Contents
Relationships in which indifference and neglect reign, where partners manipulate each other, causing jealousy or guilt, where instead of love and understanding there is tension and suffering … the classics have said a lot about toxic relationships – Dostoevsky, Zola, Virginia Woolf … And yet the new time puts his own emphasis on this topic. In the review of the writer Artem Roganov – five books by contemporary writers.
“One story”
Julian Barnes (Alphabet-Atticus, 2018)
The book is about how important it is to understand exactly what you want before making big promises or hastily marrying a stranger. Sex 19 – Susan 48. They meet by chance on the tennis court and seriously fall in love with each other. Or do they just think they’re serious? After all, the actions and words of the hero quite naturally give off youthful maximalism, and the heroine is clearly tired of her relationship with her husband – a tyrant and an alcoholic. With his latest novel, Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes appears to be a reminder of how traumatic and overwhelming the experience of a failed marriage can be. Even leaving her husband, Susan continues to destroy herself and cannot find happiness with her young lover. Paul is already in the networks, who is unable to start living on his own and as a result is left alone with his memories. In a certain sense, this book teaches us caution and independence. Whether it is necessary to get rid of the “one story” pursuing on the heels, the author suggests that the reader decides.
Quote: “Dreary sex is when you feel like you are losing contact with her, and she is with you, but this is one way to tell each other that the connecting thread is a miracle! – has not yet broken and that neither of you has put an end to the other, although in the depths of your soul you are afraid that it is time already. And only then do you discover that protecting the connecting thread is like prolonging the agony.
“Godless Lane”
Marina Stepnova (AST, 2014)
Ivan Ogarev is a talented doctor, he has a loving wife, Anya, to whom he is practically indifferent. One day, Ogarev meets an eccentric young Malya, in whom Anya immediately sees a madwoman. Anya begins to see clearly, but Ogarev does not, he goes to Male and in a certain sense ruins his life. The novel leaves the impression that the protagonist’s love problems are based on his indifference and obsession with himself. Ogarev, by and large, is indifferent to Anna, who adores him, with whom he has lived for many years. Having seemingly fallen in love for real, he does not try to get to know Malya, does not attach much importance to her oddities and problems, which ultimately lead to misfortune. The character of the hero is justified by his difficult relationship with his parents. But, one way or another, his egocentrism leads love to a dead end. “Godless Lane” gives you a feel for where the fine line lies between understanding and misunderstanding of a loved one and how to distinguish narcissistic love from normal.
Quote: “The heart was pounding, jumping behind the sternum, mixing all the diagnoses into one. This is how early heart attacks happen – from the impossibility of making a choice, from the choice itself, from the fact that – no matter what you choose – you still have to regret it. And only in the best case – himself.
“Yeltyshev”
Roman Senchin (AST, 2009)
A gloomy novel about a provincial family who moved from the city to the village, at first glance, is not at all about love. But clearly about what remains of love when you start to go with the flow and lose interest in life in other areas. Therefore, the book of the neorealist Roman Senchin is so necessary for the modern reader, because many of us at least once in our lives wanted to give up under the pressure of everyday troubles and let all matters and problems take their course, as the Yeltyshevs do. “Love for a partner is wonderful, but in order not to perish, it must be nourished by other vital interests,” the story of Artem’s eldest son tells us. The end is a little predictable – he marries the first girl he comes across and turns out to be of no use to anyone, father and mother will lose the remnants of sympathy for each other and continue to live out their days in drunken village loneliness, seemingly together, but each on their own. Someone will say that the heroes are negative from the very beginning, but isn’t it negligence and laziness that made them so?
Quote: “Life rolled downhill rapidly and unstoppably. And only the coarsening of the soul, some, albeit weak, but the shell on it did not completely despair, fall down and die. Yes, maybe it would be nice to die like this, like the ancient Greeks or epic Russian heroes, but it didn’t work out. I had to suffer further and further, and it is not known why.
“Kill Bobrykin: the story of one murder”
Alexandra Nikolaenko (Russian Gulliver, 2017)
And this work, despite the title, is about love, moreover, unhappy and painful – the feelings of a small, if not tiny, person of today’s Russia. In terms of atmosphere and theme, the latest Russian Booker laureate novel to date is reminiscent of Sergei Loban’s film Dust. The main character Shishin has a tyrannical, fanatically inert mother, Shishin cannot get a job in life, and his school love Tanya was taken away by the hated neighbor Bobrykin. But through everyday rubbish — through language, dreams and memories — the poetry of life and honest emotions emerge. Therefore, the message of the book is twofold. On the one hand, Shishin, of course, is ill, and the novel is worth reading at least in order to once again inoculate yourself against obsessive non-reciprocal love. On the other hand, the main character is honest with himself and his desires, life and adult life did not instill in him a characteristic cynical look and humility to circumstances. Shishin loves like at school. Maybe that’s what we sometimes miss?
Quote: “We made a lot of wishes in the aquarium of a school golden fish with glassy eyes, but she was probably tired of building castles from troughs. My dreams of the future, my love, remind me of the past. Return, return, return! And start all over again…
“Immortality”
Milan Kundera (ABC, 2018)
It is amazing how this little novel, written almost thirty years ago (in 1990), is still relevant today. “Immortality” – with many funny and sad storylines, with detailed author’s reasoning – about the irresistible finiteness of everything, including love. Kundera’s novel helps to realize this finitude and, paradoxically, come to terms with it and even rejoice. Immortal Goethe and Hemingway suffer from their immortality, which the journalists and young fans who are pursuing them are so eager to get. Bettina is in love with the halo of fame of the Weimar classic and fights for a part of this fame, as for property, while trying to pass off this desire as love for Goethe himself. As a result, both are captured by the love myth created by Bettina. On the other hand, the modern heroine Agnes, who lived for many years in a happy marriage, but decides to leave her family and live alone. Why? At first glance, Agnes does not have serious problems, and her husband loves her. But it is well-being that makes her leave, instead of trying to artificially prolong this well-being. Agnes wants loneliness, because she does not know how else to get rid of her inner apathy in relation to even the closest people.
Quote: “Feeling is essentially born in us outside of our will, often against our will. When we want to feel (we decide to feel, as Don Quixote decided to love Dulcinea), feeling is no longer feeling, but an imitation of feeling, its demonstration. What is usually called hysteria.”