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The Sky Unwashed

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"The Sky Unwashed" opens with the portrayal of life in a small Ukrainian village on the outskirts of Chernobyl. There is an obvious cultural divide between the old-timers who continue to till the communal land, and the younger generation who toil at the plant. However, none of them seem to fully comprehend the ticking time bomb which looms in the distance.

The horror of the Chernobyl accident, and the mishandling of the situation by the Soviet government, are disturbing. When one of the elder women of the town finds herself alone in Kiev after a governmental evacuation, she determines that she has no real alternative other than to return to the poisoned village, where others soon join her.

I couldn't put this book down. The characters are fascinating -- especially the tenacious old women who have seen so much hardship their whole lives. Their strength shines through, as they treat the radiation poisoning as just another hurdle in their lives which must be overcome.

Coincidentally, I finished reading "The Sky Unwashed" on the day that the Ukranian government finally agreed to close down the remaining reactor... Hopefully, the rest of the harm can be repaired.

As exciting a discovery as Amy Tan, Gish Jen, or even Isaac Bashevis Singer. Zabytko makes an entire culture accessible to English readers, in this timeless, moving, and unforgettable story. I don't think there has been a Ukranian writer with this combination of pathos and humor since Nicholas Gogol. This is not just a story about Chernobyl (although the story is riveting)- this is one of the rare books that could change the way you look at the world.

If you like Camus you will love Zabytko. This book reminds me of Albert Camus's works, but a bit more spiritual and a little less negative. However, the insight of a character faced with tragedy is presented in a Camus-like manner. Looking into the human spirit along with all the human falabilities and still finding humans appealing is one of Zabytko's strengths in this work.

Also, Zabytko has done something that the Ukrainian-American community should have done years ago: introduce the Ukrainian culture, mindset, and spirit to non-Ukrainians. The Ukrainian diaspora has often demanded political recognition, but it has failed to spark much interest in it's culture beyond pysanky (Easter eggs) and varenyky (pierogies). This book is what I hope is a beginning to uncovering to non-Ukrainians the complex society of Ukraine--one that is saturated with ancient traditions and torn by Soviet oppression. I encourage anyone and everyone who is curious about Ukraine, the human spirit in the face of tragedy, and loves character development to read "The Sky Unwashed." Afterwards, I garuntee the reader will be impatiently waiting for more from this fine writer.

The author puts a human face on the tragedy at Chernobyl through the main characters, Marusia and Zosia, her daughter-in-law.

After the forced evacuation of their town, Starylis, and the death of their son and husband, both women struggle to start over. Marusia returns to Starylis to find the town deserted until a handful of other older women return to the only place they have called home. Zosia, on the other hand, takes her children as far away from the contaminated area as she can.

Although the tragedy of Chernobyl has forever changed their lives, these women show a determination to better their lives and the lives of those they love and exhibit how strong the human spirit is.

I am only the sixth reader to have reviewed this book, however the five who precede me are unanimous in their Judgement, 5 stars. This is the first work by Irene Zabytko and judged by any literary measure, it is ranked about 18,000 places lower than it deserves.

This book is about a small piece of that former Empire that one of our Presidents called evil. It chronicles the suffering surrounding an event, which probably all are familiar with. What the work also does is to show how cruel, how wretched, how evil, a typical day in that former Forced union of Republics was.

The truth is visible, the truth can literally be tasted, but people conditioned for so long to the distorted reality of their leaders is still given pause. They are comforted when a "Pioneer", a young girl in the Soviet School System in her uniform of white with a red tie, hands them an envelope, the contents of which will keep them healthy.

This book then centers on women, mostly "babysi" and the choices they make when faced with alternatives that differ only in the misery they will endure. Their decisions seen from a distance are illogical, placed in the context of this story and the system they live under, their decisions become noble. Despite lifetimes mislead by deceit they know what they want even as they know the outcome with certainty.

This is a novel, but the story, the insanity that was and is Chornobyl/Chernobyl is more poignant in this book than any report you have watched or listened to. It is more frightening and more abominable when experienced through the "fictional" eyes of these characters.

Ms. Zabytko takes a recent historical event, and renders a tale that reads as if written with other great 19th century works. Novels that are famous for there detail, for the reality they create. The true time frame intrudes only when a word like television is mentioned. Much more important and so well done is the description of the baking of a wedding bread in a communal clay stove. This Authoress has a talent for turning characters into people you see clearly in your mind's eye, and would look twice if you saw a similar face amidst your day.

A Cat that becomes a timepiece for death, a woman who climbs the stairs of her Church to ring bells that she has no right to hope anyone will hear. A beautiful story, if a Requiem for a small town named Starylis and it's people can be so called.

Extremely well done.

The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster scared the world witless. We all worried what might happen to us. But what became of those who lived there? It would be a mistake to read Irene Zabytko's The Sky Unwashed as a documentary novel, because, despite its commonplace beginning, it tells its story with characters who come to matter to us for their own sakes, not for what they can tell us about Chernobyl. Even so, Zabytko, a Ukrainian-American born in Chicago, writes from experience as well as imagination, for she has relatives and friends in Chernobyl, has spent time with them there and has taken their stories into herself.

