There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In: Three Novellas About Family

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I wanted to come here and echo the other one star review--Petrushevskaya is an amazing writer, but the translations in this book are extremely abridged (I think as much as 50 pages have been cut from "The Time Is Night"). It's usually standard to indicate when a book has been abridged, but there are no indications of that here, so a reader has no idea that they're missing anything. It seems to me that perhaps Penguin wanted abridged translations so they could publish all three of these novellas in one book, but if so they need to tell their readers what they've done. I am teaching "The Time Is Night" in a Russian literature course and had my students purchase this copy because the Sally Laird translation from the nineties is out of print. I'm so horrified by how much Anna Summers has cut out (often, entire paragraphs are summarized into a single sentence), that I will be uploading a scan of the Laird translation for my students to read instead. It also seems sinister to me that many of the things which have been removed from this translation are parts of the novel which are especially graphic or deal with uncomfortable issues. It feels like censorship. Nothing is removed wholesale, but for example, a woman's description of the aftermath of her sexual assault has been condensed, as though the translator wants us to gloss over it. One of the important things Petrushevskaya accomplished in this novel was to force readers at the time to reckon with experiences of women which literature up until that point had not acknowledged. Cutting down her brutal language, whether to make the translation fit some word count, or to make it more palatable, is to fundamentally misunderstand what the book is about.

Each of the stories convey the desperation of a protagonist trying to make it through one day at a time (or not) in claustrophobic and resource constrained Soviet times. The daily hardships and the fevered decision making it induces are hard for contemporary Americans to understand. It turns these citizens into connivers against a all powerful system that is stingy with resources. (I have confirmed with Russian emigre sources that Petrushevskaya paints an accurate picture of Soviet urban life. ) Each main character makes flawed decisions, but the reader sympathizes as much as she criticizes. Each is living a personal nightmare within a greater unforgiving civic nightmare. The story telling methods and the writing are remarkable. It was an uncomfortable, yet profitable, read. Her writing is economical and eloquent. There is an introduction by the translator (with spoilers) to help those who did not experience the Soviet system to understand its requirements and the seemingly arbitrary allocation of privileges and hardships depicted here. One can see why these stories were not published within the author’s country in Soviet times. Their portrayal of the social and economic environment is unflattering, to say the least.

Although a little long winded and tedious at times I thoroughly enjoyed each of three novellas in this book. The details are such that you find yourself transported to the time and place, can easily see the daily grind in your head as if you were a fly on the wall and feel the emotions. While you could breeze through all three novellas in one sitting, it is better to go slow and savor the simple yet resonating plots as they unfold to unexpected endings.

Love this author.