The stories and plays of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya are not calculated to amuse: They are dark tales of obsessive love, of illness and death, of marital infidelity and filial ingratitude. Petrushevskaya explores the nightmare web of love and hate that binds us to our families and our neighbors.


In her brilliant novella "The Time: Night," published in English by Virago Press in 1994, Petrushevskaya takes the reader on an unforgettable journey into the domestic hell of Russian life. It is a world where there is too little of everything: too little food, too little space, too little love.


The narrator and heroine, Anna Andrianovna, is a woman struggling to feed a family on the pittance she receives answering letters for a literary journal.


She is also a poet, absurdly proud of the fact that her name and patronymic are so close to those of the great poet Anna Andreyevna Akhamtova. The only time Anna finds to write is late at night, when her extended brood is safely asleep.


She tries in vain to cope with a senile mother, a violent alcoholic son, and a wayward daughter who keeps producing babies for her mother to take care of. And through it all she tries to preserve some sense of herself as an artist and as a woman.


This is a far from cheerful book; Anna swings from love to resentment with dizzying speed, and draws us into her world with very little explanation, as we see from this scene at the book's beginning:


"How quickly it all fades! You feel so helpless looking in the mirror, still the same person and yet there you are, all gone ... come on Grandma let's go says Tima the moment we've got to the reading; he can't bear it, he's jealous of my success, he wants everybody to know I'm his grandma. But what can I do, sweetheart, your Anna has to earn a crust for herself. ... And for you, too, demanding little wretch, not to mention Granny Sima, thank God Alyona at least gets her alimony, but of course Andrei needs the extra because of his foot ... he's been completely crippled by prison life."


This sets the tone for the rest of the narrative. Anna is writing as if to herself: Characters are exposed in onion-like layers, as Anna recounts more and more scenes from their lives, mixing present trials with past grievances.


It is hard to find positive characters in the book. Seen through Anna's eyes, Alyona, the daughter, seems selfish and manipulative. Andrei, Anna's son, is a whining bully. Sima, Anna's mother, is senile, and the horrific descriptions of the old woman's physical state provide some of the most unpleasantly vivid passages in the book. Anna Andrianovna herself is no saint.


Her acerbic comments to her daughter make clear that she is not above a little emotional blackmail to keep people under control:


"I stood numbly in the kitchen, then went into Alyona's room to tell her that her grandmother had gone mad, to which she replied that it was I who was mad. I countered by saying that it was nothing terrible, that such things happen -- indeed that was how my aunt ended up. ... It was hereditary. ... 'Do you consider yourself normal?' I threw in as an afterthought. 'Take a look at yourself. You've missed classes again, you're up the whole night reading and then you can't get up in the morning. Classic psychosis. That's what heredity does.'"


Anna has two passions -- her children and her writing. The struggle to provide for her babies defines her life. And the fight always ends with defeat:


"Ah mothers, mothers! It's the holiest of words, but as time goes by you'll find you have nothing to say to your child, and your child has nothing to say to you. Love them and they'll tear you to pieces, don't love them and they'll leave you all the same. That's how it is, aye, that's how it is, alas."


Of her writing she says, simply: "As for me, if I didn't write I'd simply curl up and die, my heart would break."


Petrushevskaya was relatively unknown before perestroika. She wrote plays that were produced in underground student theaters, and short stories that often went unpublished. Her first volume of stories appeared only in 1988, when Petrushevskaya was almost 50.


Available now in Sally Laird's eminently readable translation, "The Time: Night" provides a memorable glimpse into the dark side of Russian life. Written in a stark, naturalistic style, the book, which was first published in Russian in the journal "Novy Mir" in 1992, brings the reader face to face with the harsh reality of life in Russia. It is not often a pleasant sight, but it is one well worth the trouble.





"The Time: Night" by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Virago Press, 155 pages, ?9.99. This book can be ordered through Zwemmers, with a surcharge.