The healer of the shower

Simon Narine Abgaryan: a book for the weekend from Ekaterina Pisareva

Once every two weeks, Ekaterina Pisareva, the editor -in -chief of the book service MyBook, including 260 thousand publications and 80 thousand audiobooks, will be knowledgeable to tell not only the most interesting new products, but also choose those that can be read quickly and with interest.

The new novel Narine Abgaryan “Simon” (“AST”, 2020) came out somehow quietly, without attracting public attention to himself. And then he suddenly surfaced to the surface of the literary sea - he was in the short list of the Big Book Prize. For the victory this season, he will compete with serious opponents, for example, the novel by Marina Stepnova “Garden”, “Philelin” by Leonid Yuzefovich, “Coca” Mikhail Gigolashvili and nine applicants.

So what is Simon about? Who is he and why is the book named after him?

The first thing you pay attention to is the place of action - here again everyone appears to the beloved border Armenian town of Berd, familiar to readers from the previous books of the writer - "continue to live" and "three apples fell from the sky." It is in this inhabited, cozy world that events unfold.

In a retelling, the plot sounds simple, almost anecdotal: once the old mason dies, and his wife and former lovers escort him on his last journey. Simon - this is the name of the mason - lived a long and rich life, enjoyed respect in the city and was famous for love affairs. Moreover, he walked not “quietly”, but so that everyone knew about everything - he did not hide, loved “selflessly and for wear, fascinated from the scab, was jealous and idolized .”

With each of the women who came to his funeral, Simon has his own story. Sometimes ridiculous, sometimes tragic, but forever remaining in the memory of the one that shared the moments of love with him. It could be three happy months or a year and a half, time did not play any importance for those with whom life pushed the hero. Because these stories were not about lust, passion or fascinating collecting - this was always something about the loser.

In total, the book has six chapters, four of which are stories about the life of Simon chosen ones and their memories. Interestingly, Abgaryan carefully packs every love story in a wrapper from the past heroines: one has an unsuccessful marriage behind one, the other has a child’s injury. Multiple stories are similar to one another - unhappy marriages, dissolved men, buried femininity. And Simon is given to every lover for salvation: their short romance completely changes life. He, as a healer of souls , comforts and heals, returns faith to life and in love.

It is quite difficult to write about love in modern literature - it is easy to slide into vulgarity, in mediocrity. We all, who grew up on Facebook stories and classical novels, it would seem, we know even more about her than we wanted. We know how passing affairs easily turn into the history of great love. How easy it is to immortalize a person if you lose him one day.

Writers of varying degrees of talent are trying to talk about a secret, universal feeling, but telling the stories of love - how to walk along the edge of the abyss: one wrong movement, and you have already broken down.

But the wise Narine Abgaryan is an amazing storyteller. She knows how to talk about everything in the world so exciting, so skillfully that it seems that her merciful prose is artistic ligature of handmade. She pays attention not only to the characters of her characters, but also to details. Her gaze grabs and highlights the little things that will forever remain in memory - a diaper in the frame, a wooden spindle, a truck with an accumulated mother dowry. The world of Abgaryan consists of such trifles, in its universe everything is in its place, everything works in the name of the plot and images.

Heroes generally seem very humane, vulnerable and ingenuous - living and relatives. It is easy for them to empathize, just solidarize with them. The grief of every woman in the novel is worried as your own, and the gap with Simon is like a personal drama.

The tragicomic and delicate, philosophical and sad - this novel Narine Abgaryan really deserves to be read. At first, it seems to be chamber, ingenuous and sentimental, but in reality everything is much more complicated.

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