The Ladies from St Petersburg

 

The Ladies from St. Petersburg / Nina Berberova
trans. from the Russian by Marian Schwartz
Cambridge, MA: New Directions, 2000, c1990
122 p.

Although August and Women in Translation Month is over for this year, I've finished a few more titles that I started in August, so before I move on to other books, there are a few more reviews to share! 

I picked up this little collection recently; the cover states that this is a collection of three novellas. That's stretching it a bit -- these are three short stories. The book is only 122 pages, the font is a decent reading size, and white space abounds. 

Still, they are three really good short stories. And definitely worth your time to search out. Berberova was a Russian emigree, first to Paris, then to New York. The first two stories take place in the Old World, but the third is clearly New York. In the first, mother and daughter are taking their vacation in a country boarding house in Russia, ignoring the looming revolution that's happening around them. Disaster strikes in an unexpected way; the details of the disaster and the fallout are precise and disturbing. The second features a woman who must relocate from her town in Ukraine because of the fighting, and like many other internal refugees she rents a room in a boarding house to live in. Unfortunately, she doesn't get along with the other members of the household -- they are suspicious of her, prying, spying on her, hostile to this woman from a higher, educated class. Both of these two stories were written in the 1920s, and both are sharp, with unhappy endings. Just about what you'd expect from Russian fiction. 

The final story is set in The City, and while it also features an emigre, in this one the narrative is more dreamlike and modern, having been written much later. It was fascinating but also strange. A man finds a room to live in in the attic of a huge apartment block, which has a whole "main street" of shops on one floor for the residents; the attic overlooks this floor. This is odd enough, but the other residents of the attic are also strange, as he discovers as he makes the rounds. There are still the themes of isolation, hostility, lack of belonging, as in the first two, but told in a different way here. And the conclusion feels much more American in a way. 

I found the writing style clear and descriptive, focused on character, and people's thoughts and reactions to difficult circumstances. She's just telling you what happened, not interpreting or analyzing it - that's your job as the reader. The stories are memorable, and I'm now interested in finding out more about Berberova, an author I've never read before. She was apparently a prolific writer, so hopefully I can track down more work in English.