar beginning of many a fairy tale, the title of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s short story collection There Once Lived a Woman who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's Baby fairly sets the tone of her storytelling, which is however not as much scary as it is sinister and dark. As the title indicates, her stories, which she groups in four sections ( ‘Songs of the Eastern Slavs’ ‘Allegories’, ‘Requiems’ and Fairy Tales’), are not of the saccharine kind, though in one of its more tender moments one happens to have seen ‘strange dreams, in which a cloudless joy and love surrounded him, sang lullabies to him, calmed him’. Apart from the occasional wizard, the tales aren’t composed out of the classic fairy stories stock like cruel stepmothers, Prince Charmings or magic carpets but are mostly peopled with sorrowful parents, widow(er)s, orphans and loners (often girls and women), featuring in an grisly fantastical context where the haunting realities of death, sadness, debilitating illness, loneliness and penury blend with insanity and apocalyptic dreamscapes . Set in the claustrophobic confinement of a flat, or focussing on survival in a dense forest, the stories rather than on character draw powerfully upon an ghastly atmosphere, reminding me of some of the painterly dream worlds of the Czech photographer Jan Saudek. In some stories a touch of surreal humour brims through, or a slight reference to Kafka, metamorphosing a man into a dysentery germ (‘Marilena’s Secret).
Many stories are marked by living in times and under a regime where people could ‘vanish’ any moment, cruelly snatched from life and from their loved ones - once dead, in Petrushevskaya’s supernatural world some of those unfortunate souls are allowed to solace the ones left behind by sending them messages d’outre tombe or helping them.
While I thought the despair, the bleakness and the suffering most of these sad and grim stories are soaked in quite overwhelming, what stood out for me were the sporadic moments in which Petrushevskaya proffers a faint glimpse of hope (as the poignant closing story, The Black Coat, beautifully illustrates) or when she shifts into a more melancholic and lyrical register touching on the rickety and wheezing power of love, sometimes prevailing against all odds, embodying the bare indefeasible essence of life throughout the most miserable life conditions, misfortune and family tensions.
Love manifests itself in various forms, from a wayward love for a cat (as relatable always a plus), a fatherly love conquering the death of his daughter ( The Fountain House), a spouse, finally able to express her love (‘My Love’), the loving arms of death after a long illness (‘Two Kingdoms’), the selfless care for a Thumbelina (The Cabbage-patch Mother), to the unassuming love of a mother for her son persisting despite the outrageous behaviour of the son (A Miracle). Through these scarce poetical moments in her overall flinty, aloof and sober prose, I could sense why Petrushevskaya denotes her fiction as ‘Orchards of Unusual Possibilities’(if nothing else as a shadow of a blossoming apple tree hovering over the collection).
An unflinching belief in the power of love, and that singular moment of vital resilience (like found in ‘There’s Someone in the House’), the decision to choose life rather than death, are what moved me most in this what I thought of as a rather uneven collection.
Stubbornness won out in the end, the stubbornness that protects us from the will of others, that defends our right to live our life the way we want. Even if it means life will turn out worse than anyone planned, will turn into a poor life-but it’ll be one’s own, however it is, even without music, even without talent.
Reading her stories are often compared to Angela Carter’s (comparisons which are rather unfavourable to Petrushevskaya) makes me even more eager to discover the woman author I had already in mind for the ‘C’.
February 20, 2015
I grew up listening to West African stories as deliciously weird as these ones, so once I perused my shelves and once again came across this collection by Petrushevskaya, I found myself interrupting my other reads, on a Sunday night, just to revisit these stories. While I don't agree that the collection is a Halloween one, I find that it is daring in its simple majestical and mystical storytelling. These stories include the strange, the surreal, the supernatural, the things that will have you shaking your head in disbelief, while also willing to suspend such disbelief--if only for a moment.
Petrushevskaya takes the concept of short stories and makes it her own, which probably explains why, in official Soviet literature, she remained "out of favor" for years. Her stories about the lives of women were said to be too "dark, too direct, and too forbidding." Yes, there is darkness and despair within these stories, there are illnesses and psychological disorders. And yet there are also life lessons. After all, does fiction not impart emotional truth? Petrushevskaya watched her husband die at the tender age of thirty-two; he had been paralyzed the last six years of his life. In stories like My Love and The Fountain House (two of my favorites), she explores death and disease and the effects they have on the mind. Her endings are a strange mixture of satisfaction and confusion. The beginnings, daring:
Direct? She certainly is that. If her stories were analyzed according to law-school essay requirements, they would follow the repetition of the CRAC method: Conclusion-Rule-Analysis-Conclusion. In fact she is still banned from most Russian readers lists, they say, because it cannot be accepted that she "existed so far outside the ordinary conventions of literary life…and has achieved classic stature."
If anything, this makes me admire her more.
He discovered a little hole below his neck, like an extra eye, from which tears poured out.
Petrushevskaya takes the concept of short stories and makes it her own, which probably explains why, in official Soviet literature, she remained "out of favor" for years. Her stories about the lives of women were said to be too "dark, too direct, and too forbidding." Yes, there is darkness and despair within these stories, there are illnesses and psychological disorders. And yet there are also life lessons. After all, does fiction not impart emotional truth? Petrushevskaya watched her husband die at the tender age of thirty-two; he had been paralyzed the last six years of his life. In stories like My Love and The Fountain House (two of my favorites), she explores death and disease and the effects they have on the mind. Her endings are a strange mixture of satisfaction and confusion. The beginnings, daring:
There once lived a girl who was killed, then brought back to life.
Direct? She certainly is that. If her stories were analyzed according to law-school essay requirements, they would follow the repetition of the CRAC method: Conclusion-Rule-Analysis-Conclusion. In fact she is still banned from most Russian readers lists, they say, because it cannot be accepted that she "existed so far outside the ordinary conventions of literary life…and has achieved classic stature."
If anything, this makes me admire her more.
The father takes hold of his son's sleeve, begins to scream, and wakes up in the United States, in the form of an unhappy immigrant named Grisha, who's been abandoned by his hardworking wife six months after they arrived in the States.
December 4, 2017
Liudmila Petrushévskaia (n. 1938)
Nascida em Moscovo Liudmila Petrushévskaia (n. 1938) é uma das escritoras contemporâneas mais conceituada na Rússia. Com apenas duas obras editadas em Portugal pela Relógio D´Água a “Hora: Noite” (2011) e o livro de contos “A Mulher Que Tentou Matar o Bebé da Vizinha” (2012), Liudmila Petrushévskaia tem sido premiada nos Estados Unidos da América e na Europa Ocidental.
No livro “A Mulher Que Tentou Matar o Bebé da Vizinha” são reunidos dezanove contos, de excelente qualidade literária, curtos, perturbadores, com enredos assustadores e macabros, repletos de imaginação e de alegorias, imprevisíveis e terríficos, com uma crueldade e um humor negro absolutamente excepcional; e que nos relatam as vidas de homens e mulheres, pais e filhos, mães e filhas, marido e mulher, crianças órfãs, bruxos e fantasmas, gatos e gatas, em cenários remotos, com casas perdidas no meio da floresta, em blocos de apartamentos, em hospitais, e em muitos outros locais; e que têm comportamentos sinistros e ambíguos, fomentados pelo ódio e pela vingança, em diálogos ou monólogos, sombrios, por vezes irracionais, quase sempre nas proximidades da loucura, numa solidão inevitável, dominada pelo medo, mas onde por vezes o amor resiste às agruras da vida e da morte.
