What to read in March – review of books from Chitomo

The new season is the time for new literary experiences. Ukrainian publishers work tirelessly to open unusual literary formats, brilliant authors and special literary topics to readers.

UP. Life recommends a new book review made especially for us by a book expert from “Reading” – a novel about the First World War, a book-quest about Ukrainian history, a novel about public activism and other book novelties.

Translated prose

Alexander Gemon. The world and everything in it

translated by Elizaveta Bolotova. – Kyiv: Laboratory, 2024. – 304 p.

The First World War in culture always appears as the territory of the destruction of the old world with its clear hierarchy, understandable aesthetics and comfortable orderliness. This mood is also present in the novel by Aleksandar Gemon, an American-Bosnian writer who was born and raised in Sarajevo, because he unfolds before our eyes the picture of the latest Apocalypse. This is a beautiful, multifaceted and non-trivial story about the toils of man through the bloody desert of the 20th century.

At the beginning of the novel, we meet the apothecary Pinto. He is a typical character of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the beginning of the century: he writes poems, uses opium and laughs at the ideas of his Jewish father, contrasting his knowledge of the world with his modern education obtained in Vienna. In addition, Pinto is a homosexual. But his Belle Époque is crumbling before the boy’s eyes.

The first world war begins, and with it – the years of tolls, the loss of senses and the earthly firmness underfoot. Pinto finds himself in the war, where he loses all passion for poetry, but finds Osman, whose love the hero clings to like a straw in a deluge of terror and obscurity. He will really need a straw, because he will take Pinto from his native Sarajevo and the trenches of Galicia to Tashkent and Shanghai, and his wanderings will continue for a very long time.

In the literature of the 20th century, we saw both Austria-Hungary and the war as a rather monotonous space. German language, faith in the Austrian throne, leveling of national differences. Instead, “The World and Everything in It” shows us a multilingual Babylon.

The characters of this novel speak different languages ​​and use unfamiliar words all the time. We can easily grasp the meaning of some of them. The meanings of others remain as incomprehensible as for the characters of the novel itself. The author does not leave us any notes so that we can feel the linguistic chaos.

Words that connect him with home, his intimate vocabulary burst into Pinto’s story. He doesn’t say “mother and father”, he says “manuchi and padri”. He uses another foreign phrase to denote the death that breathes on his back – la gran escuridad, that is, great darkness. Remembering his father, Pinto says that sometimes his anger returned him to the language of past centuries, to the language of prophets and prohibitions, which Pinto himself could not understand.

Because of this language difference, a feeling of loneliness comes into the novel: we always speak different languages, even with the closest people. But at the same time, words are the only thing that remains for us to remember people. Their songs, their stories and their confessions of love, finally told in their native language.

Saba Tahir. Coal among the ashes

translated by Victoria Sabelnikova. – Kyiv: Nebo Booklab Publishing, 2024. – 384 p.

“Among the Coal Ashes” is the first part of a fantasy series of books by an American woman of Pakistani origin. This novel takes us into the world of a cruel dystopia. The empire keeps everyone in fear, both the conquerors and the conquered, but the heroes of this book are ready to risk their lives and try to change their world.

Elias is a soldier of the empire and a contender for the title of future emperor. The soldiers in this novel do not have faces – they are given masks that gradually merge with their skin. Everything is very symbolic, because to be the sword of the empire you cannot have your own identity, desires and ideals. Masks are trained to be faithful, faceless and broken. Elayas, like other soldiers, is brought up in cruelty and humility.

Many boys (because there are few girls in the Black Rock Academy) cannot stand it and make desperate attempts to escape, which is considered desertion. Elayas himself has been hatching a plan to be free for a very long time. However, a day before the escape, he is made to understand: the only way to change something in the empire is to stay and fight, and not to look for a way out.

Laya is a teenager who starts spying for the resistance movement. She ends up in the Blackrock Academy as a slave, but her body movements betray the posture of a free woman. Like Elias, the girl has a choice. Surrender to fate and try to live inconspicuously, hoping for the best or taking responsibility.

This is an interesting novel about resistance to the system and about the thousands of ways in which totalitarianism gets into people’s brains, turning them into puppets. And this fantasy will resonate with the Ukrainian audience from the first pages, from the words about the importance of weapons.

The enlighteners in this novel lost and found themselves in a position of slavery because they did not have good enough weapons to defend themselves. And now they are looking for her with the intention of overthrowing the empire. No matter how much the West delights in highly civilized pacifism, common sense about the importance of keeping weapons at the ready can be seen even in fantasy literature.

Ukrainian prose

Daria Chaika. Almost good guys

Kyiv: Publishing House, 2024. – 452 p.

