The long list of the National Bestseller Award will be announced this week, and the literary season in Russia will begin. It happens every year - first, a long list of National Best, then a long list of the Big Book, then short lists, lists of finalists, at the end of May, the winners of the first prize are announced - not the largest, but the most original and independent, in fact, the National Bestseller, and at the end of the year, when everything is already clear to everyone, the ponderous and respectable "Big Book" sums up the results. So gradually we learn what we had to read all year and what we did not read.
Analyzing and even simply reviewing long lists - and right now such a National Bestseller list is already known - is a long and tedious business for the reader, first of all. Precisely because these lists are long - 50 titles each. In order not to tire anyone, I decided to tell you about three Russian books that came out either at the very end of last year, or at the very beginning of this. About books that will help you get through February and meet spring with unsmoothed convolutions of the brain - and it's not easy for him now.
Book One: Sergei Belyakov, Parisian Boys in Stalin's Moscow.
For his monograph "Gumilyov's son of Gumilyov" Belyakov received the "Big Book" seven years ago. It’s not that anyone here is fixated on the award process, but, you see, when a difficult, very voluminous and thematically specific book is awarded the main literary award, this elevates the author to the rank of those who must be read.
"Parisian boys in Stalin's Moscow" is a seven hundred-page commentary on the personal diary of Georgy Sergeevich Efron, the son of Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva. Georgy Sergeevich in Russian culture is known as Moore - that's what his mother and all his acquaintances called him.
The fate of Tsvetaeva and her family is known. She left Russia, met Sergei Efron, lived in Paris, but then returned to Moscow. Under pressure from her husband, who collaborated with the NKVD. And under the pressure of Ilya Ehrenburg. It was 1938. The husband was arrested, imprisoned, shot. Daughter Ariadne served 10 years, then spent another seven years in exile, until she was rehabilitated due to the lack of corpus delicti. Tsvetaeva herself hanged herself, and her son disappeared in the war.
But the diaries of this son remained - the diaries of Moore. And these diaries themselves are known as a beautiful piece of literature. Moore was precocious both physically and intellectually. And Sergei Belyakov pulled the whole era out of these diaries. What did the ice cream stands look like and what did it taste like? Was it good in the Park of Culture in the spring of 1940? What was young Moore thinking? Of course he was thinking about women. How did the women dress that summer? What perfumes did you use and how much did those perfumes cost? Did Soviet citizens love canned crabs? No, they didn’t like it and didn’t buy it, although the counters were packed with these crabs and the cost of a jar of the most expensive variety was 9 rubles 60 kopecks. For comparison, a foxtrot teacher at a summer dance floor could earn 1,500 rubles a month.
Marina Tsvetaeva earned almost 4,000 rubles by transfers in 4 months. Most of the money had to be spent on the whims of Moore - he desperately needed a beautiful life. Restaurants, champagne, walks with a friend Mitya Seseman - that's why the title of the book and "boys" in the plural.
In one of the chapters of the book, we learn that the Soviet condoms "Red Rezinshchik" cost 2 rubles 50 kopecks apiece.
Little things? No, this is the fabric of time, which Sergei Belyakov gathered with threads, connected and presented as a canvas. Sometimes funny, but basically, of course, tragic. A Parisian boy who, in addition to Moscow ice cream, got his mother's suicide, evacuation, criminal prosecution, hunger and death in the war.
Book Two: Tim Skorenko, Glass.
Science fiction is a genre that is more complex and time-consuming than it might seem. Every author strives to move away from simple entertainment to self-knowledge, and even further to the knowledge of the world and even further - to bringing the light of truth to readers. And for those who start with a philosophical novel about everything, this is purely technically easier. And those who write fantastic action films have to gnaw out their right to stand in line with writers who influence minds. Although work in science fiction is often no less.
This I mean that Skorenko takes a beaten skeleton: there is some mysterious and deadly phenomenon - Glass. It has a source, and it gradually absorbs the world from North to South. Glass is both an artifact and something incomprehensible, and the Holy Grail, and the philosopher's stone, and death itself, and the stimulus of life. Glass is both a figure of consciousness and the core of the world, alpha and omega, Gog and Magog.
This canvas is lined with texture - cold, many meters of snow, hunting caches, transparent dead people in the trees, passages leading either to an answer or to inevitable death, terrible dusty settlements with blind houses and peeling monuments.The author launches heroes into the resulting building - impeccable killers, desperate dashing women (of course, prostitutes, but also saints at the same time), drug dealers, junkies, sinister children, a group of seekers of the source of Glass. This group certainly consists of twelve people - yes, in science fiction there is also a place for evangelical allusions. But the most important thing is that in the space of the book nothing happens as usual. Time changes, and the past. Distance is not measurable. Memory dances satanically. A knife sparkles in the child's hands.
And all this in a frightening way begins to resemble footage from the chronicle of the past year. One solid action movie - the book, like a real page turner, changes the picture at the speed of the news feed. This is the “zone” of the Strugatskys, and “Telluria” by Sorokin, and even “Sakhalin Island” by Verkin. A chronotope that seems to exist only in the author's fantasies, but if you look closely, you can see it behind a dark window.
Book Three: Maria Pankevich, The Valley of Beauty.
I would like to say that this is an easy read: the book is small and written as if with one touch, evening - and now the last page. But this is a very difficult read, albeit an exciting one.
The heroine in her teenage years, by the will of a half-witted hysterical mother, ends up in a sectarian-type boarding school run by Academician Shchetinin. This school is located near Novorossiysk and is inhabited by lads and maidens. The heroine herself comes from St. Petersburg, where she has already taken a sip of alcohol, and early kisses, and club concerts, and night festivities. All this was accompanied by a divorce of the parents, after which the mother thought that it would be better for her to have a daughter in a boarding school, and not beside herself. Apparently, in order to somewhat drown out the feeling of guilt, the boarding school was chosen with an advanced education program.
The mother begins to behave like an extremely uncharismatic and rude animal - no winter things for her daughter, no money, no personal hygiene products. Some reproaches and shouts.
The school, on the other hand, turns out to be a natural sect, where children are forced to work all day, they are given five hours of sleep, they are fed with low-calorie waste, and in the breaks, as an education, they rub frank game about roots, holiness and vulgar etymology - “Raseya, because from“ ra ”- from the sun, as well as joy.
The speech of the teachers and the supreme director consists of what to this day can be heard at webinars and other information gypsy marathons of desires - “in the moment”, “in the flow”, “turned on”, “passionate”. And so on to infinity, which every minute seems to be.
The heroine is surrounded by fooled peers who rush between mortal fatigue and guilt - this is the basis of any sect, everyone should consider themselves bad and dirty. This is a vacuum of all-consuming delirium. It is possible to refute each stupidity separately, appealing to philology, history, biology. But when the surrounding reality consists of these nonsense, the body lacks common sense to overcome the hassle.
Despite the fact that the entire text is based on real events, Maria Pankevich manages to find creative solutions that make the text artistic. So she skillfully distances herself from horror through teenage romances, escapes, observations, sex, of course, sex, and through laughter. Through the all-conquering irony. And the heroine is first drawn into the artistic reality from the surrounding horror, and then, laughing, flits out into the real world.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.
bbabo.Net