Liudmila Petrushévskaia joga magistralmente com as palavras e com as emoções, numa escrita encantatória, visual, assente na oralidade e com um humor negro notável.
Dos dezanove contos, dezasseis são de excelente qualidade e apenas três são bons. Correndo o risco de cometer uma injustiça destaco: “A Vingança”, “A Higiene”, “Os Novos Robinsons Crusoés”, “Dois Reinos” e “O Segredo de Marilena”.
Uma autêntica surpresa – imperdível…
December 24, 2020
#abrilcontosmil
“O ser humano tem sempre medo da presença de criaturas desconhecidas, tem medo de insetos, de pequenas formigas na casa de banho, tem medo, digamos, de uma solitária barata drogada que veio, é de supor, fugindo do extermínio em casa dos vizinhos."
Fosse eu facilmente impressionável com histórias de terror e estes contos de Liudmila Petruchévskaia ter-me-iam causado calafrios e perturbado o meu sono. Há de tudo um pouco no imaginário desta autora russa: apocalipses, mortos-vivos, fantasmas e pesadelos. Ainda que não me tenham causado um verdadeiro medo, há um crescendo de tensão e, geralmente, um final imprevisível. “Lembrança de Mãe”, “Mora Mais Alguém cá em Casa”, “O Sobretudo Preto” e “O Segredo de Marilena” são alguns dos contos mais bem conseguidos.
“Quando alguma coisa não resultava à primeira, o bruxo aborrecia-se de imediato, perdia o interesse e largava tudo a meio. Transformava as suas noivas e mulheres sem préstimo na primeira coisa que lhe passava pela cabeça: num salgueiro-chorão, numa torneira, num repuxo da praça. Agradava-lhe fazê-las chorar até ao fim da vida.
Canções dos Eslavos Orientais - 4,5*
Labirinto – 4,5*
Réquies – 3*
Contos de Fadas – 4*
“O ser humano tem sempre medo da presença de criaturas desconhecidas, tem medo de insetos, de pequenas formigas na casa de banho, tem medo, digamos, de uma solitária barata drogada que veio, é de supor, fugindo do extermínio em casa dos vizinhos."
Fosse eu facilmente impressionável com histórias de terror e estes contos de Liudmila Petruchévskaia ter-me-iam causado calafrios e perturbado o meu sono. Há de tudo um pouco no imaginário desta autora russa: apocalipses, mortos-vivos, fantasmas e pesadelos. Ainda que não me tenham causado um verdadeiro medo, há um crescendo de tensão e, geralmente, um final imprevisível. “Lembrança de Mãe”, “Mora Mais Alguém cá em Casa”, “O Sobretudo Preto” e “O Segredo de Marilena” são alguns dos contos mais bem conseguidos.
“Quando alguma coisa não resultava à primeira, o bruxo aborrecia-se de imediato, perdia o interesse e largava tudo a meio. Transformava as suas noivas e mulheres sem préstimo na primeira coisa que lhe passava pela cabeça: num salgueiro-chorão, numa torneira, num repuxo da praça. Agradava-lhe fazê-las chorar até ao fim da vida.
Canções dos Eslavos Orientais - 4,5*
Labirinto – 4,5*
Réquies – 3*
Contos de Fadas – 4*
December 13, 2022
Years ago I was both drawn to and repelled by the titles (and the covers) of Petrushevskaya’s “scary fairy tales,” wondering if the stories might be too morbid even for me. After a conversation with two online friends about Petrushevskaya being attuned to and ingrained in the consciousness of those who lived under (and after) the former Soviet Union, and not having access to their recommended title of The Time: Night, I decided to read this collection.
I read the stories before bedtime, putting myself to sleep with them—that’s not a criticism— and I needn’t have worried about nightmares. I didn’t have any. Perhaps that’s because the stories’ psychic concerns are not mine, though the anxieties are relatable.
Because I had a library book with time constraints, I read several stories at a time, not my usual practice, and they’ve all run together in my head, except for “Marilena’s Secret.” It’s much of the Id, and I was reminded of Angela Carter’s Wise Children.
I will read more of Petrushevskaya.
I read the stories before bedtime, putting myself to sleep with them—that’s not a criticism— and I needn’t have worried about nightmares. I didn’t have any. Perhaps that’s because the stories’ psychic concerns are not mine, though the anxieties are relatable.
Because I had a library book with time constraints, I read several stories at a time, not my usual practice, and they’ve all run together in my head, except for “Marilena’s Secret.” It’s much of the Id, and I was reminded of Angela Carter’s Wise Children.
I will read more of Petrushevskaya.
June 1, 2016
Dark and haunting, Petrushevskaya's stories have a deeper meaning to them than you would think at first glance. They might start off as fairy tales, "There once lived ...", but they soon turn less-than-ordinary. There is this strange and surreal feel to them, a certain otherworldly quality, bordering on the supernatural. In them we encounter people struggling through poverty, war, diseases, sadness and death, often experienced through a parallel realm, called Orchards of Unusual Possibilities, sort of an Underworld. Although some are pretty short, they all left their mark.
The ones that really stood out to me are 'Revenge' in which the woman of the title tried to kill her neighbour's baby, 'The Cabbage-patch Mother' who keeps herself busy with a tiny little daughter the size of a droplet, and 'Marilena's Secret' where Marilena knows a secret or two.
With this book I conclude the May Short Story Month Marathon, a personal challenge during which Alex and I went through our short story collection in this last week of May. I added a little twist to it by reading books by authors I haven't read from before.
The ones that really stood out to me are 'Revenge' in which the woman of the title tried to kill her neighbour's baby, 'The Cabbage-patch Mother' who keeps herself busy with a tiny little daughter the size of a droplet, and 'Marilena's Secret' where Marilena knows a secret or two.
With this book I conclude the May Short Story Month Marathon, a personal challenge during which Alex and I went through our short story collection in this last week of May. I added a little twist to it by reading books by authors I haven't read from before.
December 8, 2017
This was actually a pretty big disappointment. It totally sounded like the kind of book I would love (scary Russian fairytales! Yes, please!). Sadly however, the stories got pretty repetitive after a while, it was written in a very cold and distant way throughout and thus, I never felt any sort of connection to any of the characters. Consequently, I was also never actually truly scared by what happened, even though some weird sh*t happens in this book! Just not the kind of weird sh*t I could grasp or appreciate. The only stories that stood out to me in some way were the title story (perfectly dark and twisted), and the very last story, The Black Coat (the only story that had any emotional impact on me).
September 5, 2020
Contos de fadas, órfãos, florestas, mortos-vivos, solidão e pobreza. Não encontrei nestas histórias o humor negro prometido, mas sim um desfilar de medos e crenças comuns ao ser humano, alimentados pela religião ou pela espiritualidade. Em vez de me assustar, senti até algum reconforto por essa fé na vida depois na morte e na ideia de uma justica, divina ou de outra espécie. Foi uma leitura interessante.
October 1, 2013
Now that's a puzzling title, who almost screams: "Marketing plans!", because there is no story with such title in this collection. There is one story with the idea, yes, but the title is less shocking and more evocative - Revenge. I've learnt my lesson, in that I'll be suspicious of books with flashy titles from now on.
The title of another translation of her stories is even flashier: There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself. C'mon!
