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A review by keepreadingbooks
Snow in May: Stories by Kseniya Melnik
4.0
Put together, these stories form the legacy of the Russian revolution and the Stalin era. They provide an intimate window, through which we can see how the legacy of a town’s role in history affects its citizens, generally and personally. How it lingers in the back of their minds, and how ghosts of its past haunt them on a daily basis.
But they also provide an intimate window into the lives of families and individuals in everyday interactions, going about their daily business, considering which education to take, what to do with their lives, and whether they are in ‘the right place’. They aptly show the many different destinies you find in even a small town such as Magadan, and they give a nice insight into Russian culture and recent Russian history – apart from what we may know of the bigger cities.
My favourite story was actually the very first one - Love, Italian Style, Or In Line For Bananas - and Closed Fracture and Strawberry Lipstick are close seconds. They in particular showed how certain choices lead us to where we are, and how it is always that: a choice. They showed ‘regular’ lives that happen one moment at a time, until you’re suddenly somewhere you might not have expected. I am always very fond of stories like that, which might be why they were my favourites. A few I didn’t understand the meaning of at all, among them The Witch and Summer Medicine, though they were greatly and interestingly written, and a few more were simply average.
I loved how we returned to certain stories, but from another character’s point of view. You not only saw events from a different angle (which I am always a fan of), but you also saw how different characters focused on different events. We do not always agree on what has been of importance in our interactions with other people – I may obsess over a thing I said in a conversation that I shouldn’t have, whereas the other person might not have noticed at all, and instead is focusing on how she tripped in front of everyone earlier. Just to give a completely unrelated example.
On the front cover of my copy, a reviewer called this collection ‘assured’. That, I think, is the perfect word for her style and for this collection. There is no wavering, no slight hand-shaking, no glimpse of insecurity in Melnik’s writing – no trying too hard, either. Unapologetic. It is a joy to read a writer who is seemingly so confident in and with her own work. She makes me think of Zadie Smith in that way, though their styles are very different.
To sum up, the great stories were really great, but while none were bad, some were a bit confusing and others were merely OK. Melnik’s style and depiction of characters truly deserve a read, however, and I would highly recommend this one to anyone fond of the small-scale drama of domestic stories (with the Russian revolution and the Soviet era as a large-scale and very influential background) and to those interested in more modern Russian culture.
/NK
But they also provide an intimate window into the lives of families and individuals in everyday interactions, going about their daily business, considering which education to take, what to do with their lives, and whether they are in ‘the right place’. They aptly show the many different destinies you find in even a small town such as Magadan, and they give a nice insight into Russian culture and recent Russian history – apart from what we may know of the bigger cities.
My favourite story was actually the very first one - Love, Italian Style, Or In Line For Bananas - and Closed Fracture and Strawberry Lipstick are close seconds. They in particular showed how certain choices lead us to where we are, and how it is always that: a choice. They showed ‘regular’ lives that happen one moment at a time, until you’re suddenly somewhere you might not have expected. I am always very fond of stories like that, which might be why they were my favourites. A few I didn’t understand the meaning of at all, among them The Witch and Summer Medicine, though they were greatly and interestingly written, and a few more were simply average.
I loved how we returned to certain stories, but from another character’s point of view. You not only saw events from a different angle (which I am always a fan of), but you also saw how different characters focused on different events. We do not always agree on what has been of importance in our interactions with other people – I may obsess over a thing I said in a conversation that I shouldn’t have, whereas the other person might not have noticed at all, and instead is focusing on how she tripped in front of everyone earlier. Just to give a completely unrelated example.
On the front cover of my copy, a reviewer called this collection ‘assured’. That, I think, is the perfect word for her style and for this collection. There is no wavering, no slight hand-shaking, no glimpse of insecurity in Melnik’s writing – no trying too hard, either. Unapologetic. It is a joy to read a writer who is seemingly so confident in and with her own work. She makes me think of Zadie Smith in that way, though their styles are very different.
To sum up, the great stories were really great, but while none were bad, some were a bit confusing and others were merely OK. Melnik’s style and depiction of characters truly deserve a read, however, and I would highly recommend this one to anyone fond of the small-scale drama of domestic stories (with the Russian revolution and the Soviet era as a large-scale and very influential background) and to those interested in more modern Russian culture.
/NK