A huge disappointment.
I was waiting for this book with excitement, as I knew that it would be a book absorbing and reflecting upon the author’s physical and intellectual experience of the war, particularly those several weeks of life in a village near Kyiv that was blocked (but thankfully not captured/occupied) by the Russian army. I have already read shorter text forms about it written by Володимир Рафєєнко (his play “Мобільні хвилі буття,” various essays and articles) and appreciated them a lot. I have also read his books “Долгота дней” and “Мондеґрін (пісні про смерть та любов)” about the earlier stage of the war, and although I mostly did not like these books, I regarded them as “transitional” (from the Russian to the Ukrainian language, from the Russian to the Ukrainian culture, and from the Russian to the Ukrainian identity overall) and with a great potential theoretically, and I expected to find something much more interesting in this new novel, “Петрикор — запах землі після дощу.”
Alas, first of all, there is not much “new” here, in my opinion. The repetitiveness of the author (the same and very specific imagery, the whole architecture of the text, the expressive means and stylistic methods, etc.) is very noticeable here (for those who have read his previous books, of course) and do not look like a conscious choice of “the same materials” to talk about different things, i.e., like the author’s personal style. I had an impression that it reflects some helplessness of the author in his attempt to talk about something that feels bigger and scarier than he was able to represent properly. As if trying to express inexpressible and grasp something elusive, intangible, the author just returns to already familiar paths and tools. In view of this, his previous books also look more “helpless” for me now (for example, if I tried to understand what this fucking “Кобиляча голова” means in “Мондеґрін” and why it is called “КБ,” after reading about all those “Рожева Мавпа,” “Святий Їжак Львівський і Тернопільський,” “Заєць,” “Карамболь,” etc., I have no doubts that THEY MEAN NOTHING; the author just knew that we will be racking our brains over them and probably enjoyed being mysterious and “postmodernistic” like hell, while in reality, all this MEANS NOTHING, it’s just a random assembly of words and images). I also felt more irritation meeting again the same references to “Шива” and “Кришна” (somehow they are closely tied with the authentic Ukrainian culture in the author’s mind) or his strange fascination with supermarkets and all the “deep symbolism” of these very meaningful (for the author) places as in his previous books.
However, overall, the book evokes sorrow and pity rather than irritation, because it was obvious to me that the author was so traumatized by his personal encounter with the war that he still could not gather himself together and write something more coherent about it (or about anything else, if it comes to that). It is especially clear when we look at the most comprehensible fragments of the book, where the author tries to talk about this experience directly (the story of “Віктор & Ліза”). These fragments look like an important reflection of our collective experience of war and are probably the most interesting and significant parts of the book for many readers, but I found them somewhat sick and painfully inappropriate. Here, the author talks about his greatest fears and “would-be” experiences, the things that could have easily happened to him and his wife in real life, and those things indeed were happening to other people wherever the Russians appeared. The author has all the right for those fears and for the dreadful anxiety of “replaying” the worst-case scenario in his head over and over again, I understand this. However, their reflection in this book looked partly as a sign of some deep and irrevocable trauma (when the author not only repeatedly re-traumatizes himself imagining things that did not happen to him in reality but also re-traumatizes all his readers with this as well, although there are thousands of REAL HORRORS happening to other people that we should care about in the first place, not “imaginary” ones) and partly as an unacceptable appropriation and exploitation of other people’s experiences (about which they should talk themselves and not through the eyes of some writer who “imagined” what could have happened to him in their place).
All these things are very subtle and controversial by definition, and everyone can have a very different opinion about what is “appropriate” and “inappropriate” in writing about war. I personally felt discomfort and pity for the author. I would not say that this way of talking about war is unacceptable, but I had an impression that (1) the author could not find a better way due to his personal confusion and trauma but somehow still felt obliged to write “at least something,” and it was not the best decision, in my opinion, (2) I would think twice before “imagining” war horrors for your “lyrical hero” based on other people’s experiences (not your own), especially if these people still cannot find strength and opportunity to talk about them themselves.
The only place that I really liked in the book:
“— Отож бо й біда, — Галка Галичини вибила люльку в попільничку, піднялася, наділа кашкет. — І скажуть вельмишановні судді (Карамболь, Берримор, Айс, Карась, Абрикос, Адреналін і їжак Амурчик) — ці російські тварини з автоматами (а людського там ніколи не було нічого, тільки зовнішній вигляд) — абсолютно невинні жертви війни. Як і більшість російських інтелектуалів.
— Як так?
— А отак так. Рудий і чорнявий, — Галка повісила на крило гвинтівку, — не відбулися як люди, тому й непідсудні. У них мозок не працював, скажуть твої судді, душа не народилася. Вони біднесенькі все своє життя просто хотіли унітаз, праску, парасольку, ковбаси з часником, грошей і бабу твою виїбати. Тобі, Вітю, шкода було часнику з ковбасою, скажи своїм суддям чесно?”
This notion that “не відбулися як люди, тому й непідсудні” is very precious indeed.