Lizok’s Summer Reading Plan: The 2021 Big Book Shortlist

On Wednesday the Big Book Award announced a list of thirteen finalists for the 2021 prize. I’ve read very little from this year’s longlist thus far so can’t decide if I’m surprised that some authors (Vera Bogdanova, for example) didn’t make the list, though I know I’m a little disappointed Bogdanova’s novel – as well as, for various reasons, books by Sergei Nosov, Pavel Krusanov, and Irina Bogatyreva – wasn’t on it. Lots of familiar, perennial nominees and “usual suspects” were left out, too: Ilya Boyashov, Shamil Idiatullin, Zakhar Prilepin, Andrei Rubanov, Sergei Samsonov, and Roman Senchin among them. And Alexander Pelevin’s Pokrov-17, which recently won the National Bestseller Award, isn’t a Big Book finalist either. I’m reading Pokrov-17 now and enjoying it for its suspense and weirdness but haven’t yet read enough to go on record saying more than that.

In any case, the good news is that this year’s books look far more promising than last year’s, though (as my husband likes to say) that sets the bar pretty low. I’m sure some of my positive feelings about the 2021 list involve my familiarity with some of the authors: I’ve translated three of them and know four more. I’ve read and enjoyed (or at least finished!) books by others. And those I haven’t read generally sound interesting. Unfortunately, my biggest regret about the list is that (here I go again!) only four of the thirteen books were written by women, though (as always), I don’t know much about the overall pool of Big Book nominees. I’m happiest because I’m glad this list looks likely to keep me reading.

And so. Here’s the list, in Russian alphabetical order by author surname:

• In Narine Abgaryan’s Симон (Simon), a man’s death brings together his former loves, who tell their stories. I read a large chunk of Simon on my reader but am going to reread (and finish) the novel on paper. (I think I’m getting crankier and crankier about electronic reading! I really need to flip those pages.) 
• Dmitry Bavilsky’s Желание быть городом (The Desire to be a City?) describes itself in the book’s subtitle as “Итальянский травелог эпохи Твиттера в шести частях и тридцати пяти городах” – “A Twitter-era Italian travelogue, in six parts and thirty-five cities.” The publisher’s description uses the terms “documentary novel” and “autofiction.” I’m not much for travelogues but I do like, even relish, the thought of Bavilsky describing works of art he hasn’t seen.
• Yury Buida’s Сады Виверны (The Wyvern’s Gardens, I guess?) sounds difficult to summarize with its three countries and four temporal settings so I’m just going to focus on thinking about the word “wyvern” for now. And buy the book.
• Oksana Vasyakina’s Рана (The Wound) may well be the book on the list that intrigues me the most, with (apparently) an account of the narrator traveling with her mother’s ashes, bringing them to be buried. I read Polina Barskova’s introduction and the beginning of Vasyakina’s text on my reader but am going to order a print copy so I can fully appreciate Vasyakina’s writing.
• Evgeny Vodolazkin’s Оправдание Острова (The History of Island), which I loved on the first reading for its chronicle-like format (sometimes!) and stylization (varying!) and blend of timelines. It’s a very Vodolazkonian novel; he’s exceptionally skilled at writing about favorite themes from new angles that make his material fresh, relevant, and related to his others works without repeating them. I’m working on a short sample translation now and had a good laugh remembering how cats came to be.
• Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Кока (Koka) is a continuation (of sorts?) of The Devil’s Wheel (previous post), which I loved so very much about ten years ago. Two friend who’ve already read Koka enjoyed it. It’s in my reading cart and will probably be the book I choose after I finish Pokrov-17. Like The Devil’s Wheel it’s very long (720 pages) so should keep me busy!
• Andrei Dmitriev’s Этот берег (That Shore) apparently tells the story of a retired schoolteacher who’s been living in Russia then moves to Ukraine, where he finds a new life for himself.
• Maya Kucherskaya’s Лесков. Прозёванный гений (Leskov. The Missed Genius – I almost want to say something like “slept through” or “yawning” here to capture the sense of sleeping!) is a very big book (656 pages, 668 grams) about Nikolai Leskov. My life is embarrassingly under-Leskoved but, inspired by factors including Languagehat’s posts about Leskov and, subsequently, some personalized reading recommendations plus my own impressions after reading “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” back in my first youth, I’m looking forward to letting Kucherskaya, a kind person and a good reader, guide me to and through more Leskov.
• Vladimir Paperny’s Архив Шульца (Shults’s Archive) looks, hm, potentially interesting, if a bit overwhelming at first: a Russian émigré living in Los Angeles receives a package of materials that turn out to form a family archive. A blurb from Alexander Genis uses the word “мозаика” (mosaic), something I confirmed by paging through a PDF of the book. We’ll see how it goes!
• Alexei Polyarinov’s Риф (The Reef): I’ll leave the description to the publisher (here) and add that I’m looking forward to this one after finding Polyarinov’s Center of Gravity (previous post) fairly good.
• Viktor Remizov’s Вечная мерзлота (Permafrost) is another heavyweight, clocking in at 925 grams (over 800 pages of rather small type, yeow) with a story based on actual events, about prisoners laying a railroad line in Siberia during 1949-1953. I enjoyed Remizov’s Ashes and Dust back in 2014 (previous post) and praised Remizov’s storytelling so am looking forward to Permafrost, which comes highly praised by Maya Kucherskaya and Vasily Avchenko.
• I read a large chunk of Marina Stepnova’s Сад (The Garden) on my e-reader and found that it interested me far less for its nineteenth-century plot and characters (which, after translating two twentieth-century Stepnova books, made me feel a bit off-kilter) than for its stylized language. I had fun translating a sample. I’m going to buy a paper copy of The Garden since it’s another book that didn’t feel right to read electronically. (Have I mentioned that I don’t like e-reading?)
• Leonid Yuzefovich’s Филлэлин (The Philhellene) is a novel where characters converse through journals, letters, and mental conversations. Yuzefovich’s own back-cover description refers to the novel as being closer to “variations on historical themes than a traditional historical novel.” This is one of those books where I’ve purposely avoided learning too much before reading.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The Usual. I’ve translated excerpts from two of these books and entire books by three of the finalist authors. I know other authors on the list and have ties to some of the others through publishers and literary agents.