The stories are grouped in four sections, according to themes and publication in Russia. Most of them are dark and surreal, with women and men on the brink of despair. Some characters are struggling between life and death, others are already dead. Some undergo mystical experiences, others are propelled into a parallel universe, a secondary reality which Petrushevskaya calls the Orchard of Unusual Possibilities.
The harsh realities of living conditions under Soviet regime were no surprise, since I've spent my childhood in a communist country. Their novelty aspect was wasted on me; I don't think I even noticed the crammed apartments, the lack of food and other peculiarities presented in these stories, which could prompt other readers from the West to exclaim 'Oh, how could those poor people live like that?' It seems we were able to live and survive, after all.
Despite my complaints below, I did find a couple of really good stories now and then, especially in the last section, “Fairy Tales”, which redeemed the entire collection:
From Songs of the Eastern Slavs: Revenge
From Allegories: Hygiene, The New Robinson Crusoes
From Requiems: The Fountain House, Two Kingdoms, There’s Someone in the House
From Fairy Tales: The Cabbage-patch Mother, Marilena’s Secret, The Black Coat (my favorite)
My biggest complaint with these short stories is that a lot of them are way too short. As in one page short, in some cases. After finishing a couple of stories, I was quite puzzled by their shortness and thought my copy was defective. Moreover, the language seemed strange, like I was reading a résumé. 'There must be something more, the book I have is definitely faulty', I thought. I checked Goodreads and I was relieved to find the same complaints in a couple of reviews.
Now, the translators say that these stories are so short because they are told in the manner of urban folk tales. Like the ones you hear spoken in whispers, with a mysterious air, at camp fires or in grandmother's back yard. This might explain their length, but couldn't prevent my dissatisfaction.
Another complaint is that most stories are predictable. After reading one or two, I started to prophetize: 'Oh, this guy is a ghost', 'Ok, this woman is going to die' and so on. Not to mention that the stories are not scary at all. I couldn't have been more unflinching or composed as I was with these stories. The suspense and final revelation that are talked about didn't work for me.
It is said that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya writes in the tradition of Gogol and Poe; I don't remember any of their stories, but I hope they don't have the same rudimentary feeling about them.
There are good things about the stories, though, namely the ideas behind them. Some are really good and -to my knowledge- even original, and I'll probably remember them for quite a while. I was frustrated that these ideas, which had a lot of potential, were not developed into larger narratives. And again, the language. Sometimes it was really unappealing, but it might be the fault of translation (although I doubt that).
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's life could become an interesting story in itself: the death of her first husband (only 32 years old) prompted a risky trip to Lithuania, where she wanted to visit Thomas Mann's summer house but also promote her writing, which was banned in Russia. In spite of the freedom she tasted there, she had to return because of her child. Her writing was far from being political explicit, yet it was not welcomed in Russia because it was dark and full of despair. After Soviet Union began to fall apart, some writers who had never been allowed in print before - including Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - began to be published. She became a major figure of contemporary Russian literature, although she remains controversial.
The title of another translation of her stories is even flashier: There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself. C'mon!
The stories are grouped in four sections, according to themes and publication in Russia. Most of them are dark and surreal, with women and men on the brink of despair. Some characters are struggling between life and death, others are already dead. Some undergo mystical experiences, others are propelled into a parallel universe, a secondary reality which Petrushevskaya calls the Orchard of Unusual Possibilities.
The harsh realities of living conditions under Soviet regime were no surprise, since I've spent my childhood in a communist country. Their novelty aspect was wasted on me; I don't think I even noticed the crammed apartments, the lack of food and other peculiarities presented in these stories, which could prompt other readers from the West to exclaim 'Oh, how could those poor people live like that?' It seems we were able to live and survive, after all.
Despite my complaints below, I did find a couple of really good stories now and then, especially in the last section, “Fairy Tales”, which redeemed the entire collection:
From Songs of the Eastern Slavs: Revenge
From Allegories: Hygiene, The New Robinson Crusoes
From Requiems: The Fountain House, Two Kingdoms, There’s Someone in the House
From Fairy Tales: The Cabbage-patch Mother, Marilena’s Secret, The Black Coat (my favorite)
My biggest complaint with these short stories is that a lot of them are way too short. As in one page short, in some cases. After finishing a couple of stories, I was quite puzzled by their shortness and thought my copy was defective. Moreover, the language seemed strange, like I was reading a résumé. 'There must be something more, the book I have is definitely faulty', I thought. I checked Goodreads and I was relieved to find the same complaints in a couple of reviews.
Now, the translators say that these stories are so short because they are told in the manner of urban folk tales. Like the ones you hear spoken in whispers, with a mysterious air, at camp fires or in grandmother's back yard. This might explain their length, but couldn't prevent my dissatisfaction.
Another complaint is that most stories are predictable. After reading one or two, I started to prophetize: 'Oh, this guy is a ghost', 'Ok, this woman is going to die' and so on. Not to mention that the stories are not scary at all. I couldn't have been more unflinching or composed as I was with these stories. The suspense and final revelation that are talked about didn't work for me.
It is said that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya writes in the tradition of Gogol and Poe; I don't remember any of their stories, but I hope they don't have the same rudimentary feeling about them.
There are good things about the stories, though, namely the ideas behind them. Some are really good and -to my knowledge- even original, and I'll probably remember them for quite a while. I was frustrated that these ideas, which had a lot of potential, were not developed into larger narratives. And again, the language. Sometimes it was really unappealing, but it might be the fault of translation (although I doubt that).
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's life could become an interesting story in itself: the death of her first husband (only 32 years old) prompted a risky trip to Lithuania, where she wanted to visit Thomas Mann's summer house but also promote her writing, which was banned in Russia. In spite of the freedom she tasted there, she had to return because of her child. Her writing was far from being political explicit, yet it was not welcomed in Russia because it was dark and full of despair. After Soviet Union began to fall apart, some writers who had never been allowed in print before - including Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - began to be published. She became a major figure of contemporary Russian literature, although she remains controversial.
September 17, 2022
I read this one in the original version and kept laughing out loud trying to imagine how this would've sounded for the average English-language reader.
It's not Russian literature per se.
It's not Lliterature, at all. Full stop.
As much as LP might love to be classified as such, she's not a literature writer. Her works are not a household name for an average Ukrainian/Russian/Polish/Belarus person and she's much better known for her English translations of her stories written in Russian originally than for the originals originally read. She's a spooky stories writer, nothing more elabourate.
So, it's a book of novelettes of the creepy stories type, you know, the ones that are posted and reposted on devoted to creepy stuff internet pages. These are very much interspersed with things that mostly a mind steeped in Russian cultrure would get. Like, what the WW2 deal is. For an average Russian, you know, the one who lost 2-52 relatives in it, just 1-2-3 generations ago. It's quite a big deal, you know.Much bigger than, say, the Blitz that the Londonders lived through and don't seem to have gotten over yet. Ukraine, Belarus and a large piece of Russia that lived through events much more terrible than 'Blitz' don't keep piping historical books about how they did that. Maybe they should. Or else in 50 years the story will be how the US conquered Hitler (even though they were late to the blood party by about 26 mln lives, ~3 years and all major firepower). Or how Hitler valiantly fought the Commies. I'm already seeing these fringe and alt-reality ideas in press and even legitimately-looking books.
Or, another example, what the deal is with police that don't do their job. Unlike the popular opinion is, Russian police is extremely lax. And it was even more lax back in the 90-s, 00-s. It was pretty much not functioning at all back then. Lots of murders and other violent crime were not investigated much at that period and went unpunished. So, this is what the wife murderer story refers to, as a background.
