Your Ad Could Go Here

Your Ad Could Go Here / Oksana Zabuzhko
trans. from the Ukrainian by Nina Murray, Halyna Hryn,
Askold Melnyczuk, Marco Carynnyk, & Marta Horban
Seattle: Amazon Crossing, c2020.
252 p. 

This is a strong, compelling collection by Ukrainian author Oksana Zabuzhko. It takes its inspirations from both contemporary Ukrainian life and traditional folklore, and both elements work beautifully. Zabuzhko's style is discursive, with long sentences, parentheses, and multiple clauses in a thought. I really enjoyed it and found that the style and content were finely matched. 

The book is separated into three loosely thematic groupings, made up of 8 stories that range from ones that were previously translated and published in anthologies (3), and newly translated ones. They also vary in length, from the very short title story to the novella "The Tale of the Guelder Rose Flute", based on a Ukrainian folktale. 

The stories all take on different elements, but the thread that binds them is that they explore women's experiences and take to heart the saying "the personal is political". Whether sharing the story of two competitive sisters in the Guelder Rose Flute, two young girls exploring their sexuality (Girls), or domestic entanglements between mother, daughter, and the past (No Entry to the Performance Hall After the Third Bell), each one delves into the interior worlds of the characters and illuminates the difficulty of expressing what one is really thinking or feeling. And also surrounds each story with the context of the world the characters are living in.

The title story is a short piece but holds the key to Zabuzhko's writing. In it, she buys a beautiful pair of handmade gloves in Vienna, but two years later when she goes back, the spot is taken over by a chain store making cheap assembly line gloves. The loss of craftmanship to fast fashion and carbon copy gloves is clearly symbolic. It's a lament for art itself. As she says, "Understanding, in fact, is my job, that's what writers are for -- to try to understand everyone and everything and put this understanding into words, finished to the gossamer fineness of a rose petal, words made supple and obedient, words cut to hold the reader's mind like a well-made glove that fits like second skin."

I found each story intriguing, and reflective of life in Ukraine, but the two stories that explicitly take on recent history -- the Orange Revolution in "An Album for Gustav" and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war in "No Entry" -- were particularly powerful for me. In "An Album for Gustav", a Ukrainian couple who were involved in the Euromaidan protests are sharing images and recollections with a German acquaintance who wants to put together an album of sorts about the events. The husband is a photographer, so speaks about the unexpected images that carry the emotional weight of what it felt like in those days. The wife is more circumspect, feeling that talking about it too much freezes the experience into a polished story, taking with it the visceral reality of the experience. She thinks about it, though, and Zabuzhko's words do indeed powerfully evoke the act of protest. But the idea that polishing it up into a "story" is detrimental exists alongside the very story that is sharing it. It's a fine tension. 

The final story, "No Entry", really shows the swift changes in Ukrainian social life, from the difficult and traumatic past of the mother Olha, now a performer, to her daughter Ulyanka's life. Ulyanka is now the same age as Olha was when she met the man who turned out to be Bad News, but there's a different arc for Ulyanka. She's in love with the neighbour's son, who has just returned from the front in Eastern Ukraine missing a hand - but the two younger people are pragmatic and will keep on as they planned. Olha finally understands that they are different from her own generation in their view of the world. It's a story that ranges all over the place - Olha's past, her arguments with Ulyanka, menopause, performing life in Ukraine, the Russian-Ukrainian war, social expectations in different social groups - it's all there. And somehow it felt like a fine conclusion to this book, for me. 

I really enjoyed my slow journey through this collection. I appreciated the themes that Zabuzhko tackles, and admire her style -- the language flows but she's also raw and doesn't hide reality with flowery language.

I'm glad that more Ukrainian work is being translated - it's hard to find and I always search it out when I can. This was definitely one worth finding, and it's one I will keep to reread.