What to read this spring

Stories Alice Manro, “Live in St. Petersburg” and three more excellent collections

The Literary critic of Medusa Galina Yuzefovich recommends five collections of stories, which is worth paying attention to this spring: “Without looking back” by Maria Galina, “Ladies from Grace Aadier” Suzanne Clark, “A secret that is not hidden by anyone’s Nobel Prize in Literature Elis Manro,“ Miracles and Fantasy ”of Anthony Bayette and“ In St. Petersburg in St. Petersburg in St. Petersburg Live ”with the stories of different authors.

Maria Galina. Without looking back. M.: AST, 2017

The most exciting feature of the prose of Maria Galina is her diversity, and in low prose it for obvious reasons manifests itself even brighter than in novels. The current collection of stories is like a box of “Vys -rending sweets” from books about Harry Potter: each next one does not look like the previous one, and you will never guess what awaits you for another recapture at the end of the page. There is an atypical-coherent Christmas story (“Hello, old man!”), And a realistic story about childhood and lies (“Beautiful young people”), and traditional philosophical fantasy in the spirit of the Strugatsky (“Guide” and “Without looking back”), and an elegant compact cosmoope operator (“Androids of the round table”), and the classic fairy tale (“History of the second Brother ”), and outlandish fantasy with Western Ukrainian folklore motifs (“ Ganka and her elf ”), and the colorful pseudo -detective“ In Search of Anastasia ”, as if falling out of the previous Galino novel“ Autochton ”, and thundering stackets at the very end - the most powerful lavcraftan story“ Dagor ”.

There are definitely no writers with such a genre range as Galina. As there are no writers who are able to fool the reader so delightfully, each time pulling the unsteady magic veil over a completely unambiguous finale - everything seems to be clear, but it seems to be not. Something in the texts of Galina always remains unproven and grimacingly flicker, simultaneously irritating, exciting and causing an urgent need to read further. And so - up to addiction.

The book will be released in late April

Suzanne Clark. Ladies from Grace-Aadie and other stories. St. Petersburg: ABC-Atticus, 2017. Translation by M. Klevetnko, V. Kulagina-Yartseva, N. Parfenova

Suzanne Clark’s stories collection is a rare case when the publishing annotation is not lying: “Ladies from Grace-Adye” are really real folk tales that they would be, take up their composition Jane Austin. The action of the majority of the texts included in the book unfolds in the same world of alternative England as the action of the main novel by Clark “Jonathan Strend and Mr. Norrell”: Britain is fighting with Napoleon, rural squires drive with visits to neighbors and dance at balls, ruddy young ladies in hoods and frivolous dresses “Nyud” look Roses grow and whisper with friends, but then, literally a few steps from the usual, understandable and inhabited world, the real witchcraft, sometimes good, and sometimes not very good.

The virtuous broom, the poor relative of the village priest, enters into a risky confrontation with the mysterious lady who took her lover in the witchcraft (Mrs. Mabb). Three lovely women from the village of Grace-Aje-a young heiress, the wife of an elderly gentleman and governess in a rich estate-find an elegant (albeit ethically not successful) way to deal with a guardian that threatens the lives of little pupils of one of them (“Ladies from Grace Adya”). The young spouse of the noble lord, in fulfillment of the improvisingly of this promise, is forced to hide five skeins of wool in a day and turns to the inhabitants of nearby hills for help (“on dead hill”) ...

In a word, soft English irony, charming surroundings, an obligatory happy ending and a comfortable combination of truly fabulous predictability with a fabulous surprise. Well, all together - the most charming, warming and strengthening reading that you can imagine.

The book is already on sale

Anthony Bayette. Miracles and fantasies. SPb.: ABC-Atticus, 2017. Translation by S. Brand, D. Buzaji, O. Isaeva and others

At the first moment, it may seem that the stories of Suzanne Clarceretettes in the small prose of Anthony Bayette practically without a seam: the same eternal plots with a slightly different manner. A brave tailor frees a sleeping princess ("glass coffin") from the spell. The dead inhabitants of the enchanted underwater city steal the bride from a young sailor, and then destroy himself (“History of God”). The eldest of the three sisters of the Princess goes into a dangerous journey in order to return the usual color of the suddenly called the sky (“The History of the Elder Princess”) ... However, by the end of the first of the three copyright collections that have entered the current book, everything becomes a relief, and the reader recognizes the habitual byetta, the creator of the novel “possessed” and a recognized craftsman to combine sophisticated philologism With a powerful drama.

