Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

Lithuanian fiction

Original title –  Lietuviai prie Laptevų jūros

Translator Delija Valiukenas

Source = personal copy

I am trying to fill in the gaps for the Peirene books I haven’t read here is another.from their Home in Exile series and a work from  Dalia Grinkevičiūtė she wrote on scraps of paper after her escape and return to her homeland from a Gulag and then buried the book was discovered in a Jar four years after her death. She spent time in gulags first with her family in the war years this is the period covered in the book. Then later on in the ’50s by herself. But also became a doctor on her return to Lithuania. This book is now considered part of the national canon of Lituania.

I’m touching something. It feels like cold iron. I’m lying on my back …. How beautiful … the sunlight …and the shadow

I am aware tgat a phase of my life has come to an end, a line dran underneath it. Another i beginning, uncertain and ominous. Twenty four people lie nearby. Asleep? who knows? Each of them has their own thoughts. Each is leaving behind a life that ended yesterday. Each has a family, relatives, friends, They’re all saying goodbye t their loved ones. Suddenly the train jolts. Something falls from the upper bunk No one is asleep now. Silence I dress hurriedly- I have to say goodbye to Kaunas

The opening as she is on the train heading she doesn’t know where

The book follows Dalia her mother and her older brother as the family is wrenched out of their home in Kanuas and deported by the regime as she joins a lot of fellow Lithuanians on a train covered so no-one knows where they are going. The journey last weeks as they are spilt in to groups as they are sorted and divide. The conditions on board  are horrid on board. They have dreams they are heading to America but end up by a river and in some wooden huts trying to keep together sing national songs they get wood from the forest and try to get by but this is shortlived now on a barge they finally reach the Artic and the tundra is a  wasteland freezing as they are dressed in the clothes for a Baltic summer and now have to work building a fish processing factory. Hundreds die that first winter but Dalia manages to get through. This is very hard work as they live in simple jurt with next to no clothes as the winter draws in and those around her start to fall apart she has a overwhelm spirit of hope that shines through her words As we see the dark underbelly of the Soviet regime and how it tried to break the people from the Baltic states.

I look around and am chiled to the bone. Far and wide, tundra, naked tundra, not a sprig of vegetation, just moss as far as the eye can see. In the distance, I notice something tat looks like a small hill of crosses. We learn that these are the graves of the Finns. Two weeks ago, they were brought in from Leningrad already debilitated as a result of the blockade, starved and suffering from typhus, and now they are dying, suddenly, I’m gripped by rear. What if this becomes a “death Zavod” rather than a “fish zavod” ? I hear the steamer sound ger horn and start to move, manoeuvring our empty barges through a maze of rafts .

They arrive on the island and the horror of this world faces her the line about the crosses in just twoi weeks is chilling !!

it is great when works like this are found that pay testament to the hardship of the Soviet-era regime. It is like a Soviet Anne frank they both share that hope of spirit that gives them such hope for the future no matter how horrific their present is. The Gulag has been well documented in the work of the great Russian writers Solzhenitsyn and Kochergin A day in the life and Christened with crosses are two powerful works. I covered Midnight in the century by Victor Serge that followed another writer being in Exile. The world she wrote about is so well written the biting cold the fish factory being built the starving the being looked down on by locals on the island that view these prisoners from around the soviet states as underlings. Powerful work and so thankful it survived discovery from the KGB.

The last day byJaroslavas Melnikas

The last day by Jaroslavas Melnikas

Lithuanian fiction

Original title – Rojalio kambarys

Translator – Marija Marcinkute

Source – Reivew copy

I’ve been late getting to this as it came out a while ago from the small press Noir press whose books I have reviewed before. They have been bringing some of the brightest writers from Lithuania. Jaroslavas Melnikas has written six novels, collections of philosophical essays in Lithuanian he has also written poetry and prose in Ukrainian and a novel in French. He has worked for a number of Magazines including Laima and Woman. He is a member of both the Lithuanian and Ukrainian writers union. He won the BBC book of Ukraine with this book. This is his first work to be translated into English.