The novel opens with a too-journalistic narrative of a Ukrainian family's dispirited life, pre-disaster, in a village where people seem to be going through the motions of life in a dying culture. Weddings are not celebrated festively so much as mockingly, less cheer than jeer. For young people, working at the nearby Chernobyl plant offers a chance to escape from ancestral poverty. Older ones, even in the gentler Gorbachev times, take a different view. They've lived through Stalin's engineered Ukraine famine; war; oppression. "The old women in babushkas who kept the old ways alive with their icons and litanies ... knew that the hard times never end," the prologue says.

The Petrenko family represents both attitudes. Old Marusia lives with her weak, dull son, whose wife, Zosia, nurses a vital spark that leads her into unhappy affairs in search of vibrant life. We don't like Zosia much at first. Irritable, nasty, she appears selfish despite having two young children. But after Chernobyl blows, her overbearing ill-temper and sharp tongue come in handy when the radiation-poisoned family encounters sneering incompetence at a Kiev hospital. Zosia bribes and browbeats her way to medical treatment for her husband; of course, we fear for those who lack such survival skills.

Yet it's the aged Marusia, with her traditional, lumbering ways, who carries the novel into our hearts. She goes along with the evacuation because there's no choice. When in the ensuing chaos she finds herself alone, though, she realizes that home is the only place to go. Arriving there after a hard journey, "She sank to her knees on the ground, and she made the sign of the cross. She uttered a prayer of thanks to be back on the land where her mother and grandmother had lived."

How Marusia survives in a deserted, radioactive village where the water tastes "like coins" is harrowing and fascinating. It's the center of the novel, much as the primacy of home and religious faith is Marusia's center. Eyes itching and red, body aching strangely, she goes to her church to ring its deafening bells every day. She tills her garden, aids a dying cat. Loneliness tries to crush her spirit. A few other residents return, bringing relief from isolation but also moral dilemmas and the pain of an old wrong that Marusia is now expected to forgive. She leads some villagers to an effective (but not very convincing) showdown with Soviet officials over basic demands. (It should be noted that this is a strong-women novel -- the men all tend to be weak, stupid or dead. Is that necessary to show that women are strong?)

The author resists any temptation to lard her story with lectures on the evils of nuclear power. A lesser writer would have introduced a character whose job was to pontificate instructively on radiation dangers and communist inefficiency (a lethal combination, for sure). Instead, Zabytko concentrates on showing what happens to her characters and how they respond, in their human particularity, to the terrors they face. Incidents affect them, and move us, without any sense of piling-on or wallowing in pathos. There are even mica-glints of humor.

Mainly we're left with astonished pride at human endurance, coupled with anguish and anger at what the novel shows so unflinchingly without preaching: that by accepting dangerous technologies, we risk irreversibly poisoning not only our bodies but also our very ground of being -- land, home, family.

On 26 April 1986, a catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl power plant in what is now the Ukraine, sent a massive cloud of radioactive particles into the stratosphere. After Swedish detectors picked up the radiation in the atmosphere, the news of the accident made headlines around the world, reigniting debates on the safety of nuclear power plants.

Although the Soviet government was unable to deny the accident, they did their best to downplay the results and the stories of human suffering were, and still remain, largely untold. In The Sky Unwashed, Irene Zabytko tells us a very personal tale that seeks to correct this deplorable situation.

Despite several hundred years of industrial progress, the Ukrainian countryside remains surprisingly rural and backward. Although some farm machinery can be seen, for the most part, the planting and harvesting is still done through manual labor. Abundant grazing lands abound, meaning readily available beef and dairy products for the farmers, more so than for their fellow citizens in urban centers such as Kiev.

At first glance, one might assume the small village of Starylis to be nothing more than a peasant village. A second glance, however, will reveal its high percentage of young people...people who are employed as electricians and construction workers at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The protagonist of The Sky Unwashed is Marusia Petrenko, one of the older women of the village. Marusia views the habits of the young people with disdain and scorn. After all, she, herself, has survived political and personal turmoil that include a World War, the ravages of Stalinism and desertion by her husband. Understandably, she tends to turn to her Orthodox religion for guidance and comfort rather than to her government. Marusia, however, is a woman who is satisfied with her life. She is happy she can share her home with her grown son, Yurko, his wife, Zosia and Yurko and Zosia's two children. While all is not perfect in Marusia's world, it is not too bad, either.

At a Palm Sunday religious service, a few of the villagers remark on the sound of an explosion the night before, while several others express concern over the absence of relatives due home after the Chernobyl plant's second shift. Women notice a metallic tang in the air, yet no one really shows any undue alarm. If something were amiss at the plant, they reason, surely their government would let them know.

It isn't until several days after the accident, when the villagers are gathered together and sent to Kiev, that they realize something must be terribly wrong. They are, however, never told exactly why they must leave Starylis nor when they may return. Even more shocking, there are no provisions for their continued existence once they arrive in Kiev.

