Contents
The conflict of fathers and children in our time has partially changed gender. It just so happened: children are now more often brought up by mothers, they are the first to face their growing up. Writer Artem Roganov recalls the best examples of modern prose on this topic, which will have a therapeutic effect.
1. “Dragonfly enlarged to the size of a dog”, Olga Slavnikova
A novel-vaccination against codependency. After the betrayal of her husband, the Soviet teacher Sofya Andreevna divorces and brings up her daughter Katerina Ivanovna alone. But the daughter does not justify the hopes of the mother – she remains without a higher education, works as a typist, and she also does not work out in her personal life. This is the story of two lonely women who love and hate each other at the same time. Surely, many in life have met such families living in their own juice of mutual insults and quarrels. How does this trap come about? Is it possible to get out of it? What to do if love and hate have merged beyond recognition?
The debut of the famous writer, author of “2017” is a stylistically subtle, slightly Nabokovian text about how important it is to continue to search – not to become isolated on each other and, against all odds, build an independent life. (Vagrius, 2007)
Quote: “At the very last conscious moment, Sofya Andreevna suddenly realized that her life so soon passed was unbearably happy, she managed to endure it only by inventing misfortunes that actually did not exist.”
2. “The eternal life of Lisa K.”, Marina Vishnevetskaya
If Olga Slavnikova’s novel is about how “not to”, then “The Eternal Life of Lisa K.” Marina Vishnevetskaya is a positive example. A dynamic and, in a good sense, very modern work, where parents and an adult daughter take turns saving each other. The mother will help the main character with the upbringing of the child, while she will make a career and deal with men. The daughter will support the mother when the forgotten love from the distant past returns to the father. Both women will end up finding answers to their most important questions. What is the secret? Perhaps it is that you do not need to try to agree on everything, and friendly humility with a partial misunderstanding of a loved one is also understanding. (AST, 2018)
Quote: “But mom never scolded dad on the merits, for some reason it was so between them, in essence she dropped only a polite remark, and after half a day she suddenly collapsed, finding an extraneous reason – either highly moral or intellectual. Because she shouldn’t be moaning over a potato.”
3. “Stories”, Natalia Meshchaninova
Under the deliberately unpretentious title hides a whole, sincere and gloomy book. It is about the impossibility of getting rid of the past, the impossibility of forgetting and forgiving, including forgetting life with a mother who betrayed her daughter’s trust. The main character seems to have gotten out of the traumatic world of childhood and adolescence, where seventh graders torture a fifth grader, and polio stepfather Uncle Sasha takes naked pictures and leaves him without dinner. She was able to live her own life, but getting out of the hole does not mean removing the hole from herself.
The prose of the director and screenwriter of the sensational film “Arrhythmia” Natalya Meshchaninova turned out to be useful for idealistic Russian literature. It is also necessary for the modern Russian reader in order to look into the eyes of the unpleasant aspects of reality, not be afraid to talk about them and wash dirty linen in public, when doing without it means being left alone with nightmares for life. (Session, 2017)
Quote: “How, when, how did it happen that from blind, incomprehensible, bleeding love, for which I could kill without embellishment, without blinking, I stepped into hatred. How from the Sun to the shadow crossed the border on the Moon. You are unlikely to take the liberty of thinking that you have not loved me for a long time. This would be sacrilege for you, a violation of a taboo. You can only not love strangers, but you are obliged to love your own. And I so want, so I want to condemn you, to poke your face into a lie, into indifference and selfishness. And every time we meet, I spend all our time on it, and when you leave, I sob from orphanhood.
4. “Sun”, Lyudmila Ulitskaya
The story of Lyudmila Ulitskaya tells how you can and should humble yourself. The situation is not as cruel as in Meshchaninova’s collection, but you have to forgive everything the same: the arrogance and selfishness of a loved one. At first glance, it may seem that we are talking more about the relationship between Sonechka and her husband, but implicitly it becomes clear – and about the relationship between adults and children, too. True, the daughter who has estranged from her parents is replaced by a young mistress to her father. Sonechka forgives her husband, who does not have long left, moreover, she actually makes his mistress a named daughter, because, alas, it is no longer fate to find common ground with her own.
The unhurried, rich in stylistic images narrative, accelerating towards the end of the text, teaches us a useful skill – self-sufficiency. And really, isn’t it possible to be happy with life in loneliness? (Eksmo, 2009)
Quote: “Sonya didn’t fall asleep on the train, she kept thinking about what a wonderful life is happening to her daughter and husband, what a young flowering around, what a pity that everything has already passed for her, and what happiness that all this was … She shook her head like an old man. , obeying the small tremors of the car, anticipating the tick that she will have two decades later.
5. Amendments, Jonathan Franzen
Everyone should get together for Christmas. A mother dissatisfied with her daughter’s personal life, the middle son’s career, and the elder’s indifference. Her heavily aging husband. Adult children, desperately continuing to search for themselves in an unstable global world. America of the nineties here is somewhat reminiscent of today’s Russia – it seems as if two eras coexist in it at once, or even more.
“Amendments” are not about hidden crimes or violent betrayals. Not even about the despotism of parents and not about the indifference of children, although both are found in the novel. “Corrections” is about normal, by and large, family life, the classic generational gap, the inability to fully sympathize, the inevitability of old age and the burden of maturity. If you are annoyed by the reproaches and demands of your parents, or if your supposedly grown children behave stupidly and do not even want to listen to obvious advice, try reading this book. (Corpus, AST, 2013)
Quote: “The Greeks, the inventors of tantalum torments and Sisyphean labor, overlooked one torture: the veil of self-deception, a warm, soft blanket that wraps the suffering soul, but always leaves something outside.”