The ghost stories, the cemetery story, bleeding floors, the neighbour baby story... How would an average reader even understand what 'kaustic sodium' aka Sodium hydroxide is and why one would even have it on hand (in the 70-90s), beats me? A fun read, if not particularly deep or engaging.
PS The intro to this edition by the 2 translators almost had me rating this book 1 star, it's wrong on so many accounts... I literally can't find a single idea that's correct or adequate about their 'analysis' of her work.
That quip about 'breakdown of traditional human values post-war', I'd really like to see these translators proving it basing on LP's actual work. I'd also like them to compare her work to Stephen King (and a bunch of other popular Horror, Thriller and Mystery writers) as well as to regular spooky stories that come seemingly from every culture and nation under the Moon (with the partial exception of Chinese). Violent crime reports from worldwide nowadays could also help them. After this they could probably amass enough material to offhanddly comment about normal breakdown of human civilization or smth equally apocalyptical. Amen.I hate it so much when some people know letters and can recognize words but that's about the extent of their reading comprehension.
It's not Russian literature per se.
It's not Lliterature, at all. Full stop.
As much as LP might love to be classified as such, she's not a literature writer. Her works are not a household name for an average Ukrainian/Russian/Polish/Belarus person and she's much better known for her English translations of her stories written in Russian originally than for the originals originally read. She's a spooky stories writer, nothing more elabourate.
So, it's a book of novelettes of the creepy stories type, you know, the ones that are posted and reposted on devoted to creepy stuff internet pages. These are very much interspersed with things that mostly a mind steeped in Russian cultrure would get. Like, what the WW2 deal is. For an average Russian, you know, the one who lost 2-52 relatives in it, just 1-2-3 generations ago. It's quite a big deal, you know.
Or, another example, what the deal is with police that don't do their job. Unlike the popular opinion is, Russian police is extremely lax. And it was even more lax back in the 90-s, 00-s. It was pretty much not functioning at all back then. Lots of murders and other violent crime were not investigated much at that period and went unpunished. So, this is what the wife murderer story refers to, as a background.
The ghost stories, the cemetery story, bleeding floors, the neighbour baby story... How would an average reader even understand what 'kaustic sodium' aka Sodium hydroxide is and why one would even have it on hand (in the 70-90s), beats me? A fun read, if not particularly deep or engaging.
PS The intro to this edition by the 2 translators almost had me rating this book 1 star, it's wrong on so many accounts... I literally can't find a single idea that's correct or adequate about their 'analysis' of her work.
That quip about 'breakdown of traditional human values post-war', I'd really like to see these translators proving it basing on LP's actual work. I'd also like them to compare her work to Stephen King (and a bunch of other popular Horror, Thriller and Mystery writers) as well as to regular spooky stories that come seemingly from every culture and nation under the Moon (with the partial exception of Chinese). Violent crime reports from worldwide nowadays could also help them. After this they could probably amass enough material to offhanddly comment about normal breakdown of human civilization or smth equally apocalyptical. Amen.
December 5, 2017
Havendo a possibilidade de reencarnar, já não quero ser um felino mas sim uma escritora como Ludmilla Petrushevskaya...
February 4, 2021
Érase una vez una mujer que quería matar al bebé de su vecina. Érase una vez una familia que se fue a vivir a lo más profundo del bosque sin saber de qué huían; una mujer cuyo hijo se colgó de una cuerda; un padre que buscaba desesperadamente a sus hijos, aunque en realidad no sabía si habían nacido. Érase una vez una mujer que sentía una extraña presencia en su casa, y otra que se encontró con una amiga a la que creía muerta hace tiempo.
Érase una vez, hace mucho tiempo, un país llamado Rusia, en el que las mujeres transmitían de generación en generación, durante los largos y duros inviernos, una maravillosa tradición narrativa.
Liudmila Petrushévskaia, galardonada con premios tan prestigiosos como el Russian Booker Prize o el World Fantasy Award 2010 es, en muchos sentidos, la heredera de esa tradición. Además, su creatividad no se limita a la literatura; es también pintora, música, periodista y guionista.
Los relatos de Petrushévskaia recuerdan a los cuentos “de los de toda la vida”, pero sus cuentos de hadas no son para niños, ni mucho menos. Érase una vez una mujer que quería matar al bebé de su vecina es una colección de relatos modernos, para lectores adultos, que repasa toda la temática característica de la autora. La colección se divide en cuatro libros, cuyos títulos —Canciones de eslavos orientales, Alegorías, Réquiems y Cuentos de hadas— son bastante explicativos de lo que vamos a encontrar ellos.
Las fábulas de esta colección se desarrollan en un universo grotesco y sórdido, lleno de pobreza, crueldad y envidia, dominado por la injusticia y la represión; un lugar en el que no nos extrañaría encontrar malvados brujos y temibles dragones; pero no, por desgracia ese mundo es aquí y ahora, perfectamente reconocible para cualquiera de nosotros, aunque sea tan oscuro, o más, como el de los cuentos de antaño.
Pero esa ominosa penumbra queda matizada en los cuentos de Petrushévskaia por la luminosidad tenue, aunque omnipresente, que irradian la ternura y la ingenuidad de la gente sencilla. La magia de estos relatos no reside en duendes diminutos, o en los hechizos de un mago, sino en el sacrificio cotidiano de personas normales, en su fuerza de voluntad y en sus ganas de vivir.
A pesar de lo real y actual del contexto sobre el que se desarrollan, los cuentos de Érase una vez una mujer… se encuentran continuamente penetrados por lo onírico y lo sobrenatural; a veces nos encontramos que los muertos se comunican con los vivos a través de crípticos sueños para guiarles, otras veces puede que un desconocido te muestre tu destino a cambio de una botella de vodka. Es la versión eslava del realismo mágico.
En Érase una vez una mujer que quería matar al bebé de su vecina, sin abandonar la tradición literaria rusa, se combinan el realismo minucioso y la introspección psicológica de Chejov con la fantasía de Cortázar. Una fantasía en unas ocasiones conmovedora, en otras terrorífica, pero siempre narrada con una voz familiar, habituada a contar cuentos junto a la cama, o al calor de la chimenea, mientras afuera la nieve cae implacable.
Algunos de los cuentos que forman esta colección son, simplemente, una revisión de los cuentos y leyendas de siempre, ambientados en el mundo actual. Otros, los más fantásticos, narran viajes de ida (y a veces de vuelta) al mundo de los muertos, o conversaciones con las ánimas. Algunos de ellos, sin embargo, podrían interpretarse en clave de alegoría o de parodia de la URSS de la posguerra o de la Rusia moderna. Por ello, en diversas épocas, su autora ha tenido problemas con la censura.
¿Por qué censurar los cuentos de hadas? ¿Acaso no son la expresión más inocente de la literatura? ¿A quién pueden molestar? Esos relatos nos ayudan a comprender nuestros miedos y a enfrentarnos a ellos, como cuando éramos niños y temíamos que un monstruo pudiera esconderse debajo de la cama. Entonces, nuestra madre nos contaba la historia del hijo de un molinero que derrotó a un ogro y nos dormíamos confiados. Supongo que por eso los cuentos son tan necesarios para nosotros como peligrosos para aquellos que preferirían que nunca nos libremos del temor.
Hoy sabemos que los monstruos no existen o, mejor dicho, que sí existen, pero que no viven debajo de nuestra cama y que es imposible diferenciarlos a simple vista del resto de las personas.
