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Multiple Personalities
Having spent years in a coma, a female protagonist is anxious to lead a normal life. Her miraculous recovery is riddled with falling in and out of our time continuum - she wanders through history in her imagination as if it were her backyard. Notwithstanding her condition, her peers are going through a real change of their own echoing events that engulfed Russia in the past few decades. In Multiple Personalities, life is a masquerade and its participants are characters from classic world literature racing towards destination unknown. The question they all are asking is whether the traditional notion of time's flow from the past to the future is the correct one. Who has the answer?
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Author Tatyana Shcherbina is known in Russia for her poetry and prose, as well as numerous essays and translations from French. Her early works had been self-published in the USSR to avoid censorship, and it was only in the new Russia that she gained public recognition. She recieved various literary awards and is considered one of Russia's most celebrated female writers.
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Author Tatyana Shcherbina is known in Russia for her poetry and prose, as well as numerous essays and translations from French. Her early works had been self-published in the USSR to avoid censorship, and it was only in the new Russia that she gained public recognition. She recieved various literary awards and is considered one of Russia's most celebrated female writers.
- GenresRussia
142 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
22 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 23, 2018
Warning: discussing this book involves using the author’s terms and expressions (in translation) to describe illnesses which may disrupt the functioning of the mind – and I acknowledge that these may not be the words that are culturally appropriate in Australia.
Multiple Personalities is an intriguing novella that uses the idea of ‘split personalities’ as a metaphor for not only life under the Soviets, but also for the confusion of contemporary life in post-Soviet Russia. The central character is a woman introduced to the reader as Tanya, but whose narration also includes multiple other personalities notably that of Sylvaine Personne – whose surname in French means ‘nobody’ and whose initials turn out to represent many others:
These personalities (which are quite distinct) move in and out of time (including a future in 2030 when there are no humans as we know them). The book begins with what Tanya tells us is a fantasy about Alexander Pushkin, who turns up outside her house in 2006. He’s an angry Pushkin because his imminent wedding has been disrupted by this time travel, and he thinks he’s in Hell. Tanya’s attempts to soothe him fail when she tries quoting a passage from his own Collected Works, but the lack of reaction suggests he still has time to write these particular lines. And she soon realises that her credibility is at stake:
The alert reader will remember that those were her words at the very beginning of her narrative in chapter one: I’ve got this persistent fantasy.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/02/23/m...
Multiple Personalities is an intriguing novella that uses the idea of ‘split personalities’ as a metaphor for not only life under the Soviets, but also for the confusion of contemporary life in post-Soviet Russia. The central character is a woman introduced to the reader as Tanya, but whose narration also includes multiple other personalities notably that of Sylvaine Personne – whose surname in French means ‘nobody’ and whose initials turn out to represent many others:
‘Personne’ – in the original that means no-one,’ said the little girl, the words tumbling out, ‘or personality. It’s the same word. S for Samuel, Y for Ysabella/Isabella, L for Lyudmila, V for Viktor, A for Alexey or Anatoliy – it could be either, I for Iris, N for Nathalia, E for Elena/Helen. SYLVAINE.’ (p.159)
These personalities (which are quite distinct) move in and out of time (including a future in 2030 when there are no humans as we know them). The book begins with what Tanya tells us is a fantasy about Alexander Pushkin, who turns up outside her house in 2006. He’s an angry Pushkin because his imminent wedding has been disrupted by this time travel, and he thinks he’s in Hell. Tanya’s attempts to soothe him fail when she tries quoting a passage from his own Collected Works, but the lack of reaction suggests he still has time to write these particular lines. And she soon realises that her credibility is at stake:
After that conversation [with Rosa], I think, ‘No-one will believe me. I’ll say it’s a hallucination. No, better still, a fantasy.’ (p.10)
The alert reader will remember that those were her words at the very beginning of her narrative in chapter one: I’ve got this persistent fantasy.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/02/23/m...
Displaying 1 of 1 review