For years writer Tatyana Tolstaya has had to explain repeatedly to her readers that she is, in fact, no relation to the great Leo Tolstoy. I can just imagine her routine rebuttals: "I?€™m not a countess, and Leo Tolstoy and I are just namesakes. My parents belong to another branch of the family. Do you remember Alexei Tolstoy? He wrote the novel ?€?Peter the Great?€™ Did you read it?"
If I were Tatyana Tolstaya, I would have left everything behind ?€” just as her famous namesake did ?€” in search of a life without human contact. But Tolstaya carries on bravely in her motherland, making those who value good literature happy with her books.
Indeed, one of the best literary arrivals of the year was a new collection of Tolstaya?€™s stories published by Podkova this year, Reka Okkervil, or the River Okkerville. These stories take us back to the middle of the 20th century ?€” the war and postwar period. Set in Leningrad, the stories are filled with all the familiar trappings of the Soviet era: the physical destruction of the war, life in communal apartments, a black market selling goods brought in illegally from abroad.
The images of a city destroyed by war figure prominently in the first story, "Sonya." Yet Sonya is a character readers want to come back to again and again as they delve further into the book to find others whose lives are burdened by physical objects ?€” a fur coat, a yellow shirt, a woman?€™s wrap ?€” all of these things become the focus of emotional force while the characters themselves lead empty lives. They have lost something that Sonya has ?€” love. It may sound banal, but it is this basic human emotion that allows her to survive and justify all the senselessness in life.
Tolstaya has not had to ride on the coattails of her namesake to claim an esteemed place in the history of Russian literature. She has earned that niche by her own merit. Connoisseurs of art will certainly appreciate her turns of phrase and plot development.
Indeed, Tolstaya?€™s tales are also likely to live on in another way ?€” by inspiring other writers to return to her inimitable characters to carry the plot further. Just as Tolstoy?€™s "War and Peace" was the basis for subsequent books written by other authors ?€” including "Pierre Bezukhov" and "Natasha Rostova" ?€” Tolstaya?€™s short stories may inspire future novels. But of these literary works mimicking Tolstaya one thing is certain: They will never equal the perfection of her stories in "Reka Okkervil."
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