Up Next: Svetlana Kuznetsova’s The Anatomy of the Moon, which I’m translating and enjoying for the third time but still don’t know how to write about. Vodolazkin’s The History of Island, which I’m rereading the way it should be read – slowly; A. Pelevin’s Pokrov-17, and maybe Alexander Belyaev’s The Air Seller, quick reading that I started while waiting for Pokrov-17 to arrive…

Books by the Calendar: Charskaya’s School Year and Baranskaya’s Week

I think I’ve been an impatient reader during the last few months. I’m not sure if that’s because of some sort of strange psychological aspect of finally, finally, finally nearing the end of Proust – only half a volume to go, oh, will I be glad to finish! – or because I haven’t been interested in much of the contemporary Russian fiction in my new acquisitions cart. I’m suspecting the latter: I’ve long been moody about my reading choices and I’ve been feeling like nothing fits. Though when something fits (like Svetlana Kuznetsova’s Anatomy of the Moon), I devour it.

Fortunately, I amassed a good selection of twentieth-century books in recent months, leading to a reread of Natalya Baranskaya’s Неделя как неделя (A Week Like Any Other) and then a first reading of Lidia Charskaya’s Записки институтки (hm, maybe Notes of a Boarding School Girl?). They’re very, very different – not surprising given that A Week is dated 1969 and Notes is dated 1901 – and I enjoyed them both, perhaps largely because they’re short, tidy, straightforward works of prose that read easily yet won’t leave me alone. (Unlike Proust: ISOLT simply slithers from my memory!) Both works are also set within very delineated timeframes: Baransksya describes a week in the life of a harried working mother and Charskaya tells the story of a tween girl from Ukraine who’s sent to a boarding school in St. Petersburg.

I first read A Week Like Any Other (brief sample of Pieta Monks’s translation, here) about thirty years ago. I don’t remember if I read in English or Russian but do remember that A Week was generally mentioned along with the phrase “double burden” during discussions of feminism and the numerous work-and-home responsibilities Soviet women were supposed to handle. Olga, A Week’s first-person narrator, works with polymers for sewer pipes and roofs, and she breaks her story into daily installments. The week coincides with the time allotted for answering a questionnaire about family life, to learn why women aren’t having more children. Olga makes a glossary of key words for the topic, covering the Russian alphabet from “a” (аборт/abortion) to “я” (я/I), with words like illness, children, nerves, motherhood, and money in between.

