It’s taken me a month or two to get up the gumption to write about
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s Нас украли,
история преступлений (Kidnapped.
The History of Crimes) but that’s less a factor of the love/hate
spectrum (I’m on the really-liked-to-loved end) than of the simple fact that it’s very hard to
describe. Sometimes time smooths over the complications, leaving contours that
are helpful in writing meaningful summaries. We’ll hope that’s the case with Kidnapped, though I fear I’ve failed us
all, including the book. I think the best way to do the novel justice is to
suggest that you read the summary I linked to above, on the English-language
title, since Petrushevskaya’s literary agents offer an excellent plot outline. And
I’ll attempt to address some of what struck me most.
The novel begins with two young men bearing nearly identical
passports – their names and birth dates are the same – flying off from Moscow
to Montegasko. (Or maybe Montegasco, that’s more pleasing to the eye, isn’t it?)
“Doesn’t exist,” I wrote in the right margin with “not typical kids” at the bottom
of the page. We already have mysterious doubles (cue up “switched at birth”
plus a mother’s death in childbirth and a fictitious family situation to
satisfy bureaucracy) and a faraway, make-believe place. Petrushevskaya is
already telling yet more scary fairy tales, this time about brothers who are
both lucky and unlucky, not to mention about horrendous relatives to escape, magically
good developments, and Soviet bureaucracy. As well as multiple mentions of Lloyd’s
of London, thanks to the sinking of a ship during the “бешеные” nineties, years that are, literally
speaking here, “rabid,” though we might call them “frenzied,” “mad,” and/or “violent” since
the nineties, the age of vouchers, were basically was a horrible shipwreck for so many.
Petrushevskaya doesn’t focus solely on the boys, though: we
get lots of backstory about their families, some of it told in chapters that
read almost as set pieces detailing family abuse and abuses of power, as in the
case of unscrupulous hospital workers. I could probably write this post as a
list of tropes, many of them thoroughly bared: lonesome princess, foundling who will live like a king, a
character feeling alone in the world and wanting to go to Moscow, and even an outright
mention (in dialogue) of the sense of a soap opera involving babies switched at
birth. And then there are all the sociocultural and sociopolitical myths and
mores, with mentions of Soviet-era diplomatic ways (I loved the interrupted line,
“And we, simple Soviet diplomats…”), the KGB, and the trauma of changing times,
like those afore-mentioned nineties. I give Petrushevskaya particularly high marks
for writing an ending that was so funny that I completely forgot what happened:
beyond noting stereotypes about Russian life (vodka included, of course), there are
interrogations (with lie detector) where Petrushevskaya notes an interpreter’s
infelicities. It’s great stuff.
The strangest, scariest, and most magical part of all this is
that Petrushevskaya somehow or other makes everything fit together and read as a real novel. Referring to some sort
of literary alchemy or sorcery is perhaps most fitting since she seems to do
the impossible, blending so many storylines, genres (the back cover’s statement
from Petrushevskaya mentions detective novels), characters, locations, ways of
life, and myths into a relatively seamless novel, a book that kept pulling me
along. It kept me up at night, and even, yes, made me laugh out loud. It’s Petrushevskaya’s
finessed hodgepodge of familiar elements and odd surprises that makes the book
read so well – there’s something masterful in how she refreshes old stories in Kidnapped, using her distinctive style
and contemporary twists as she toys with her material and characters. Her NOS(E)
award, from the panel of critics, was thoroughly deserved. I think it’s
time to reread her Время Ночь (The Time: Night).
Disclaimers: The
usual.
Up Next: London
Book Fair trip report. And then a book that I won’t name, lest I jinx myself
yet again. I’ve done a lot of required and recommended reading in recent months
but am very happy to be back to free reading now!
