Sonechka: A Novella and Stories
A quiet family story that delicately reveals the inner life of a woman through memory and reflection.
Work Information
Small events leave a long aftertaste.
A quiet family story that delicately reveals the inner life of a woman through memory and reflection.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Schocken
- Published
- 2005-05-03
- Pages
- 256 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 21.64 x 2.49 x 14.55 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780805241952
- ISBN-10
- 0805241957
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Literary
The Los Angeles Times said of Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The Funeral Party , “In America we have friends, family, lovers, and parents–four kinds of love. Could it really be that in Russia they have more? Ludmila Ulitskaya makes it seem so.” In Sonechka: A Novella and Stories , Ulitskaya brings us tales of these other loves in her richly lyrical prose, populated with captivating and unusual characters. In “Queen of Spades,” Anna, a successful ophthalmologic surgeon in her sixties; her daughter, Katya; and Katya’s teenage daughter and young son live in constant terror of Anna’s mother, a domineering, autocratic, aging former beauty queen. In “Angel,” a closeted middle-aged professor marries an uneducated charwoman for love of her young son, raising the child in his image. In “The Orlov-Sokolovs,” perfectly matched young lovers are pulled apart by the Soviet academic bureaucracy. And in the stunning novella “Sonechka,” the heroine, a bookworm turned muse turned mother, reveals a love and loyalty at once astounding in its generosity and grotesque in its pathos. In these stories, love and life are lived under the radar of oppression, in want of material comfort, in obeisance to or matter-of-fact rejection of the pervasive restrictions of Soviet rule. If living well is the best revenge, then Ludmila Ulitskaya’s characters, in choosing to embrace the unique gifts that their lives bring them, are small heroes of the quotidian, their stories as funny and tender as they are brilliantly told.
Ludmila Ulitskaya was born in Bashkiria, in the Ural region, and was trained as a geneticist. Her novels and short stories have been published in more than twenty-five languages. She has received many awards for her writing, including the first Russian Booker Prize and the Medici Prize. She lives in Moscow.
Reviews
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Great book
I saw this mentioned in the Boston College Alumni magazine and since I was familiar with one of the other books mentioned I thought it looked worthwhile. There are three short stories that give an interesting insight to live in Russia. Having been over there several times I thought it was right on the mark.
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... and bought this book as a result and greatly enjoyed it.
I heard Ludmila Ulitskaya being interviewed and bought this book as a result and greatly enjoyed it.
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A book, and an author, to be reckoned with.
Compellingly readable; extremely frank about life in the USSR; no holds barred about women's (and some men's) sexuality. Not quite 5 stars by my reckoning: the characters are painted a bit too crudely to compel complete belief. But the energy, and the unsparing logic of the arc of the lives of the men (and especially the women) who people these stories, holds you in its grip. A book, and an author, to be reckoned with.
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Thought provoking and moving
Ulitskaya's prose is lyrical at times and yet down to earth. Her stories focus on women and their relationships with each other, the men they love, and their culture.
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Love's labor's lost
Ludmila Ulitskaya is widely regarded as one of the best contemporary Russian writers with a number of books and plays to her credit. She is probably best known for The Funeral Party . Sonechka and the relative handful of other stories contained in this beautifully bound book cover some of Ulitskaya's shorter works, and as such they really only give you a taste of her writing gifts. Sonechka, the title story, seems more like a sketch for an epic novel than a novella. She plots out quite a story from Sonechka's uninspiring origins in which books became her refuge, to her marriage to a dashing painter, a daughter and ultimate disillusionment with life before reverting once again to books. The other stories capture moods and impressions both in Russia and abroad, culminating in a ribald reunion of three Russian women in New York in 1990 romantically entitled The Dauntless Women of the Russian Steppe.