Baranskaya’s writing isn’t beautiful and lovely but given the topic as well as the novella’s effect and pace, I feel like calling it something like “utilitarian” is far higher praise: she covers a week in fifty pages, outlining work problems (falling behind schedule, missing days because her children are sick, relationships with her co-workers, a dreaded political session), family duties (shopping during lunch breaks, housework, taking care of sick children), marital relations (honeymoon flashback, arguments when hubby doesn’t want to help), concerns about her hair, and much, much more. On Friday the thirteenth, she loses something at the office and admits she, too, feels lost. Olga’s candidness about flaws – her own, the system’s, her husband’s – and her unsentimental optimism (I think that’s what I’d call it), plus Baranskaya’s ability to describe the breakneck pace of Olga’s life, make A Week very affecting. That’s how I felt back in the eighties and that’s how I feel now, too, particularly because I read it during a very stressful week, though at least my problem (a severe case of feline non-recognition aggression) could be resolved within a quick couple of weeks, unlike, say, the timesuck of Soviet-era food shopping. Read now, A Week feels like a period piece in some senses (again: Soviet-era shopping procedures) but that’s a plus because the novella feels so true to life, whether you remember those years (I do, albeit a bit later) or are learning about them from literature and history books. What gives A Week its emotional power is Olga’s straightforward (that word again!) account of her feelings, personal situation, and all that rushing, things I think most of us can relate to even now in 2021, if only on some lesser level. Languagehat also wrote about A Week; he researched a literary reference in the text.

Charskaya’s Notes generates empathy differently: this novel(la?) about a girl who leaves home for boarding school and makes friends with Nina, a Georgian princess (!) is sweet and might verge on saccharine if its portrayal of affection and friendship, beloved schoolmates and teachers, and family ties didn’t feel so heartfelt. I came to love the characters, too. Notes is something of a tear-jerker, so, yes, dear reader, I finished the book with damp eyes and a lump in my throat. Lyuda, the first-person narrator, is the daughter of a famous, heroic, and fallen Cossack officer – this is why Lyuda’s given a spot at a school so fancy that (mild spoiler alert!) royals come to visit the school, including Lyuda’s classroom. (And of course Sa Majesté Impériale knows her father’s name.) Among the quirky details of the time: he hands out cigarettes as souvenirs.

Charskaya, who apparently wrote the book from her own notes and experiences, focuses on a defined temporal setting: most of a school year, working in celebrations of Christmas and Easter that bring to mind Pasternak’s Zhivago, where the church calendar has significance. (Charskaya’s Wikipedia page does mention Pasternak, hm...) Descriptions of Christmas are lovely, with trees and tasty care packages, but Lent and Easter were more interesting, for confessions and forgiveness – Lyuda wants to forgive everyone and even confesses to throwing balls of bread at her friends – as well as a harbinger of death. I think my favorite aspect of Notes, though, is the day-to-day: nervousness when answering in class, descriptions of the dortoir, mentions of sweets and dining hall offerings, and rivalries among the girls. Nothing goes to waste here: an episode where Nina brings a crow into the classroom and is punished for it reveals many girls’ generosity. It also made me laugh.

My book with Notes also includes a prequel that tells Nina’s story. It’s apparently much beloved, though I’m not sure I want to read it. Nina’s a good character – smart, sharp, loyal to those she loves – and she’s proud of her heritage but I think I’d rather leave her story and Lyuda’s stories as they are for now. Judging from comments on Russian book sites, Notes is popular among young readers. I’m sure I would have loved it at Lyuda’s age (elevenish), and I enjoyed it very much now, both as a sentimental tale (no spoilers!) and as a very vivid, detailed, exuberant, and often humorous account of a certain angle on a (fictionalized) life at the turn of the last century.

Up Next: Big Book finalists. Vodolazkin’s History of Island, yes, I’m still reading; I’m also translating a brief excerpt. Svetlana Kuznetsova’s Anatomy of the Moon, which I’m translating, meaning I keep discovering and connecting more and more details. Belyaev’s The Air Seller.

My Favorite Pelevin Wins 2021 NatsBest

I missed yesterday’s NatsBest Award news thanks to not one but two Internet outages (!) so was pleased to learn this morning that Alexander Pelevin won the 2021 prize for his Pokrov-17. Video of the ceremony has not yet been posted but according to RG.RU, each jury member voted for a different finalist (there were six of each!), leaving the honorary (nonvoting) jury chair, Grigory Ivliev, to break the tie. I haven’t read any of the books on the shortlist – which look especially decent this year – but thoroughly enjoyed Pelevin’s The Four and Kalinova Yama so am looking forward to this one.  

For more on how this happened: Mikhail Vizel for Год литературы

 

Disclaimers and Disclosures: Nothing but the usual this time?

