Books by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya provide an opportunity to get to know this contemporary author as closely as possible. This is a domestic poetess, prose writer, playwright and screenwriter.
Creative biography
The books of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya began to be published back in the 70s. True, they did not go out in separate editions then, but in literary magazines. So, in 1972, the story "Across the Fields" was published in Aurora.
After this author was forgotten for a long time and not printed until perestroika. Occasionally, Petrushevskaya only managed to produce plays.
Many literary critics point out that her prose is an actual continuation of dramatic works. In fact, they are an encyclopedia of women's life. Moreover, at all age stages, starting with youth and ending with old age.
These are the stories “The Clarissa Story”, “The Adventures of Faith”, “Who Will Answer?”, “Xenia's Daughter”, “Mysticism”, “Country”, “Hygiene”, the novel “Time of Night”, the cycle “Songs of Eastern Slavs”, the novel “ Number One, or In the Gardens of Other Opportunities, collections of First-Person, Two Kingdoms, Borderline Tales of Kittens, Black Butterfly, Stories from My Own Life.
"Time is night"
Perhaps, among the books of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, the most famous is the novel "Night Time". This work is built in the form of diary entries that are kept by the main character - the mother of adult children and a poetess, whose talent has much to doubt.
From time to time, pages from the diary of her daughter appear in the text. This is a very young girl, experiencing the sweet season of first love. In fact, this entire diary helps to expose the heroine, who has the initials of A. A., like Anna Akhmatova. Using this comparison, the author draws the image of a woman with an inevitable fate, who is waiting for her in the country of the Soviets.
In reviews of the book by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, "Time is Night," readers noted that this is a very sad, hopeless work. Reading this, of course, is difficult. Especially the author manages to shock with a realistic description of physiological details, which causes real disgust. Not everyone succeeds in getting through such a complex work.
First person
Another noteworthy work among the books of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is the first-person collection. It included stories, essays, as well as several interviews with the writer.
In some works of this collection, the author thinks deeply about the profession of a writer. Especially a lot of thoughts on this subject in the stories "Lecture on genres", "On the topic of inspiration", "Answers to questions of different people."
Most importantly, the first-person collection is a storehouse of writer's memories. Many pages are devoted to life in the USSR, when the books of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya were not printed. She actually had to live a recluse.
"Number One, or In Gardens of Other Opportunities"
The novel "Number One, or In the Gardens of Other Opportunities" is not like everything that the writer previously published.
Petrushevskaya creates a real exciting mystical thriller. It tells terrible stories about the transmigration of souls, which for heroes begins in the taiga, in the terrible cemetery of a passing civilization. From here follows a whole string of intricate events that unfold on the pages of this novel.
Those who managed to appreciate this work call it an enchanting novel with amazing drama. The plot is complex, difficult to perceive, but if you still manage to get to the denouement, then in the end everything turns out to be completely different from how you could imagine it. This prose is fascinating, forcing you to read more and more books by this author.
True, readers have enough sharply negative reviews. They note that in this book only chernukha and complete hopelessness were discerned.