As time passes and the people around her sicken and die, Marusia realizes that all she wants to do is return to the only home she has ever known...Starylis...despite the cautions and the dangers. She is a well-drawn and believable character, so her desires are understandable and we empathize with her plight, even if we objectively see her wishes as unsound.

The Sky Unwashed is a compelling novel that traps the reader between what is real and what is fiction. The harsh realities of the disaster at Chernobyl are known to almost everyone, yet this knowledge does not at all ruin the suspense of Zabytko's powerful novel. In fact, the juxtaposition of fact and fiction only helps to relentlessly draw the reader into the tragedy of Marusia's story.

The surroundings and culture of the Ukrainian countryside may be foreign to some, but the emotions and reactions of the people are universally recognized and understood. The reader knows things before the characters do, e.g., that the very air they are breathing is lethal, and this knowledge evokes a strong reaction of the most profound grief. When Marusia and her family finally come face-to-face with the tragedy, we feel the same desire, the same anger, the same hope as the characters do. We desperately want someone...anyone...to come along and, impossibly, make things right.

The Sky Unwashed is profoundly moving and filled with desperation and sadness. Yet, it is a gem of a novel that anyone, anywhere can hold close to his heart.

Every once in awhile you come upon a book that gets into the marrow of your psyche and won't let you go. "The Sky Unwashed" is such a book. I finished it more than a week ago and I have yet to stop thinking about Marusia and the rest of the villagers in Starylis. For these people, who lived within close proximity to the Chernobyl nuclear plant at the time of the accident there in April 1986, life was irrevocably altered. The way of life that they had known through famine, revolution and war was destroyed with one badly managed stroke of 20th century technology. To enter these people's world is to get a glimpse into the tragedy there that news stories and detailed reports failed to capture. "The Sky Unwashed" awakens anew a poignant awareness that all of the day's headlines have at their core the real-life pathos of individual experience. Irene Zabytko has indeed written a remarkable story. Do yourself a favor and get a copy of this book in your hands as soon as possible.

I must admit, I was initially drawn to this book because I myself derive from 100% Ukrainian lineage. As such, Zabytko's subject matter interested me. I thumbed through the book and thought "Hey, I've gotta read this."
The story centers around the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of April 26th, 1986. The fallout from this tragedy is said to have been the equivalent of eight Hiroshimas! Yet, as though the tragedy in itself were not bad enough, the government at that time chose to suppress information to the residents of villages surrounding Chernobyl, and to the nation at large. Folks were kept in the dark concerning the actual extent (and far-reaching effects) of the radioactive contamination. As a result, much PREVENTABLE damage was done to people at the time, and even to the children that would be born to those who survived.
The Unwashed Sky focuses on the situation facing the widow Marusia Petrenko, her son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. By the time they flee their village of Starylis, it is too late. Their lives will never be the same.
Marusia decides to return to Starylis. She is not even aware that it has been declared a "forbidden zone"... all that she knows is that this is her village, the only home she's ever known, and since everything dear has been torn from her, this feeling of "home" may be the only thing she can yet embrace as her own.
She returns, and finds that her only companion is an old mangy cat. She keeps a perpetual fire, hoping that the smoke from her chimney will tell others of her presence. And slowly, some of her old friends do begin to trickle back. One by one, these old women (and one man), drawn by the same sense of a need to belong to their beginnings, return to rebuild their lives.
These tenacious Starylis "babysi" band together and draft a letter of demands that causes the Chernobyl officials to cede to their requests, and admit to certain wrongdoings, however late in the day! (Even then, they grant the women's wishes only because of how good this will look in the newspapers).
Zabytko paints a sensitive, touching picture of this time of loneliness and desolation, of undeserved and unwarranted hardship... a time when even the dirt rejected seed and the water tasted of metal.
I loved the authentic Ukrainian vernacular running through the book... I could hear my own grandmother clearly.
A wonderful testimony of the enduring power of the human spirit and its will to survive... a point made all the more sobering when one considers the non-fictional source of the author's inspiration.
In an interview with Rebecca Brown, Irene Zabytko said: "I hope that anyone who reads it comes away with the feeling that despite the cultural exoticisms, we're still part of one planet, and the endurance of the human spirit persists in all."
I think she succeeds in this.

It's just an ordinary day in the village of Starylis on the outskirts of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine, where widow Marusia Petrenko awakens in her tiny house to hear her son Yurko & his wife Zosia arguing. Soon she rises to take care of her grandchildren, her garden & her prize milk cow in the shed.

Yurko labors long hours at the nuclear plant & when he does not come home for days; when the priest does not turn up for services; when the storks do not return & the air takes on a bitter metallic taste, hard to breath, hard to see - it all happens so quickly.

A profoundly moving story about forces beyond control; of having to leave all you have ever known; of being taken to strange places & surviving under the careless wing of a remote government; of witnessing death by strange diseases & an anonymity that shrivels the soul.

Until the day Marusia decides to walk home to her beloved village. Here a new story begins in the deserted farmland & houses. When other intrepid babysi wander back, life takes on a semblance of normalcy until these gentle souls begin to die.

A memorable first effort, rich in humanity & so very lyrical! Do check out my site for my full review & eInterview with this author