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Sunday, September 23, 2018

An excellent very short story, Poor Girl, in current New Yorker

Current New Yorker has a story by the Russian writer Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (yes, I had to check the spelling); I'd never heard of her, and the "about the author" blurb indicates she's a prolific contemporary though few of her books have yet been translated into English. I'd like to see more from her, as this story, Poor Girl, is quite good and a technical tour-de-force, a really mysterious and nuance family portrait with a sharp and surprising ending, which I won't divulge. The story reads like a novel in miniature, or at least like a Chekhov story in miniature. In essence, it's about a father who is devoted to his daughter, in an almost perverse manner - maybe not even "almost" through at least the first 8 years of her life. His wife/her mother is a doormat - so abused (not physically) by her husband as to almost go beyond the norm and be even comic: She takes care of all of the household chores, including running a little family farm/garden plot, takes care of his mother and hers, and earns the salary that keeps the family afloat, plus all the child-care other than the doting and gloating. Fortunately, at last she kicks off the shackles and moves w/ daughter to remote Mermansk, where they spend a year of unhappiness - until doting father comes for a visit, and I'll leave it at that. So we loathe the father and feel sorrow and pity for the mother and expect no good outcome for the confused daughter, yet the whole thing clicks and makes sense - maybe not in a conventional happy ending, but one that we can accept and understand. We learn more about the characters in this tight space - a 2-page story - than in many meandering tomes and flaccid plaints. And LP leaves us wondering:Who's the "poor girl" of the title?

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