moirwyn's review
5.0
This review originally appeared on my blog, Books Without Any Pictures:
http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/2014/11/26/there-once-lived-a-mother-who-loved-her-children-until-they-moved-back-in-three-novellas-about-family-by-ludmilla-petrushevskaya/
There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In is a new collection of novellas from Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. Petrushevskaya’s prose is stark and honest, revealing characters’ thoughts and motivations, especially those not fit for polite society. She writes about messy relationships and broken homes, breaking the illusion of the model Soviet society and presenting the stories that lie beneath the surface. She’s not writing a generalization of Russian life, she’s presenting the stories of families that are fucked up and desperate and just can’t hang on any longer, and that type of situation can be found in any country and any culture because people are human.
I’ve read Petrushevskaya’s work before, and when I heard that she was releasing a new book, I was very excited to read it. This collection of novellas does not disappoint.
The Time is Night
Anna is an aging grandmother who has made many sacrifices for her family. Her daughter is wild and promiscuous, and now Anna must raise her grandson without any financial support from her daughter. Anna’s son is a petty criminal freshly out of prison, and her own aging mother’s health concerns are increasingly becoming a burden. Anna loves her family, but she also can’t stand any of them, and the tensions between them escalate as a side effect of too many people living in a small apartment. Anna makes everyone around her miserable with her mean-spirited nagging, and as the story progresses, readers realize that she is destroying every meaningful relationship that she has in her life. On one hand, we empathize with Anna’s suffering, but on the other hand, she really is rather despicable and deserves her fate.
Chocolates with Liqueur
A mentally ill man tries to kill his wife and children because he’s having an affair and wants to give their apartment to his mistress. Leila has flashbacks to the beginning of her relationship with Nikita, which began with him stalking and raping her after she got off her shift at the hospital one night. Every part of their relationship was wrong from the very beginning, and now Leila is struggling to hold on and to save her children from the monster that her husband has become. Profoundly disturbing.
Among Friends
A woman in the earlier stages of dementia reminisces about the group of friends she has who have gotten together to drink on the weekends for many years. She’s worried about what is going to happen to her son when she dies, and so she comes up with a plan to get her friends to take her son under their wing. This story was hands-down the best one in the book, and the ending made me tear up I little.
http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/2014/11/26/there-once-lived-a-mother-who-loved-her-children-until-they-moved-back-in-three-novellas-about-family-by-ludmilla-petrushevskaya/
There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In is a new collection of novellas from Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. Petrushevskaya’s prose is stark and honest, revealing characters’ thoughts and motivations, especially those not fit for polite society. She writes about messy relationships and broken homes, breaking the illusion of the model Soviet society and presenting the stories that lie beneath the surface. She’s not writing a generalization of Russian life, she’s presenting the stories of families that are fucked up and desperate and just can’t hang on any longer, and that type of situation can be found in any country and any culture because people are human.
I’ve read Petrushevskaya’s work before, and when I heard that she was releasing a new book, I was very excited to read it. This collection of novellas does not disappoint.
The Time is Night
Anna is an aging grandmother who has made many sacrifices for her family. Her daughter is wild and promiscuous, and now Anna must raise her grandson without any financial support from her daughter. Anna’s son is a petty criminal freshly out of prison, and her own aging mother’s health concerns are increasingly becoming a burden. Anna loves her family, but she also can’t stand any of them, and the tensions between them escalate as a side effect of too many people living in a small apartment. Anna makes everyone around her miserable with her mean-spirited nagging, and as the story progresses, readers realize that she is destroying every meaningful relationship that she has in her life. On one hand, we empathize with Anna’s suffering, but on the other hand, she really is rather despicable and deserves her fate.
Chocolates with Liqueur
A mentally ill man tries to kill his wife and children because he’s having an affair and wants to give their apartment to his mistress. Leila has flashbacks to the beginning of her relationship with Nikita, which began with him stalking and raping her after she got off her shift at the hospital one night. Every part of their relationship was wrong from the very beginning, and now Leila is struggling to hold on and to save her children from the monster that her husband has become. Profoundly disturbing.
Among Friends
A woman in the earlier stages of dementia reminisces about the group of friends she has who have gotten together to drink on the weekends for many years. She’s worried about what is going to happen to her son when she dies, and so she comes up with a plan to get her friends to take her son under their wing. This story was hands-down the best one in the book, and the ending made me tear up I little.
sarapalooza's review
4.0
So glad this could finally be released. A perspective often overlooked and a window into another time.
greeniezona's review
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
olivialmit's review
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
sidneyreads_'s review
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
hannahleila's review against another edition
dark
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Rape, and Sexual violence
Moderate: Pregnancy, Suicide, and Infidelity
bookchantment's review
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
ajsterkel's review
2.0
This review is for the English translation of a Russian novella collection.
This is the second Ludmilla Petrushevskaya book I’ve read, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t understand what’s great about her writing. These three novellas are intriguing enough that I finished them, but I can’t say I liked them or enjoyed the reading experience. They’re just so rambley! It’s infuriating.