Up Next: They’re piling up. Natalya Baranskaya’s A Week Like Any Other, which was just the thing during a particularly harried recent week. Svetlana Kuznetsova’s The Anatomy of the Moon, which I’m translating and enjoying for the third time but still don’t know how to write about. And Eugene (Zhenya!) Vodolazkin’s The History of Island, which I’m rereading the way it should be read – slowly – which means I’m appreciating it even more the second time around. I also just started Lidia Charskaya’s Lidia Записки институтки, about a girl who’s sent to a private school at a tender young age. The Big Book finalist announcement is coming soon, too.

The 2021 Big Book Longlist: Best-Laid Plans Edition

The Big Book Award announced a longlist of forty-one books a Tuesday or two ago. This year’s longlist gives me hope that the 2021 shortlist might be at least a little better (meaning more readable!) than last year’s, though (cue my perennial gripe) only 11.5 of this year’s longlist titles were written by women. That’s a bit better than last year’s eight out of thirty-nine although, as always, I don’t know much about what books were nominated.

I started this post last weekend but didn’t finish (an all-life-cycles mouse infestation in the garden shed was a complete downer) but am picking back up today and attempting to accentuate the positive and focus on some books that sound good.

First off, three books overlap with this year’s National Bestseller Award shortlist. It’s probably no coincidence that these three had the top scores in NatsBest voting and are also the (unread, for me) books that interest me most:

• Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Кока (Koka) is a continuation (of sorts?) of The Devil’s Wheel (previous post), which I loved so very much about ten years ago. The friend who bought Koka seems to be enjoying it. 
• Alexander Pelevin’s Покров-17 (Pokrov-17) is set in the Kaluga area in 1993 but the action somehow connects to a World War 2 battle. Pelevin loves playing with time like this, which is one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed two of his other books (The Four) and (Kalinova Yama) so much. I’ve actively avoided learning more about Pokrov-17 before reading.
• Vera Bogdanova’s Павел Чжан и прочие речные твари (Pavel Zhang and Other River Creatures) sounds scarily intriguing, with its digital concentration camp and “total chipization.” I’ve seen lots of praise for this book and am looking forward to reading it.

 Then there are some books I’ve read or have on the shelves:

• I’m still rereading Eugene Vodolazkin’s Оправдание Острова (The History of Island), which I loved on the first reading for its chronicle-like format (sometimes!) and stylization (varying!) and blend of timelines. It’s a very Vodolazkonian novel; he’s exceptionally skilled at writing about favorite themes from new angles that make his material fresh, relevant, and related to his others works without repeating them.
• Shamil Idiatullin’s Последнее время (it sounds like this is more likely Last/Final Time(s) than, say, Of Late, though who knows!) concerns an invented country. Maria Galina’s back-cover blurb calls it ethnofantasy. I haven’t been a big fan of Idiatullin’s realistic work so bought this with the hope of enjoying something that’s less a part of this world.
• Sergei Samsonov’s Высокая кровь (High Blood) is a thick (630+ pages of small print) book set during the Civil War that (among other things) borrows on themes from Sholokhov. Translating a sample was very, very challenging thanks to Platonovesque stylistics, regional language, and literary references. The text is dense and interesting. I need to read the rest of the book.
• Leonid Yuzefovich’s Филэллин (The Philhellene) is a novel where characters converse through journals, letters, and mental conversations. Yuzefovich’s own back-cover description of the book refers to it as being closer to “variations on historical themes than a traditional historical novel.” This is another book where I’ve purposely avoided trying to learn too much before reading.
• Bulat Khanov’s Развлечения для птиц с подрезанными крыльями (perhaps something like Diversions for Birds With Clipped Wings) is described as a book about rebels but I read about a third and found it a bit slow to develop, even plodding, as it follows four people who seem to be all too fated to meet. I suspect part of my problem with Birds is that, well, its wings feel so clipped, making it feel very safe compared to Khanov’s much briefer, far riskier, and higher soaring Rage (previous post). William Barclay, by the way, translated an extended sample of Rage, under the RusTRANS project.
• I’ve had so many similar problems with books by familiar (even favorite) authors in the last year, that I wonder if my problem is due to my pandemic-era pickiness rather than flawed novels. To wit… Narine Abgaryan’s Симон (Simon) also didn’t quite hit me though I wonder if that’s because her Three Apples Fell From the Sky, which I translated, still feels so familiar and very dear to me. Similarly, Marina Stepnova’s best-selling Cад (The Garden, a.k.a. A New Breed) interested me far less for its nineteenth-century plot and characters than for its stylized language, which made me more than happy to work on a sample; this could be a matter of familiarity, too, after so enjoying translating two Stepnova novels set in later times.

