The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

 

The Museum of Abandoned Secrets / Oksana Zabuzhko
translated from the Ukrainian by Nina Shevchuk-Murray
Amazon Crossing, 2012, c2009.
756 p.

My final read of WIT Month this year is also one of my top reads of the year so far. The Museum of Abandoned Secrets is a lengthy, twisty, lively, and evocative story of three women in Ukraine - two in a contemporary timeline and one in WWII. 

Daryna is a successful journalist, with a documentary show, and she discovers the story of Olena Dovgan, a WWII insurgent killed by Stalin's troops in 1947. She is immediately and viscerally connected to Olena, and is committed to digging out the truth of her story. At the same time, she's trying to recover from the suspicious death of one of her best friends, the painter Vlada, who was living with a politician at the time of her death. How is politics intertwined with all of these stories? Those are the secrets of this novel. 

Despite the length, this book rockets along. Stylistically it's ambitious and modern; whole chapters are Daryna having conversations but only her words are recorded - and yet you perfectly understand what's going on. There are references to other works in Ukrainian literature, to historical figures, to locations, to significant historical events, and to broader cultural topics from across Europe. There is no slowing down to info dump on any of these; if you don't recognize a name or reference, take the time to go look it up so that you can understand the full resonance, and you'll also learn a lot. 

The narrative switches between Daryna and her story -- her career, her love affair with Adrian, a grand-nephew of Olena Dovgan who she met via her research, and her thoughts on Ukrainian life in the wild years of the 90s, pre-Orange Revolution -- and the war years, in which Olena (Gelya) and her lover (also an Adrian) spend their time as Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisans, fighting both Nazis and Stalin. There's so much to take in, so many threads to follow and untangle, and such rich characters. 

Zabuzhko's writing style is fabulous, she pulls in references to a multitude of things, and has a way of throwing in beautifully written imagery & ideas, in the midst of the bawdy or humorous elements of her writing. And I have  to mention the excellent translation by Nina Shevchuk-Murray, who captures the energy & stylistic quirks of Zabuzhko's writing. 

The book is a process of uncovering secrets both from the past and from the world around Daryna -- like the archives, where most of the information she's seeking was destroyed in a political panic, and/or sent to Moscow. Or what the relationship between Vlada and her political paramour really entailed. Or even what Adrian's secretary at his antiques store is up to. 

The title is also a reference to a game played by small girls in Daryna's youth, which consisted of burying a pretty scene in a hole in the ground, covering it with glass and then dirt again, so it was only accessible to those in the know. They suggest in the story that this came from the way women would bury icons to keep them safe during communist purges (related to the way women bury Ukrainian flags in Russian invasions today?) This 'game' is also referred to in the previous book I shared here, Episodic Memory. 

This is a must-read for those interested in learning more about the Ukrainian past, as well as the national psyche. I find Zabuzhko's almost breathless, energetic style very readable, and enjoy the way she can make dark themes snappy and engaging. But she can also share metaphors and imagery that will stick with you for a long time. Like this passage, which I'll conclude with, describing life and its ultimately unknowable secrets: 

I have come to think that a person’s life is not so much, or rather is not just, the dramatically arched story with a handful of characters (parents, children, lovers, friends, and colleagues –anyone else?) that we pass on more or less in one piece to our descendants. It’s only from the outside that life looks like a narrative, or when viewed backwards through a pair of mental binoculars we put on when we have to fit ourselves into the small oculars of resumes, late-night kitchen confessions, and home-spun myths, trimming and shaping life into orderly eyefuls. When seen from the inside, life is an enormous, bottomless suitcase, stuffed with precisely such indeterminate bits and pieces, utterly useless for anyone other than its owner. A suitcase carried, irredeemably and forever, to the grave. Maybe a handful of odds and ends fall out along the way …

Highly recommended, a fantastic read.