The first novella, The Time Is Night, is written stream-of-consciousness style. The main character is a poet who seems to hate the women in her family. She put her mother in an old folks’ home and doesn’t get along with her daughter or granddaughters. However, she’d do anything for her grandson and her criminal son. (Even though she kind of hates them, too?) She’s basically an all-around horrible person. She’s been so beaten down by living in constant poverty that she’s mostly given up on life. The stream-of-consciousness writing style makes the story hard to follow. It jumps around in time without warning and rambles on for over 100 pages. The characters are mildly interesting because they’re all horrible, but there isn’t a plot. This is my least-favorite novella in the book.
I had slightly better luck with Chocolates with Liqueur. It’s mostly linear, so it’s easier to understand. It stars a father who feeds poisoned chocolates to his wife and children, but they fail to die. What follows is a weird and suspenseful tale of a woman trying to protect her children from her psychotic husband. This is my favorite story in the collection, but I didn’t love it. I have a hard time with Petrushevskaya’s writing style. There’s so much distance between the characters and the reader that I was never able to connect with the characters. I just didn’t care about them.
The ending of the final story, Among Friends, caught me off-guard. This novella is about a group of friends (or, more accurately, frenemies). The story covers a long stretch of time and shows how relationships change as people get older. Near the end of the story, one of the friends is diagnosed with a deadly illness. She goes to great lengths to ensure that her friends will care for her son if she dies. Honestly, I considered giving up on this novella. Similar to the first story, it rambles. I didn’t feel like it was going anywhere or building to anything. The ending is great, but getting to the end was a struggle.
My favorite part of the book is the introduction. The translator gives background information that is very helpful for readers who are not familiar with life in Soviet Russia. Writing these stories could have gotten Petrushevskaya in trouble with her country’s government because they show Russians in a negative light. Her characters are poor, overworked, starving, mentally ill people who live in crowded communal apartments. The stories are full of hopelessness and casual violence. I appreciate the bravery it took for Petrushevskaya to show her country in an honest way, but this book wasn’t for me.
This is the second Ludmilla Petrushevskaya book I’ve read, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t understand what’s great about her writing. These three novellas are intriguing enough that I finished them, but I can’t say I liked them or enjoyed the reading experience. They’re just so rambley! It’s infuriating.
The first novella, The Time Is Night, is written stream-of-consciousness style. The main character is a poet who seems to hate the women in her family. She put her mother in an old folks’ home and doesn’t get along with her daughter or granddaughters. However, she’d do anything for her grandson and her criminal son. (Even though she kind of hates them, too?) She’s basically an all-around horrible person. She’s been so beaten down by living in constant poverty that she’s mostly given up on life. The stream-of-consciousness writing style makes the story hard to follow. It jumps around in time without warning and rambles on for over 100 pages. The characters are mildly interesting because they’re all horrible, but there isn’t a plot. This is my least-favorite novella in the book.
I had slightly better luck with Chocolates with Liqueur. It’s mostly linear, so it’s easier to understand. It stars a father who feeds poisoned chocolates to his wife and children, but they fail to die. What follows is a weird and suspenseful tale of a woman trying to protect her children from her psychotic husband. This is my favorite story in the collection, but I didn’t love it. I have a hard time with Petrushevskaya’s writing style. There’s so much distance between the characters and the reader that I was never able to connect with the characters. I just didn’t care about them.
The ending of the final story, Among Friends, caught me off-guard. This novella is about a group of friends (or, more accurately, frenemies). The story covers a long stretch of time and shows how relationships change as people get older. Near the end of the story, one of the friends is diagnosed with a deadly illness. She goes to great lengths to ensure that her friends will care for her son if she dies. Honestly, I considered giving up on this novella. Similar to the first story, it rambles. I didn’t feel like it was going anywhere or building to anything. The ending is great, but getting to the end was a struggle.
My favorite part of the book is the introduction. The translator gives background information that is very helpful for readers who are not familiar with life in Soviet Russia. Writing these stories could have gotten Petrushevskaya in trouble with her country’s government because they show Russians in a negative light. Her characters are poor, overworked, starving, mentally ill people who live in crowded communal apartments. The stories are full of hopelessness and casual violence. I appreciate the bravery it took for Petrushevskaya to show her country in an honest way, but this book wasn’t for me.
mcomer's review
5.0
Three dark but bitingly funny short stories about family life gone sour in Moscow. The heroines of these stories are put upon and besieged by obstacles of all kinds, from murderous husbands and awful, pretentious friends to low-paying jobs and Kafka-esque bureaucracy. Yet they all keep their heads about them and a dry, if caustic, sense of humor. The stories are also infused with the spirit of the times: either late-Soviet stagnation and hopelessness or post-1991 chaos and uncertainty. They are extremely Russian in detail and overall mood. If you like dark humor and wry asides or glimpses into Russian life, I highly recommend these novellas.