Russian Month of Reader Tolstov: Ivanov, Sopikova, Bushkovsky, Nosov, Milchin, Kozlov
Read 2022 Issue 610
“Reader Tolstov” announces May as a month of Russian literature! That is, I will write only about books written by Russian authors – both prose, and non-fiction, and all sorts of things, but in order to from our native, dear writers. Russian voluntary assistance is necessary: there, after the growth of book novelties from the change, short book fairs are postponed, paper becomes more expensive, the authorities of thoughts run after sending – how can one not help here? I will write about Russian books, and you listen (or don’t listen) to my recommendation. So we will win. All May we write about Russian, we read Russian, go ahead.
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Sergey Nosov “Odyssey”
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Limbus Press Publishing House, 2022
A new volume from Limbus Epica, a culture-trading project, the writers eminently retell classic epics in their own way. Pavel Krusanov – Kalevala (by the way, they say, one of the best-selling books in the Limbus catalog), Igor Malyshev – The Song of the Nibelungs, Ilya Boyashov – heroic epics, and Sergei Nosov was entrusted with retold Homer. It’s a great idea, of course, for modern writers to take average epipos that no one reads anyway, and adapt them for perception. the team of everything turns out, of course, in the style of a worker, busy with a trusted retelling. So “Odyssey” looks like a new book by Sergei Nosov himself, with all the manifestations of his style, expressed – a natural sense of humor, introspection, the unexpected presence of the “author in the frame”, because it is not Nosov retelling Homer, but this St. Petersburg writer Sergei Nosov tells about how he sees the ancient Greek story of the travels of Odysseus, and how it sounds in his own way. Perfectly thought out, superbly presented, drawings by Alexander Veselov are delivered separately. Looking forward to the next volumes in this series.
Ruslan Kozlov “Stabat Mater”
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Publishing house “Editorial office of Elena Shubina”, 2022
An unusual novel, what can I say. Debut book. The plot is based on the fact that a certain epidemic has broken out in Russia, affecting only children. Children seize the infection and die in terrible agony. There is no vaccine to ease the last days of dying children, they are taken to closed hospices. One of these hospices becomes a scene of action. Different heroes will converge there: one cannot get a relationship with faith, because he does not understand why God puts such tests on children. She has the gift of relieving pain, but each time it strikes her personality. Plus, a similar plot, as in The Master and Margarita, about how in ancient Rome the Christian community has to make a terrible choice between the death of their loved ones and renunciation of the faith. Ruslan Kozlov himself works in a charitable foundation that helps sick children, in many plots and stories. Painful scenes, mental anguish, love and compassion – well, and individual characters in confrontation with cruel equipment, as usual. For a debut novel, I would say very good, a novel of despair, doom, advent, indifference and miracle.
Anastasia Sopikova “Longing for the Outskirts”
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Publishing house “Editorial office of Elena Shubina”, 2022
I read the texts of Anastasia Sopikova on the Reading portal, at one time she even wrote a blog on her blog, but she abandoned it, constantly and now she wrote a book. “Longing for the Outskirts” is made up of five short stories, not short stories, but rather short stories. Five stories are written as a stage of acceptance of the expected – anger, bargaining, depression, denial, what else is there. I liked The Thenardier’s Inn and Jonathan’s Friend, they were great in my opinion. In the first, a student took up a part-time job in a bookstore selling junk books – and a curious, dynamic and touching story develops, besides, it is not the heroine herself who tells it, but her backpack (don’t ask). “Friend Jonathan” is a thousand-year-old story of unhappy and non-reciprocal love, he loves her, she does not, but he is sure that there is something to love him for, and there the forecast is absolutely lethal. Anastasia Sopikova wrote her debut book, for which she is not ashamed – there is both style and heroes, and this ability to convey self-awareness to a little girl, then an adult girl, then a deceived woman, and all these tricks, capture-restraint, and the style is excellent, and humor peculiar (“Lumpyansky helps in his own way – loitering between the rows with a guitar, jumping up to flocks of girls and singing a song about Gagarin, which he, Lumpyansky, loved”) – that’s really good.
Alexey Ivanov “Ridge of Russia”
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Publishing house “Alpina Prose”, 2022
I followed it especially: the previous edition was published in 2012 in Azbuka, there was an author’s series for books by Alexei Ivanov. However, it was rather a photo album, illustrated with footage from a television project that Ivanov made together with Leonid Parfyonov. The new edition of the Parfenov is not mentioned, and the emphasis is on the content, that is, the prosaic setting. Even the image is intentionally implemented in black and white so that the design does not distract from the text. The text in The Ridge of Russia is, of course, striking. This, in my opinion, is the best that is written in the genre of local history, or local history, or even riskily called the genre of “The Ridge of Russia” “poetic local history.” Ivanov, of course, is a fan of the Urals – and is so in love with it that even the most famous events of history, some ordinary Ural towns, plates from the museum exposition are reflected in the discovery of symbolic meaning, they reveal flesh and blood. What’s there – it’s just wonderful that the new generation of readers will read The Ridge of Russia, at one time this book completed a much greater impression on me than Parfenov’s four-episode project.
Vera Milchina “How a cat looked at other kings and memoirs”
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Publishing House “New Literary Review”, 2022
Incredibly nice autobiography. Rather, even autobiographical notes, composed of various anecdotes, tales, passages, objects, Vera Milchina herself came up with the name “memoirs”. Vera Milchina collection as a translator of classic French books (for example, Afolfe de Custine), as the author of excellent studies on everyday life (and its intersections with life, the 19th century), and also as the mother of a Russian book critic, culinary specialist and our good friend Konstantin Milchin. I recommend reading her book: especially interesting facts about Vera’s translation of Arkadyev’s book (for example, the famous saying in Marx’s Capital, which differs in accuracy from a readable vaudeville, gag translator). sincerely dedicated to his work. Good book.
You also need tools for the soul:
Alexander Bushkovsky “The Clairvoyant Pyatakov”
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Publishing house “Editorial office of Elena Shubina”, 2022
I love the works of Alexander Bushkovsky – “The Feast of Unnecessarily Eagles”, “Rymba”, this is such a “prose of a northern man”, Bushkovsky himself lives in Karelia, writes very beautifully about Karelian beauties. And we have, it must be said, a shortage of writers who can describe life well in the northern latitudes – for nothing that two-thirds of Russia’s territory is in the permafrost observation zone. I especially like “Rymba”, the story of a fictional island somewhere in the North, where one era changes, but nothing changes for the inhabitants of the island, it’s a great idea. “The Clairvoyant Pyatakov” is a story about a miracle. Or rather, about how something magical happens in the everyday life of ordinary people, and they really don’t know what to do with it. Gavryusha Pyatakov acquired the ability to feel the thoughts of other people and translate his thoughts to them. And around him, well, let’s say, peculiar objects, it’s better not to know that someone’s leader will look into their head, they will kill them right away. An interesting experience: Bushkovsky had never written phantasmagoria before, he was not about mysticism, but about honest, accessible prose, but here he decided to experiment. I didn’t have any impression of this book. I like Bushkovsky as a writer, but I confess that I read The Clairvoyant with little reluctance.
Russian Month of Reader Tolstov: Ivanov, Sopikova, Bushkovsky, Nosov, Milchin, Kozlov |
Read 2022 Issue 610
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