The longest text of the book “Ginn in a bottle of glass“ Nightingale Eye ”, a bizarre hybrid of an oriental fairy tale and a love novel, tells how a lonely elderly folklorist Jillian Procholt went to a conference to Turkey, and on the way back became the owner of a bottle of gin. In a middle -aged British, during a Sunday visit, her beloved husband suddenly dies to the picture gallery, and she, literally stepping over his body, runs away from everything to the south of France, in them, towards her new fate (“Crocodile tears”). The English artist decides that Tatchera England is a place that is not suitable for life, and settles in France, in a house with a pool. The pool imperceptibly becomes the meaning of his life, and an evil witch lives in it, with whom the owner enters a long positional war (“Lamia in Sevenny”). Bayette heroes endlessly tell each other and their own fairy tales and stories (as well as stories within stories), the paintings are formed into the framework for other paintings, the plots are crushed and multiply. As if you are opening one carved casket, and inside it is still a dozen ten caskets smaller, and so on to infinity.

The book is already on sale

Alice Manro. A secret not hidden by anyone. SPb.: ABC-classic, 2017. Translation T. Borovikova

Another collection of short stories of the Canadian writer and Nobel laureate, Elis Manro, has not been released in Russian, Elis Manro transferred the reader to the city of Karsters, Ontario, at the time between the two world wars. The naive and awkward city fool, the hiding hunter for otter suddenly marries and leaves for Australia, and the house in which she once lived with her brother comes into decay and falls apart (“real life”). The young librarian has a strange epistolary romance with a young soldier who went to the front. He will return alive and unharmed, but they will not meet, and this world hobby will become a harbinger for the heroine of the future serious great love (“hobby”). Little Hezer Bell will go on a campaign with the Society of Girls Skouts-he will go and will never return home. The secret of her disappearance is almost accidentally recognized by the wife of a local lawyer and will be powerless to change something (“A secret not hidden by anyone”). As usual, manro, each story of the collection is simultaneously surprisingly simple and at the same time meaningful. The environment oversaturated with details forms a dense, tangible world around the plot, and the slight uncertainty and understatement present in each text gives everything that Manro, depth and volume writes about.

All the stories included in the collection are emphasized, almost defiantly anti -exatical - the events described in them are reliable and realistic that the definition of “life itself” itself does not seem to be exaggerated to them. However, there is, in a secret that is not hidden by anyone, one text is completely amazing, standing apart not only in the book, but in the whole work of the writer - this is the story “Albanian virgin”. During the ordinary Mediterranean cruise, his heroine, a young Canadian, falls into the clutches of wild Albanian highlanders, lives in captivity for a separate life, and having returned home, brings with him fragments of an alien world - not that fictional, or real. The romantic and crazy story of this Albanian captive is bizarrely intertwined with the story of the storyteller, the owner of a small bookstore, confused in relations with her lover and husband, and is eventually allowed by a remote catharsis. If you are going to read, reserve this story in the end-or, on the contrary, start with it so as not to lubricate the impression: Manro is even good, but this story is something special.

The book will be released in late April

Live in St. Petersburg. M.: AST, editorial office of Elena Shubina, 2017

The collection of notes, stories and essays “Live in St. Petersburg” continues the cycle of “City prose” invented at the editorial office of Elena Shubina and logically adjoins the collection “Moscow: the place of the meeting”, which was published here a year earlier. Having paraphrased the well-known maxim “to drink” the compilers in St. Petersburg, in general, they did not error against the truth: the texts that made up the book draw Petersburg not tourist-destructive and ceremonial, but domestic, gray, everyday, poorly, thoroughly and unexpectedly cozy-approximately what the Petersburgers themselves must be seen.

Andrei Bitov talks about his move to two spacious communal rooms in Nevsky from a cramped room in a parental apartment in a pharmacist - and how this move became for him the beginning of emigration to Moscow. Andrei Avostsaturov generously introduces an inquisitive stranger to the secrets of St. Petersburg public transport - on a marvelous and bizarre. Mikhail Piotrovsky with youthful passion recognizes his love of his native Hermitage and protects him from rather illusory attacks. Evgeny Vodolazkin is nostalgic around the house on the Zhdanovskaya embankment, who does not have the slightest attitude to his comrade Zhdanov.

Perhaps the compilers should have been slightly less to chase the stellar composition of the participants-“living in St. Petersburg” would definitely not have become worse without the naive essay of the actress Elizabeth of the boyar or slurred poem by Boris Grebenshchikov. However, the best texts of the collection are Nikita Eliseev’s elegant essay about the cultural secretography of St. Petersburg or the tragicomic story of Eduard Kochergin about two homeless people who decided to fry under the wall of the Peter and Paul Fortress of an innocently murdered quinker - all semantic gaps are closed with a large margin.

The book will be released in mid -May

Galina Yuzefovich