Sin embargo, al crecer, confiados en encontrar las respuestas en ensayos o periódicos —quizá en novelas—, nos hemos convencido de que los cuentos de hadas son cosa de niños y hemos renunciado a comprender una buena parte del mundo que nos rodea —esa parte que escapa a la razón. Y mientras sigamos pensando así, será difícil terminar nuestro relato con un ”y fueron felices y comieron perdices”.
Érase una vez, hace mucho tiempo, un país llamado Rusia, en el que las mujeres transmitían de generación en generación, durante los largos y duros inviernos, una maravillosa tradición narrativa.
Liudmila Petrushévskaia, galardonada con premios tan prestigiosos como el Russian Booker Prize o el World Fantasy Award 2010 es, en muchos sentidos, la heredera de esa tradición. Además, su creatividad no se limita a la literatura; es también pintora, música, periodista y guionista.
Los relatos de Petrushévskaia recuerdan a los cuentos “de los de toda la vida”, pero sus cuentos de hadas no son para niños, ni mucho menos. Érase una vez una mujer que quería matar al bebé de su vecina es una colección de relatos modernos, para lectores adultos, que repasa toda la temática característica de la autora. La colección se divide en cuatro libros, cuyos títulos —Canciones de eslavos orientales, Alegorías, Réquiems y Cuentos de hadas— son bastante explicativos de lo que vamos a encontrar ellos.
Las fábulas de esta colección se desarrollan en un universo grotesco y sórdido, lleno de pobreza, crueldad y envidia, dominado por la injusticia y la represión; un lugar en el que no nos extrañaría encontrar malvados brujos y temibles dragones; pero no, por desgracia ese mundo es aquí y ahora, perfectamente reconocible para cualquiera de nosotros, aunque sea tan oscuro, o más, como el de los cuentos de antaño.
Pero esa ominosa penumbra queda matizada en los cuentos de Petrushévskaia por la luminosidad tenue, aunque omnipresente, que irradian la ternura y la ingenuidad de la gente sencilla. La magia de estos relatos no reside en duendes diminutos, o en los hechizos de un mago, sino en el sacrificio cotidiano de personas normales, en su fuerza de voluntad y en sus ganas de vivir.
A pesar de lo real y actual del contexto sobre el que se desarrollan, los cuentos de Érase una vez una mujer… se encuentran continuamente penetrados por lo onírico y lo sobrenatural; a veces nos encontramos que los muertos se comunican con los vivos a través de crípticos sueños para guiarles, otras veces puede que un desconocido te muestre tu destino a cambio de una botella de vodka. Es la versión eslava del realismo mágico.
En Érase una vez una mujer que quería matar al bebé de su vecina, sin abandonar la tradición literaria rusa, se combinan el realismo minucioso y la introspección psicológica de Chejov con la fantasía de Cortázar. Una fantasía en unas ocasiones conmovedora, en otras terrorífica, pero siempre narrada con una voz familiar, habituada a contar cuentos junto a la cama, o al calor de la chimenea, mientras afuera la nieve cae implacable.
Algunos de los cuentos que forman esta colección son, simplemente, una revisión de los cuentos y leyendas de siempre, ambientados en el mundo actual. Otros, los más fantásticos, narran viajes de ida (y a veces de vuelta) al mundo de los muertos, o conversaciones con las ánimas. Algunos de ellos, sin embargo, podrían interpretarse en clave de alegoría o de parodia de la URSS de la posguerra o de la Rusia moderna. Por ello, en diversas épocas, su autora ha tenido problemas con la censura.
¿Por qué censurar los cuentos de hadas? ¿Acaso no son la expresión más inocente de la literatura? ¿A quién pueden molestar? Esos relatos nos ayudan a comprender nuestros miedos y a enfrentarnos a ellos, como cuando éramos niños y temíamos que un monstruo pudiera esconderse debajo de la cama. Entonces, nuestra madre nos contaba la historia del hijo de un molinero que derrotó a un ogro y nos dormíamos confiados. Supongo que por eso los cuentos son tan necesarios para nosotros como peligrosos para aquellos que preferirían que nunca nos libremos del temor.
Hoy sabemos que los monstruos no existen o, mejor dicho, que sí existen, pero que no viven debajo de nuestra cama y que es imposible diferenciarlos a simple vista del resto de las personas.
Sin embargo, al crecer, confiados en encontrar las respuestas en ensayos o periódicos —quizá en novelas—, nos hemos convencido de que los cuentos de hadas son cosa de niños y hemos renunciado a comprender una buena parte del mundo que nos rodea —esa parte que escapa a la razón. Y mientras sigamos pensando así, será difícil terminar nuestro relato con un ”y fueron felices y comieron perdices”.
October 6, 2019
– Te, mi ez a mélységes mély fekete kút itt a kert végében?
– Az orosz traumatikus tudat.
– Király. Akkor megyek, és lemászom.
Petrusevszkaja rémtörténetei hihetetlenül sokszínűek: van itt minden a tradicionális orosz mesék hangulatától a gótikus horrorig. Bizonyos témák vissza-visszaköszönnek, ilyen a női kiszolgáltatottság, vagy a katonaság témája (a "cinkkoporsó-effektus"), egyszer megkapja az olvasó a feloldozást, másszor meg lófüttyöt kap, nem feloldozást. Annyira kiszámíthatatlanok ezek a szövegek, hogy néha pontosan azt történik, amire számítunk. Irodalmi előképnek talán Harmsz ugrik be – az abszurd mint eszköz, és az, hogy az olvasó sokszor kénytelen tanácstalanul széttárni a karját: ez meg mi volt? Petrusevszkaja ugyanis tudja, a rémtörténetek kulcsa, hogy az ember néha ne értse a dolgokat, lépjen működésbe benne az egzisztenciális bizonytalanság. (Mondjuk tegyük hozzá, a szerző ebbéli igyekezetében egyszer vagy kétszer odáig is elmegy, hogy a szöveget a mondattan szintjén sem tudom értelmezni – ez viszont nem biztos, hogy helyes.) Úgy vagyok a kötettel, ahogy a sokszínű elbeszélésköteteknél az már megszokott: némelyiktől el vagyok képedve, meg vagyok babonázódva, másokat meg becsületes szövegnek tartok, de semmi több. Ettől függetlenül azért nagyon figyelemre méltó kötet ez, és kedvemre való próza. Intenzív orosz nemzetkép rajzolódik ki belőle.
– Az orosz traumatikus tudat.
– Király. Akkor megyek, és lemászom.
Petrusevszkaja rémtörténetei hihetetlenül sokszínűek: van itt minden a tradicionális orosz mesék hangulatától a gótikus horrorig. Bizonyos témák vissza-visszaköszönnek, ilyen a női kiszolgáltatottság, vagy a katonaság témája (a "cinkkoporsó-effektus"), egyszer megkapja az olvasó a feloldozást, másszor meg lófüttyöt kap, nem feloldozást. Annyira kiszámíthatatlanok ezek a szövegek, hogy néha pontosan azt történik, amire számítunk. Irodalmi előképnek talán Harmsz ugrik be – az abszurd mint eszköz, és az, hogy az olvasó sokszor kénytelen tanácstalanul széttárni a karját: ez meg mi volt? Petrusevszkaja ugyanis tudja, a rémtörténetek kulcsa, hogy az ember néha ne értse a dolgokat, lépjen működésbe benne az egzisztenciális bizonytalanság. (Mondjuk tegyük hozzá, a szerző ebbéli igyekezetében egyszer vagy kétszer odáig is elmegy, hogy a szöveget a mondattan szintjén sem tudom értelmezni – ez viszont nem biztos, hogy helyes.) Úgy vagyok a kötettel, ahogy a sokszínű elbeszélésköteteknél az már megszokott: némelyiktől el vagyok képedve, meg vagyok babonázódva, másokat meg becsületes szövegnek tartok, de semmi több. Ettől függetlenül azért nagyon figyelemre méltó kötet ez, és kedvemre való próza. Intenzív orosz nemzetkép rajzolódik ki belőle.