Now a few potentially interesting books and/or authors I hadn’t known anything about. The pool isn’t very big – I’ve read twenty-seven of the authors on the longlist – so first I’ll cheat and mention a few more familiar authors on the list: Irina Bogatyreva, Ilya Boyashov, Sergei Nosov, Aleksei Polyarinov, Roman Senchin, and Alla Gorbunova. Since I’m always looking for novels (preferably novels with plots!) that narrows my choices a lot for unknown books and authors. But here are three books, one of which has only been published in a journal thus far, making it all the more mysterious:

• Ksenia Dragunskaya’s Туда нельзя (which I really want to call Don’t Go There, in the literal sense) sounds like it might connect several characters’ stories because of a lake. (?)
• Olga Pokrovskaya’s Летучий корабль (Airliner, perhaps?) is apparently about aviation.
• Roman Shmarakov’s Алкиной (Alcinous, I guess) is set in the fourth century, in the late Roman Empire. Although it’s apparently often described as a “philological novel,” Artyom Roganov’s review for Gorky Media says it’s more. (And even cites humor! We enjoy humor!)

Up Next: Two rereads: Vodolazkin’s History of Island and Svetlana Kuznetsova’s The Anatomy of the Moon, which I nominated for the Big Book and am translating. I reread very slowly!

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual, including having translated some of the authors on the longlist. I signed a request to call in an unnominated Pavel Krusanov collection for Big Book; he’s a good writer so I’m glad it made the list. I’ve received a number of the books on the list from agents, authors, or publishers in either electronic or print copies.

The 2021 NatsBest Shortlist

Well, that seemed to happen fast: The National Bestseller Award announced its six-book shortlist last week. I’m so behind on new releases that I haven’t studied up much on some of these titles. So no time like this chilly spring day to learn a bit more.

• Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Кока (Koka) (10 points) is the only book I know much of anything about. It’s a continuation (of sorts?) of The Devil’s Wheel (previous post), which I loved so very much about ten years ago. A friend just bought Koka and I’m looking forward to hearing her thoughts. (I was going to order it a couple weeks ago myself but it sold out!)
• Alexander Pelevin’s Покров-17 (Pokrov-17) (8 points) is set in the Kaluga area in 1993 but the action somehow connects to a World War 2 battle. Pelevin loves playing with time like this, which is one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed two of his books (The Four) and (Kalinova Yama) so much. I’ve actively avoided learning more about Pokrov-17 before reading.
• Vera Bogdanova’s Павел Чжан и прочие речные твари (Pavel Zhang and Other River Creatures) (7 points) sounds scarily intriguing, with its digital concentration camp and “total chipization.” I’ve seen lots of praise for this book and am looking forward to reading it.
• Mrshavko Shtapich’s Плейлист волонтера (A/The Volunteer’s Playlist) (6 points) is, according to nominator Yulia Selivanova’s text, “a contradictory book” thanks to its narrator’s depiction of his own deviant behavior, which contrasts with media characterizations of idealized volunteers. Nonfiction. One NatsBest juror, Mitya Samoilov, called it a “guilty pleasure.” Juror Denis Epifantsev says it’s the best book he’s read this year and compares Shtapich to Hunter S. Thompson. (!)
• Daniel Orlov’s Время рискованного земледелия (A/The Time of Risky Arable Farming?) (5 points) is set in today’s Russia; Andrei Astvatsaturov’s nomination note calls it a “wonderful example of contemporary realistic, social prose,” going on to note dynamic plot lines. I love the thought of dynamic plot lines and arable farming in one book.
• Ivan Shipnigov’s Стрим (Stream) (5 points) sounds like a polyphonic, “verbatim” book about life among young (Russian) adults. Given that Shipnigov is a screenwriter, this may be a book where the verbatim approach actually works.

So there you have it. These six books sound like a pretty decent lot, though (here comes my perennial gripe) I’m disappointed there aren’t more books written by women. Which means I’m going to order up a few from the longlist that sound good but didn’t make the shortlist. This seems to have become an annual ritual.

Just a reminder that the NatsBest site has an archive of reviews/opinions written by “Big Jury” members (here) and that their votes are archived as well (here). The winner will be selected on some future day at some future time. (Translation: I didn’t see a date mentioned for the ceremony.)

Up Next: The Big Book longlist. My reread of Vodolazkin’s Island. Another book to reread, which finally arrived in a printed copy.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual, with some familiar names on the nominator, author, and jury lists.