“Almost Good Guys” is a teenage LGBT novel, although given the popularity of romantic stories and the lack of adult Ukrainian queer stories, it will be read not only by teenagers.

Before us is a Ukrainian high school in the city of Smila. Someone leaked the personal correspondence of two boys, one of whom is Kim, on the Internet, and now everyone at school knows that he is gay. This unplanned coming out causes various reactions in the environment, but by no means support. Even from close friends.

The chemistry teacher does not say anything to the boy, but begins to systematically lower Kim’s grades (everything in the best Soviet traditions: one cross in the notebook – minus one point), the boys in the locker room demonstratively roll their eyes (“no, I will not undress next to THIS ONE”), and one of Kim’s former comrades arranges a massacre of the boy (as it turns out later, not because of homophobia).

As befits all romantic stories, we know from the first pages between whom romantic feelings and relationships should arise, who should kiss whom, but the author keeps the tension and does not let this happen until the last pages. The narrator of this novel – Kim’s best friend – is trying to atone for his own guilt, to win back his friend’s favor and, of course, worries about his relationship much more than his lessons.

This novel describes a lot of vivid youthful experiences, jealousy, embarrassment and wandering in the darkness of one’s own inexperience. It is this emotional layer that is the basis of the book. Of the pleasant bonuses: the novel has one minor character, whose room is hung with Ukrainian national paraphernalia instead of posters of musical groups or anime posters.

The novel unfolds in the time before the full-scale invasion, the boy’s parents are military. And the character himself does not tolerate the sound of Russian music on the phones of his classmates. I would like to see more such heroes in popular teenage fiction.

Valery Savotina. Independence: Reboot

Kharkiv: Vivat, 2024. – 176 p.

Literature usually doesn’t give us much of a choice about how to read it. In the author-text-reader relationship, the latter is left with a passive role to perceive and interpret what is read, but not to have any power over the printed word. True, the 20th century gave us many examples of non-linear reading and playing with the form of the text, as in the famous “Khozar Dictionary” by Pavych or “The Game of Classics” by Cortasar.

“Independence: Reboot” is a book-quest or a book-game. Its plot and ending depend entirely on what choices the readers make. So reading this story, like playing computer games, can be done in many different ways with different results. Therefore, on the pages of this book, readers not only become active participants in what is written, but also return to thinking about the importance of choice as such.

Before us are two heroines: Anya and her daughter Khrystia. Together with them, we jump from the moment of Ukraine’s declaration of independence to the Orange Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity, a full-scale invasion and options for the future that may await us. The idea of ​​the book is simple: we not only have a choice, but also bear responsibility for it.

What is valuable, the selection in this book does not concern random events, but turning points in Ukrainian history. Regarding most of them, readers or their parents have already made their choice in real life.

But the book gives space to think, would we have done the same under different circumstances? Would you have dared to go to the Maidan in 2004 if you were of a conscious age? Would you consider leaving Ukraine in 2022 if you had children?After all, would we do the same things as in real life if we knew what was coming next?

The book reminds you how thankless it is to make compromises and let others choose for you. Ask your husband or mother what they think about certain political events and accept their point of view without question. After all, our passivity and avoidance of choice is also a choice for which we will have to pay ourselves.

Khrystyna Morozova. Fan girl A bipolar story

Kyiv: Vikhola, 2024. – 248 p.

Vladyslav is a popular art critic and art critic who gives public lectures and regularly appears in the media with his expert opinion. Anna is his fan, a woman with bipolar disorder who does not miss any of Vladyslav’s performances and builds an improvised altar with his books and photos in her home.

Once his voice on the radio became the only thing that kept the girl in touch with life. So now she is ready to sacrifice a piece of herself to her idol. And if at first Vladyslav does not pay attention to her stalking and obsessive help, then in some places scenes worthy of a psychological thriller appear in this novel.

It could be a story of painful love and adoration that leads at least one of the characters to disaster. But the author of the novel Fanatka decided otherwise. Instead of directing all her manic energy to Vladyslav, Anna unexpectedly redirects it to social activism and the rescue of the Murashka manor in Kyiv.

The author tried to combine several different topics in the novel, which are clearly closely related in this book. Just like Anna herself, who is a very different person in the phases of mania and depression, the book constantly rushes in several opposite directions.

On the one hand, this is a novel about art and social activism, about former lovers and model-girls of great artists, who today sit in the state department for the protection of monuments and make a contradictory impression on a generation of active youth. On the other hand, this is a book about bipolar disorder, about life trapped within the framework of medical prescriptions and recommendations, and also about people drawn to each other by their illnesses.