December 18, 2021
Numa enigmática envoltura de humor negro, imaginário, suspense, terror (para alguns), asco e mistério, assim nos é apresentado um livro que, de uma forma fantasiosa, nos transporta para uma sociedade onde a fome, a solidão, a guerra, a morte estão inevitavelmente presentes invadindo, tumultuosamente, o corpo e a mente humana.
Um livro que se lê bem, com uma escrita simples, não foi assustador, mas muitas vezes fiquei expectante e muito curiosa com o que iria acontecer a seguir.
Os contos que apreciei mais e que lhes atribuí cinco estrelas bem brilhantes foram: “A Vingança”, “A Higiene”, “O Segredo de Marilena” e o “Testamento do Velho Monge”.
Um livro que se lê bem, com uma escrita simples, não foi assustador, mas muitas vezes fiquei expectante e muito curiosa com o que iria acontecer a seguir.
Os contos que apreciei mais e que lhes atribuí cinco estrelas bem brilhantes foram: “A Vingança”, “A Higiene”, “O Segredo de Marilena” e o “Testamento do Velho Monge”.
April 28, 2021
Well, this was underwhelming and disappointing.
First of all, don't expect any scary fairy tales. This is a collection of short stories with supernatural, something akin to Gogol or Poe. But without Poe's creativeness, gore and lyricism and Gogol's picturesqueness and cynicism.
But the cat kept meowing, like in that famous story where the man kills his wife and buries her behind a brick wall in his basement, and when the police come they hear the meowing behind the wall and figure out what happened, because along with the wife’s body the husband has entombed her favorite cat, which has stayed alive by eating her flesh.
yeah, I know, don't remind me of a better book.
Also for such a tiny book it was surprisingly repetitive. The ghost count as an explanation of mysterious in the end of stories is substantial.
What's interesting, I've heard about this book from western readers, not from Russian speaking world. If you want to try Russian short stories I would recommend Chekhov, Bunin, Gogol. This book is not a creative example even of a soviet life. Not one story stayed with me after closing the books.
First of all, don't expect any scary fairy tales. This is a collection of short stories with supernatural, something akin to Gogol or Poe. But without Poe's creativeness, gore and lyricism and Gogol's picturesqueness and cynicism.
But the cat kept meowing, like in that famous story where the man kills his wife and buries her behind a brick wall in his basement, and when the police come they hear the meowing behind the wall and figure out what happened, because along with the wife’s body the husband has entombed her favorite cat, which has stayed alive by eating her flesh.
yeah, I know, don't remind me of a better book.
Also for such a tiny book it was surprisingly repetitive. The ghost count as an explanation of mysterious in the end of stories is substantial.
What's interesting, I've heard about this book from western readers, not from Russian speaking world. If you want to try Russian short stories I would recommend Chekhov, Bunin, Gogol. This book is not a creative example even of a soviet life. Not one story stayed with me after closing the books.
February 17, 2018
Lyudmila Stefanovna Petrushevskaya - Людмила Стефановна Петрушевская; nasceu, em Moscovo, a 26 de Maio de 1938.
Só depois de 1986, com a Perestroika, é que Petrushevskaya passou a ser publicada na Rússia. Até esta data os seus originais ficaram “engavetados” por conta da censura do governo soviético.
Lyudmila tem uma prosa áspera, incómoda e envolvente, mas é também possível encontrar algum humor e um íntimo “dark”.
Muitas das histórias são fantásticas, contêm elementos místicos e alegóricos, mas simultaneamente refletem os horrores daqueles que viviam numa situação limite, numa sociedade privada de liberdade, sem privacidade, e que servem para nos mostrar um pouco como eram as condições de vida na União Soviética.
Gostei de todos os contos mas houve dois de que gostei particularmente, A vingança e O segredo de Marinela.
November 18, 2010
The story referred to in the title is the one called "Revenge". It's aptly titled because it is about relationships.
I love this book.
I've only read one short story by Petrushevskaya in another collection. I picked this up over the weekend at a bookstore. I had heard good things about it.
It's nice to know that sometimes the hype is correct.
This book is a collection of Petrushevskaya's more fairy tale genre fiction, so fantasy, magic realism, and fairy tale. It is split into four different sections. Some tales are scary and all are touching.
The tales mostly focus on women and those that don't tend to focus on fathers. While on the surface, the stories appear to be ghost stories or fantasy, there are deeper currents that would seem to indicate why her writing wasn't published much under communism.
It's hard to make an aboslute favorite. There is a beautiful story about a girl found in a cabbage leaf and how the woman who finds her becomes a mother, there is an equally haunting story about a father trying to say good bye to his son before the son leaves for the army. The title story is shocking, but not in the way the title on the book cover suggests. In fact, it is far more powerful than the title suggests. There is a wonderfully funny story about twin dancers who turn into a fat lady.
In some ways, the last story, "The Black Coat", is, perhaps, the most emotionally impacting. To say anything more than that would be to spoil it, and that would be wrong.
The blurb on the back on the back compares Petrushevskaya to Gogol and Poe. I haven't read much Gogol, so I'm not going to make that comparsion. While I can see why some might compare to her Poe, she is closer in style to Angela Carter, though in translation her language is more fluid, more everyday. Her tone, at times, is more humorous, so the Carter comparsion doesn't quite fit. She reminds me of Carter, Byatt, and Terry Pratchett, like the three of them had a Russian kid.
I love this book.
I've only read one short story by Petrushevskaya in another collection. I picked this up over the weekend at a bookstore. I had heard good things about it.
It's nice to know that sometimes the hype is correct.
This book is a collection of Petrushevskaya's more fairy tale genre fiction, so fantasy, magic realism, and fairy tale. It is split into four different sections. Some tales are scary and all are touching.
The tales mostly focus on women and those that don't tend to focus on fathers. While on the surface, the stories appear to be ghost stories or fantasy, there are deeper currents that would seem to indicate why her writing wasn't published much under communism.
It's hard to make an aboslute favorite. There is a beautiful story about a girl found in a cabbage leaf and how the woman who finds her becomes a mother, there is an equally haunting story about a father trying to say good bye to his son before the son leaves for the army. The title story is shocking, but not in the way the title on the book cover suggests. In fact, it is far more powerful than the title suggests. There is a wonderfully funny story about twin dancers who turn into a fat lady.
In some ways, the last story, "The Black Coat", is, perhaps, the most emotionally impacting. To say anything more than that would be to spoil it, and that would be wrong.
The blurb on the back on the back compares Petrushevskaya to Gogol and Poe. I haven't read much Gogol, so I'm not going to make that comparsion. While I can see why some might compare to her Poe, she is closer in style to Angela Carter, though in translation her language is more fluid, more everyday. Her tone, at times, is more humorous, so the Carter comparsion doesn't quite fit. She reminds me of Carter, Byatt, and Terry Pratchett, like the three of them had a Russian kid.
