Litvinovs on the volcano

Anna and Sergei Litvinov’s new novel “Sky Island” is the perfect beach read. And I do not advise looking for derogatory meaning in this definition: on the beach you also need to read something, and secondly, in the novel everything is not so simple.

The Litvinovs know how to write cheerfully, dynamically and accurately, but at the same time work with the most modern realities, from which magazine prose disgustingly turns away. Their response speed is amazing: just last summer, Moscow was dying from the heat and at the same time heatedly discussing the death of a young girl under the propeller of a yacht that entered the swimming area. Then they blamed everything on the captain; the owner of the yacht managed to remain in the shadows. And the Litvinovs made of this incident - which they transferred to the fictitious Primorsk - a social detective story in the best English traditions.

The reader remembers the main characters from “Exclusive Sin” - these are journalist Dima Poluyanov from “Youth News” and Nadya Mitrofanova, who is friends with him and helps as much as possible in journalistic investigations. At first, everything here is as always with the Litvinovs: a crime, disappeared or bribed witnesses, unobtrusive humor, recognizable characters, love affairs and living signs of the times. Only then does the reader—imperceptibly, as always—think about the fact that “Heavenly Island” is not so elementary: this is a book about the already completed and final stratification of the entire post-Soviet population into people and subhumans. This is how it seems to the masters of life, and no one has yet convinced them of this. There are no general rules, no general morality. And those who live on the second floor no longer have any idea about those who are messing around in the basement. It doesn’t cost anything to bribe a father so that he stops being interested in the reasons for his daughter’s death. The murder of a pensioner is not a reason for investigation at all. There is no need to say what happens to love in these circumstances: they simply don’t remember it. The Litvinovs turn quiet Primorsk into an excellent metaphor for Russia, where you can do whatever you want with the overwhelming majority of the population and they won’t make a sound. It is especially gratifying that the Litvinovs still place their only hope in journalists, but Pouyanov, to be honest, has much less enthusiasm and hope in this book than in the previous one.
So I repeat: the perfect beach read. Read, look around and think about the fact that we are sunbathing, essentially, on a volcano and that is why it is hot here.