Half a Revolution

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In Russia, a hot-tempered person is said to start ``half a revolution,'' explains editor Gessen. Of course, since this is a collection of women's writing, another revolution is implied, one quietly involving half the population of a country whose historic milestones have featured plenty of revolution but few women. The same openness that welcomed McDonald's has unmuzzled women's voices and admitted previously unspeakable notionsmystical beliefs, equal wages for women, homosexualityinto Russia's vocabulary and into the tumultuous re-formation of its identity. But, for all that is new, these women honor their roots. The decaying housing complex in Galina Volodina's compassionate tale of bickering, corruption and failure recalls Gogol's doss-house. Turgenev would recognize the insistent details Marina Paley uses to underline the spiritual isolation and selfishness in a provincial hospital; and Valeria Narbikova's six-dimensional journeys over Moscow float very close to the fantastic spaces of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. Natalia Shulga's childhood romance of trust, innocence and the forbidden may be lesbian, but it is also universal. In the tradition of great pre-Soviet writers, these authors focus on ordinary lives where fear and pettiness outweigh nobler motives, where the familiar nuances of psychology are still the most complex and intriguing. (Apr.)

Library Journal

This collection of short stories by Russian women is divided into three sections. "Realities" views life in the former Soviet Union as it was actually lived whether the theme be coping with everyday life, the futility of voting under communism, or the pathos of being treated in a hospital for a terminal illness. "Transitions" begins a breakaway from more conventional storytelling. Unanchored references, erratic time frames, and bizarre thoughts begin appearing. "Experimenting" leaves Socialist realism behind by including a piece of lesbian fiction. The stories are all in black and white; few adjectives are used and even fewer adverbs. These stories, so different in theme, are shot through with strands of the same thread-perhaps because the authors are all Russian women, or because they all came of age under Brezhnev's government, or because nearly all attended Moscow's Literary Institute. After superficial reading, the stories can appear very simple, yet at the same time the reader could spend a long time studying each one. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.-Olivia Opello, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.