Read
February 5, 2024Mixing Older and Newer Forms of Imagination
There are two kinds of stories in Petrushevskaya's imagination:
1. Those that come from a desire to be dark, uncanny, spiritual, ghostly, macabre. That is a familiar interest in Russian and other European fiction, and surprising as some of these stories are, in the end it is exhausting and uninteresting. It's an old desire: it goes back to the nineteenth century, to fin-de-siecle mysticism, and to late romanticism, and so it's as if modernism and postmodernism hadn't quite ever taken place, or as if she wishes they hadn't. But I find I can't take pleasure in the idea of re-inhabiting cultural spaces that ended so long ago.
2. Those that come from aggressions, terrors, and weirdnesses in Petryushevskaya's imagination. The title story, about a woman who tries to kill another woman's baby, is of this kind. A reviewer said that it was the best story, but it's more than that: it isn't the same kind of story as the others in the collection. It's an attempt to report passion and pathology. The only thing that's false about it is the ending, which takes some strategies from fin-de-siecle ghost stories and surrealism -- that is, it borrows the desires of the first kind of stories, and uses them to pretend that this story is nothing but a scary fairy tale.
It is the one real story in the collection.
There are two kinds of stories in Petrushevskaya's imagination:
1. Those that come from a desire to be dark, uncanny, spiritual, ghostly, macabre. That is a familiar interest in Russian and other European fiction, and surprising as some of these stories are, in the end it is exhausting and uninteresting. It's an old desire: it goes back to the nineteenth century, to fin-de-siecle mysticism, and to late romanticism, and so it's as if modernism and postmodernism hadn't quite ever taken place, or as if she wishes they hadn't. But I find I can't take pleasure in the idea of re-inhabiting cultural spaces that ended so long ago.
2. Those that come from aggressions, terrors, and weirdnesses in Petryushevskaya's imagination. The title story, about a woman who tries to kill another woman's baby, is of this kind. A reviewer said that it was the best story, but it's more than that: it isn't the same kind of story as the others in the collection. It's an attempt to report passion and pathology. The only thing that's false about it is the ending, which takes some strategies from fin-de-siecle ghost stories and surrealism -- that is, it borrows the desires of the first kind of stories, and uses them to pretend that this story is nothing but a scary fairy tale.
It is the one real story in the collection.
October 31, 2018
This is a collection of nineteen short stories that reflect the agony, suffering and helplessness of the ordinary Russian citizen ,especially women in the past decades.
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To understand Ludmilla's writing ,it is crucial to understand her native country ,Russia and it's people .This is a harsh country with a history of harsh governments ,harsh weathers ,harsh famines and harsh revolutions and people who have managed to survive through it all .Ludmilla ,herself, never had it easy .She grew up in Bolshevik Russia in communal apartments and homes ,because her father abandoned the family.Although ,she began writing in the 1960s ,her work was censored ,maybe because her prose is utterly sincere and reflects bitter truths😃 .The publication of her works and the due recognition arrived only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
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All her characters find themselves stuck in a tunnel forged out of misery,loss,death,hunger and try to escape desperately.They ultimately see the light at the end and manage to come out ,only to discover that they have lost a vital part of themselves in the journey. Every character has a sad tale.Every character is desperate to survive.Every character drifts between different worlds.Her stories were haunting and foreboding and I definitely want to read more.
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To understand Ludmilla's writing ,it is crucial to understand her native country ,Russia and it's people .This is a harsh country with a history of harsh governments ,harsh weathers ,harsh famines and harsh revolutions and people who have managed to survive through it all .Ludmilla ,herself, never had it easy .She grew up in Bolshevik Russia in communal apartments and homes ,because her father abandoned the family.Although ,she began writing in the 1960s ,her work was censored ,maybe because her prose is utterly sincere and reflects bitter truths😃 .The publication of her works and the due recognition arrived only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
All her characters find themselves stuck in a tunnel forged out of misery,loss,death,hunger and try to escape desperately.They ultimately see the light at the end and manage to come out ,only to discover that they have lost a vital part of themselves in the journey. Every character has a sad tale.Every character is desperate to survive.Every character drifts between different worlds.Her stories were haunting and foreboding and I definitely want to read more.
January 5, 2017
Some of these are better than others. Hygiene, The New Robinson Crusoes, The God Poseidon, and Marilena's Secret were the best in my opinion.
May 25, 2020
If you like your short stories mostly concise and very very psychologically dark, this collection is for you. I thoroughly enjoyed them. Scary Fairy Tales should be a genre. Delightfully unsettling.
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August 16, 2020love love love
June 3, 2018
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, is a virtual unknown here in the States but a very big deal in her native Russia.
Many of these stories fit roughly into a category of literature that Franco-Bulgarian structuralist Tzvetan Todorov calls the Fantastic—simply put: texts that cause the reader to hesitate between natural and supernatural explanations for the events described, much like Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.
The fantastic can be present in works where the reader experiences hesitation about whether or not a work presents what Todorov calls "the uncanny.”
According to Todorov, this hesitation involves two outcomes: “The fantastic requires the fulfillment of three conditions. First, the text must oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living persons and to hesitate between a natural or supernatural explanation of the events described. Second, this hesitation may also be experienced by a character; thus the reader's role is so to speak entrusted to a character, and at the same time the hesitation is represented, it becomes one of the themes of the work -- in the case of naive reading, the actual reader identifies himself with the character. Third, the reader must adopt a certain attitude with regard to the text: he will reject allegorical as well as "poetic" interpretations.”
The Fantastic can also represent dreams as well as wakefulness where the character, or readers themselves, hesitates as to what is reality or what is a dream. But again the Fantastic is found in this hesitation and once it is decided the Fantastic ends.
The blurb on the back on the back compares Petrushevskaya to Gogol and Poe. I haven't read much Gogol, so I'm not going to make that comparison. But I can see why some might compare her to Poe, although in translation her language is more fluid, more everyday and her tone, at times, is also more humorous than Poe’s.
Valentine Garfunkel in a review in PopMatters, an international online magazine of cultural criticism, had this to say about the book, “Ultimately, these stories were not intended to sustain such critical scrutiny. Condense in form and plot, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby is best approached as an assortment of appetizing little vignettes, best enjoyed compulsively, in one gulp, rather than chewed over. For in their plain, colloquial language, they evoke, in Petrushevskaya’s own words, the urgent hastiness of bus conversations, with the speaker “making sure you come to the point before the bus stops and the other person has to get off.” As everyone from the U.S.A. to the U.S.S.R. knows, the important thing is to make sure to get off the bus before the old babushka grasps your thigh with her horny, wrinkled palm, turns her withered face to you, and starts spinning one of her ole yarns.”
This book was in all honesty a big disappointment. It originally sounded like the kind of book I would love, scary Russian fairytales, but the stories soon became repetitive and were written in a very cold and distant way thus, I never felt any real significant sort of connection to any of the characters or it’s themes. A lot of weird shit happens yes, but not the kind of weird shit that you can appreciate. The only stories that stood out to me in any way were the title story, perfectly dark and twisted, and the very last story, The Black Coat, which was the only story that had any emotional impact on me whatsoever.
Many of these stories fit roughly into a category of literature that Franco-Bulgarian structuralist Tzvetan Todorov calls the Fantastic—simply put: texts that cause the reader to hesitate between natural and supernatural explanations for the events described, much like Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.