A very strange situation unfolded in the country and across the whole planet. Everybody was convinced that a divinity existed. But where was it? The sun shone, as always, the sky was still there, as were the clouds, the trees and animals. The world hadn’t changed; everything was alive, vibrant, but the hidden divinity was nowheere to be found. There was just that book, which appeared out of nowhere.that simpy infuriated everybody.God, if you decide to reveal that you exist, and in such an original manner, then show yourself!

The book of everyones last day changes the way the world is and they think about God.

This is a collection of eight short stories some from a few pages to others about fifty pages long. The collection opens with the title story the Last day based in an alternative world where someone has the power to find out when everyone dies and these days are published in books this shows how people deal with knowing when the last day is and what they do. The second story we find a man Jura thinking about the times he has played his grand piano at his home in his grand piano room only for his family to deny there was ever such a room he even remembers his wife seeing him play but she denies this ever happen he is left question as he walks through a door to a different plan or has he just imagined all this. Other stories see a woman grow younger a sort of female version of Benjamin Button she rediscovers her sexual prowess. Other see a man following directions but where are they leading him? Then a man ends in a cinema watching a film that never ends about a girl called Liz where reality and life get blurred.I laughed at an early line about the film saying it was a film that seems pointless as it was plotless.I was reminded that is something My Amanda would say about some of the films I watch.

Nikodimova was sixty when she noticed the small bloody discharge. She didnt take any notice at first, but then the skin under her eyes became smoother. Just like that. She began to feel like living and enjoying herself. And the birds and spring. In the mornings, while in the morning, while in the shower, she discovered her body was astonishment. Not in the prime of youth, of course, her skin drooped here and there, but still, in shape, sufficently supple.

She could reach hjer toes without bendingher knees, the stream of water pleasantly drumming against her vertbrae and her waist, running in a warm stream down her bottom and thighs

The tale of Nikodimova and her growing younger when she turns sixty.

 

This a great collection. The stories all make you as the reader thinks about what is the truth behind each one each story.  There is a lot about who people are, what we are! who we are.! Those major questions like how we look shown when the Nikodimova the sixty year starts growing younger she get the neighbors talking. The other thread is the community as in the Soviet era of close living where everyone was on top of each other at times the identity gets blurred as shown in the grand piano room a story about shifting truths with a nod to the Soviet past. These would make great short tv series in the style of something like The outer limits used to be.  Where we are asked to accept various views of the world. Then asked to read greater into the stories than what is on the surface. An interesting collection of stories from a new writer to us in English. Noir press have brought an interesting writer out one of the best short story collections I have read in recent years.

Shtetl Love Song by Grigory Kanovich

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shtetl Love song by Grigory kanovich

Lithuanian fiction

Original title – Местечковый романс

Translator – Yisrael Elliot Cohen

Source – review copy

I reviewed the first book from the new publisher Noir press Breathing into Marble which I enjoyed. this their latest book from Lithuanian is a true gem of a book. Grigory Kanovich is a well know poet and writer. He currently lives in Israel and before he emigrated there was the head of the Jewish community of Lithuania. He also served as a people’s deputy during Soviet times. Born into a tailoring Jewish family of the Shtetl community if Jews in Lithuania before world war two. what he brings in this book is the lost world of his family and their friends. 95% of Shtetl jews died during world war two when Germany invaded.

For a long time I have intend to write about my mother with that joyous enthusiasm and the kind of abundant detail with which it is fitting to recall one’s parents, the people closest and dearest to you. But to my great shame, for one reason or another, i have kept putting it off.Or, if I have started, then I have written nothing more than casual scraps, limiting myself to separate episodes that dealt with my relatives and the other people from my hometown. Wanting to somehow soften my feeling of guilt, I began to recall things, conjuring up memories even when I was sleeping, However the following morning I would mercilessly erase the words that has seemed so appropriate the night before

Grigory explains his struggle with this book he want to honour his mum and home town.

The book starts with Grigory saying he had long wanted to tell the story of his mother and family in pre war Lithuania in those years before he turned twelve and they had to leave and returned later to a changed country. I saw somewhere that said the Grigory was maybe the only person that could bring this world to us as readers as so few people are left alive from that time.. This follows his father and grandfather and their spouses Mama and Dovid ,Grandma Rokha as they leave their home and head to Lithuania after the end of another war to first Vilnius and then on to the home town of Jonava. What follows is the history of the following years of the family as they grow into village ,life but also stat planting roots which we see his mother Hennie settle and explain the village around them the rabbis, traders and characters. This is a description of a world long gone but also a family history a view of the world they live in which at the time was one where their is big changes as the country they live in Lithuania that had just become a country but is also trying to stay a country and not get eaten up by either of the two large powers that are  nearby the Soviet and German regimes have their eyes on the country.

