Good Citizens Need Not Fear

Good Citizens Need Not Fear / Maria Reva

NY: Doubleday, c2020

212 p.

I first heard about this book when the Amnesty International Canada book club chose it for a club read. When I saw that it is set in Ukraine, I knew I had to read it. Fortunately, my library had it in audiobook format so I was able to listen to it. 

It's a connected set of short stories following all the same characters -- the first section during the Soviet years, and the second immediately following the fall of the USSR. It's heavily steeped in the dark absurdism of Soviet life, centred on 1933 Ivansk St, an apartment building that doesn't exist - except it does. Bureaucracy, however, has no record of it, so the lives of its residents are determined by their apparent non-existence. 

In nine stories, Reva explores differing facets of life in Soviet Ukraine. From "Bone Music" in which a middle aged woman records contraband punk onto x-ray film 'records' for the black market, to "Miss USSR", in which a returning character crashes a beauty pageant to memorable effect, the stories highlight elements of highly disparate women's experiences. There are predictable things like orphans and bread lines and bureaucratic double speak, but not done predictably. 

There's a flippant dark tone to it which recalls other writers from Ukraine, like for example Andrei Kurkov, describing chaotic unrest and even violence with a wry acceptance. Here though, there is also a throughline taking the characters from the darkness of the Soviet years to the promise of freedom -- although that seems like its also pretty hopeless in the end. 1933 Ivansk St reflects the characters as it creaks and crumbles along with the USSR, and the solid life of the inhabitants diminishes as some of them move on. 

I found the structure of this book quite intriguing; centred on a living space, and all the people who are connected by it whether willingly or not. It gives a base for a variety of stories and voices, which I liked. It's true that this is a bit depressing by the end, and there is no great enlightenment to be shared. It's just life. And you'll have to take it as it comes, which really could be the message of the narrative as well. 

Maria Reva was born in Ukraine but raised in Canada, and lives in Vancouver. Her distance from Ukraine and the USSR perhaps assists her ironic view of a past that is definitely not very long ago at all.