The fantastic can be present in works where the reader experiences hesitation about whether or not a work presents what Todorov calls "the uncanny.”
According to Todorov, this hesitation involves two outcomes: “The fantastic requires the fulfillment of three conditions. First, the text must oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living persons and to hesitate between a natural or supernatural explanation of the events described. Second, this hesitation may also be experienced by a character; thus the reader's role is so to speak entrusted to a character, and at the same time the hesitation is represented, it becomes one of the themes of the work -- in the case of naive reading, the actual reader identifies himself with the character. Third, the reader must adopt a certain attitude with regard to the text: he will reject allegorical as well as "poetic" interpretations.”
The Fantastic can also represent dreams as well as wakefulness where the character, or readers themselves, hesitates as to what is reality or what is a dream. But again the Fantastic is found in this hesitation and once it is decided the Fantastic ends.
The blurb on the back on the back compares Petrushevskaya to Gogol and Poe. I haven't read much Gogol, so I'm not going to make that comparison. But I can see why some might compare her to Poe, although in translation her language is more fluid, more everyday and her tone, at times, is also more humorous than Poe’s.
Valentine Garfunkel in a review in PopMatters, an international online magazine of cultural criticism, had this to say about the book, “Ultimately, these stories were not intended to sustain such critical scrutiny. Condense in form and plot, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby is best approached as an assortment of appetizing little vignettes, best enjoyed compulsively, in one gulp, rather than chewed over. For in their plain, colloquial language, they evoke, in Petrushevskaya’s own words, the urgent hastiness of bus conversations, with the speaker “making sure you come to the point before the bus stops and the other person has to get off.” As everyone from the U.S.A. to the U.S.S.R. knows, the important thing is to make sure to get off the bus before the old babushka grasps your thigh with her horny, wrinkled palm, turns her withered face to you, and starts spinning one of her ole yarns.”
This book was in all honesty a big disappointment. It originally sounded like the kind of book I would love, scary Russian fairytales, but the stories soon became repetitive and were written in a very cold and distant way thus, I never felt any real significant sort of connection to any of the characters or it’s themes. A lot of weird shit happens yes, but not the kind of weird shit that you can appreciate. The only stories that stood out to me in any way were the title story, perfectly dark and twisted, and the very last story, The Black Coat, which was the only story that had any emotional impact on me whatsoever.
January 26, 2010
This book is subtitled "Scary Fairy Tales." Well, perhaps. But I did not find Petrushevskaya's wonderful collection of stories particularly scary, nor do I feel comfortable with the term "fairy tales." In fact, the closest I can come in my own lexicon for a term to describe this collection is from classical Chinese: 志怪 zhiguai. Loosely translated, this meas something like "accounts of the bizarre" and refers to a genre of Chinese stories that became particularly popular during the Six Dynasties Period (220-589 AD). Such stories are not usually particularly scary nor do they always involve ghosts or other supernatural beings (though sometimes they certainly do). Shifting forms, the mixture of dream worlds and real worlds, and stories of surprising dislocation are common in this genre, and such is precisely what we encounter in Petrushevskaya's collection. In "There Once Lived a Woman," for example, we find a story of two dancers who are cursed by a magician so that their lithe, appealing bodies merge into a single fat person, a story of a woman who finds a miniscule baby on a cabbage leaf, a story called "Two Kingdoms" which includes a fascinating and highly imaginative description of an afterworld, and many other tales best described as bizarre . . . extremely bizarre. Petrushevskaya was long banned in Russia, and her stories are almost uniformly dark and bleak, punctuated a time by very dark humor. This too resembles the Chinese zhiguai story in which political critique is often just below the surface. My brief excursion into Petrushevskaya has convinces me that she is a major writer who richly deserves a wider readership.
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January 15, 2020We in the West love to stare at Russia through our screens -- maybe we watch any of the various collections of Russian news clips that reveal what we presume to be a nation of track-suited and vodka-soaked toxic males and leggy Slavic beauties in five-inch stilettos and crazy driving and Putinist operatives.
It's a vision that as far as I can tell is not 100 percent wrong, but it belies the fact that this all comes from something much darker and older. And this is what Petrushevskaya taps into -- all of the stuff behind the industrial malaise of modern Russia, all of the tales of dybbuks and Baba Yaga and forest spirits that underlie everything, and it's fucking magnificent.
It's a vision that as far as I can tell is not 100 percent wrong, but it belies the fact that this all comes from something much darker and older. And this is what Petrushevskaya taps into -- all of the stuff behind the industrial malaise of modern Russia, all of the tales of dybbuks and Baba Yaga and forest spirits that underlie everything, and it's fucking magnificent.
January 28, 2020
Recommended for those at the center of the universe, in absolute and utter darkness, along among the stars.
March 7, 2010
I actually did not intend to read this all in one sitting, but it happened for better or for worse. These nineteen stories (or "fairy tales") are comfortably short reads. They all are mystical and dark, with some undertones of Edgar Allan Poe and Anton Chekhov. I picked up on the Chekhov primarily because of the whole Russian Connection thing, but also because I just finished The Portable Chekhov. I mean, it's sort of hard to miss now.
These are the kinds of stories I like - totally bizarre, not your normal everyday sort of stories, and certainly not the kind of fairy tales you would read to your children. I like to say they're more akin to the original non-Disneyfied fairy tales... the dark and spooky kind. In their mysticism I can't help but compare the stories to Zoran Zivkovic's Impossible Stories or Strange Forces by Lugones. Petrushevskaya is no stranger to the bitterness and wariness of a lot of Russian novelists, and in that way she reflects all the traditional writers that came before her. But she's on her own road by taking that same bitterness and turning it into fantastic allegorical short stories. Seriously, how often can a plague be used to describe Soviet living conditions before it's just, "Oh, ho-hum." Petrushevskaya takes similar stories and puts this cracked out twist on them that makes for interesting and fresh reading.
These are the kinds of stories I like - totally bizarre, not your normal everyday sort of stories, and certainly not the kind of fairy tales you would read to your children. I like to say they're more akin to the original non-Disneyfied fairy tales... the dark and spooky kind. In their mysticism I can't help but compare the stories to Zoran Zivkovic's Impossible Stories or Strange Forces by Lugones. Petrushevskaya is no stranger to the bitterness and wariness of a lot of Russian novelists, and in that way she reflects all the traditional writers that came before her. But she's on her own road by taking that same bitterness and turning it into fantastic allegorical short stories. Seriously, how often can a plague be used to describe Soviet living conditions before it's just, "Oh, ho-hum." Petrushevskaya takes similar stories and puts this cracked out twist on them that makes for interesting and fresh reading.
August 1, 2010
I don't have much to say beyond a resounding "meh." Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough to find the moral in each story, which I thought was the point of fairy tales? Or maybe the sensibility was just too foreign, and the drama of the plots eluded me. Or maybe these were just dark stories, and mediocre. I'm thinking something was probably lost in translation, both linguistic and cultural. Disappointing.
December 28, 2014
This book is wacky, wild and very blunt short creepy stories that YOU JUST HAVE TO READ! I enjoyed these very much and look forward to reading more of this author.
May 6, 2021
Ovaj sveprožimajuži osećaj teskobe sam možda i očekivao al maltene poeziju u prozi koja izvire iz tog čemera nisam. Davno mi nije bilo ovoliko žao što ništa ruskog nisam naučio kad je trebalo.
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