Wake up. Hirshele! Wake up, my golden one! today it’s an important holiday. Pesach! Passover! I’m going to take you today, my little dove, to the synagogue for the first time. To the Beit Knesset Hagadol .

“Where?” my eye. still not unstick from my sweet sleep expressed nothing but fear.

“To the great synagogue. You’ve never been before.Each day Gotenu, our dear god, decends from heaven to there. We will be pray together and thank our protector and Benefactor for delivering us from Egypt thousands of years ago and liberating us from the Pharohs.

I love and fear going place like this with my grandmother at times.

I have read a lot of lit about the war and Jewish life , but there isn’t many books  out there that touch this book for the way it captures the day-to-day family life As many of you know I am a huge fan of those books that capture village small town life and this is what this does . But also the black humour the jewish community is well-known for shine through at times that saw their world change. The action is in the pre war period but the sense of the wider world invading the small is evident as the family goes on but their world will be for ever changed. Grigory has written all his life about the Litvak community of Lithuania. This is his most personal book and the last he has written so far, it won a number of prizes including the Lithuania National prize. I loved the small boy on the cover he capture this world so well in a way.

Breathing into Marble by Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite

 

Breathing into Marble by Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite

Lithuanian Fiction

Original title – Kvėpavimas į marmurą

Translator – Marija Marcinkute

Source – review copy

As I said yesterday in my wrap up there was three new publishers last month and here is another Noir press is a new small press focusing on Baltic fiction. They contact me and said This may be perfect as my first book from Lithuania as I had yet to review a book from there. Laura is a prize winning writer this book won the EU prize for lit .She studied Lithuanian become a Journalist and then a writer she has had a number of books published and translated into a number of languages this is her first to be into English and the first by a living Lithuania writer to be translated to English.

HIS EYES wer brwn, with irises that seemed as thick as steel- they had none of the softness that would be characteristic of a child.When Isabel was taken to the group, they all simultaneously turned towards the door and a hush fell upon them. Isabel froze in deadly silence, pierced by fifteen pairs of starring eyes. And the a ripple out from the corner, a short, slight stir as the boy pressed his tiny fists into his mounth and his eyes flashed.Hardness was probably his most distinctive quality

She meets Ilya for the first time maybe she saw more than she realised in his eyes there

Breathing into marble is a story of family Isabel , who has a son Gailus , but this lad is suffering from Seizures which are  getting worse, the family are trying the best for him. The Isabel meets an orphan Ilya whom she decides they are going to adopt to help their son and also give him some company.This new arrival to use the old saying is like setting a cat amoung the pigeons and he is trouble he wrecks this quiet families life .What we see is the ripple effect of his arrival on how people get effect by one event .The mother and father trying to maybe replace the faulty child with a new one but he isn’t no this six year cause a rift and doesn’t take to his new step brother .

Galius had never met a person who took up so little space “Its like ILya always trying to become smaller ” he said to Isabel .He behaved as though he was not two but ten years older than his brother. He would not complain to his mother when things began disappearing from the drawers of his desk – pencils and his Tragi-comical everyday reflections – what he called the pieces of paper with his scribblings on them.

The two brothers meet and the older orignal son observes something about his step brother .

This is a tough one to describe in her winning interview about this book for the EU lit prize she notes the books isn’t plot driven its a book of psychology of the human soul she says it is to see how people react to one event the event here is a death at the heart of the story that turns the wife and husbands world upside down . This is like a lot of new fiction around europe about famlies in the worst points , I felt a connection to The Boy which I reviewed last year another novel dealing with the fallout of a child’s death. This also seems to be part of a group of writers In Lithuania writing Noir fiction another influence I felt is Simenon roman Durs novels those psychological novels he wrote about the darker side of human nature at times and how we all react in certain situations . This is a dark look into ome couples past and secrets they had to bury many years ago , death and recovering or trying to recover from it .