Customer Reviews

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'd heard good things about this book, so when I saw it at the bookstore the other day, I picked it up, and didn't put it down until I finished it that evening. The stories read more like fairy tales than traditional ghost stories. They all have an otherworldly quality, but sometimes the supernatural element does not appear until the end, and often she leaves questions unanswered. The worlds Petrushevskaya describes are bleak, spooky, and thoroughly believable. Unlike many short story collections, these stories never felt uneven. Each story is as good, if not better, than the one preceding it, and I imagine I will get even more out of the book when I read it a second time.

I'd definitely recommend this book to fans of Angela Carter of Kelly Link, or a horror buff looking to read something a little more "literary".

Twisted, ghostly, and apocalyptic describe these tales, with characters that are on the brink of madness or despair. Most start out like simple, but slightly off folk tales - "There once lived a woman whose son hanged himself," "There once lived a girl who was killed, then brought back to life," "There once lived a girl who found herself in an unknown place, on a cold winter night."

Then suddenly the stories take us out of ordinary existence and into strange, nightmarish worlds, described by the author as "orchards of unusual possibilities."

Some recognizable tropes appear, but the landscape is completely unfamiliar and disconcerting. Instead of a child lost in the woods, we have a father with no children, a husband with no wife. He has no memory of who his family is and yet he keeps searching for them.


"There once lived a father who couldn't find his children. He went everywhere, asked everyone--had his little children come running in here? But whenever people responded with the simplest of questions--'What do they look like?' 'What are their names?' 'Are they boys or girls?'--he didn't know how to answer. He simply knew that his children were somewhere, and he kept looking."


What starts out seemingly as a ghost story, There's Someone in the House, becomes something quite different. Who or what is the woman in the house battling against? A ghost, her daughter or herself?


"...Someone is secretly, soundlessly creeping from room to room. That's how it seems.

The woman doesn't tell anyone about her poltergeist: It's still hiding, not knocking, not causing mischief, not setting anything on fire. The refrigerator isn't hooping around the apartment; the poltergeist isn't chasing her into a corner. Really there is nothing to complain about.

But something has definitely moved in, some kind of living emptiness, small of stature but energetic and pushy, sneaking and slithering along the floor..."


A mother frets over her Thumbelina-sized cabbage patch child

Profound illumination comes to a woman lost in the woods with nothing but matches to light her way.

A family quarantines itself when a disfiguring infectious disease ravages their town

In these realms of the unusual, nothing is ever straightforward or neatly wrapped up; like disturbing dreams from which one awakens, they are not easily explained or forgotten.

[...]

I read a review of this book in the local paper but I have to admit, it was the title that lead me to buy it. The book is full of short stories that take you down a path and at the end you say "whoa, didn't see that coming." This author is someone I will definitely buy more of - she definitely has an off kilter view of the world.

This collection of stories with a darker edge is an interesting but not totally captivating take on Russian life during the Cold War period. The best stories are those rendered in fairy-tale format such as the title story,the stories that do not work as well are the "ghost" or dream-scape stories. These have the unsatisfying feel of being somehow too vague and incomplete. Perhaps it is more attributable to the choices made by the Editors of the book than to the Author,but the collection as a whole fails to hang together.

One of the things I love about the reading group in my local independent bookstore is the fact that I get to discover new and different writers that I might never of heard of on my own. This contemporary short story collection, subtitled "Scary Fairy Tales", is an example of modern Russian literature and is indeed one of those wonderful finds. The 206-page book contains a full 19 stories, some of them only a few pages long. The stories are bizarre and unique and rather macabre, illustrating the bleakness of life in the Soviet Union. They all take a trip from reality and have post-modern touches. Yes, the stories are indeed rather gruesome, but they all have a grain of psychological insight and every one of them was succinct and clear, complete in itself and with all loose ends tied up.

Reading these stories brought me face to face with the writer's worldview and through her characters and I gained understanding of the landscape in which she wrote. There's the story of a family facing the end of the world, a story of daily life during an epidemic, a story of two ballerina sisters who were turned into one fat woman, a story of revenge, a story of jealousy and a story of life after death. These characters often depart from physical reality and find themselves struggling in strange places.

Each story evoked an emotional response in me. Mostly it was one of horror. But it was also one of respect for the writer's genius. This is not a pleasant read, but it is certainly worthwhile.

Amazing author, great book, good translation. Dark and funny, surreal and real. Takes a day to read. An exploration of Russian mind - it's scary part.

I couldn't put this book down. I bought it after reading one of Ludmilla's stories in The New Yorker. I think that "Hygeine" still remains my favorite story in the book. For me, this story mixes a great sense of sadness with a penetrating sense of Hope, hope that something good will come of sequestering oneself from the world, locking oneself up, keeping oneself from being exposed to all the nastiness and disease out there. But as one would suspect, there are dangers and horrors lurking in the corners of even one's own closet. Like a good fairy tale, there is an inevitable quality to her stories: after a while, you're reading them to see just how horrific they can be. All of the stories have this quality of delightful, childish abandon. But that's, most of the time, immediately squashed by reality. By the horrors of reality. But that doesn't mean you can't revel in that childish abandon, at least for a few pages or so, until reality breaks your door down and bludgeons you to death with a baseball bat. Seriously: while you're reading these stories that's the feeling you'll get. It's a freaking awesome collection. Ludmilla had a story called "Medea" in Harper's last month too. I can't wait for another collection!

Imagine Angela Carter's dark, surrealistic stories are even darker than they are. Got it? Now, go even darker. Now you've got the tone of Petrushevskaya's short tales. Set in Soviet era Russia, these stories explore extremes of poverty and despair. This is a world where there is never enough to eat, where if you have even a little bit you are at once a prime target for theft, where sons rob their mothers and neighbors plot murder.

These are surreal, magical tales. A number take place in that liminal place between life and death, and love can beat death. Some characters find themselves in strange places or even strange bodies. Are these events real, or are they illusions brought on by stress? Are the characters alive or dead? The author leaves us to decide for ourselves. Human relationships are more important than physical reality. Highly recommended.

I admit that I bought this book based on its hilarious title (not a big child fan myself). However, nothing prepared me for the macabre brilliance of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's writing. Her stories are quite often simple, subtle, and horrifying. I'll even go so far as to say that they are reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe. These are beautifully written, captivating, and terrifying tales that will stay fresh in my memory for a long time. If you're looking for a unique book of stories that will chill you to the bone, this is definitely it.

I'm a sucker for fairy tales, folk tales, the weird and wonderful. This book is all that and more. The stories are written in an almost oral storytelling voice, but crafted in a way that displays just how much they truly are "written". Great danger exists in these stories. Terrible and surprising things happen to people, and miracles on occasion save them. Despite the aura of horror and magic, though, these stories tell so much about the social and political realities of Russian culture. I'll be rereading this one for sure.