Skunk: A Life

by Peter Aleshkovsky

A master novel set in the Russian north with a wealth of authentic details on forest life.

Genres: Russia

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Pyotr Markovich Aleshkovsky (Russian: Пётр Ма́ркович Алешко́вский; born 22 September 1957) is a Russian writer, historian, broadcaster, television presenter, journalist and archaeologist.

Peter Aleshkovsky was born on 22 September 1957 to historian Mark Khaimovich Aleshkovsky and Natalia Germanovna Nedoshivina in Moscow. Russian bard and writer Yuz Aleshkovsky is his uncle. Aleskhovsky is the husband of Tamara Eidelman, a son-in-law to Natan Eidelman, and he is the father of photographer Dmitry Aleshkovsky. He graduated with a degree in history from the Moscow State University in 1979.

Working with "Союзреставрация" (Soyuzrestaurations) from 1979 to 1985, he restored several monasteries in northern Russian regions, among them Novgorod, Kirillo-Belozersky, Ferapontov and Solovetsky. He began writing stories since 1989 in the journal Wolga, then switching to numerous other magazines, among them The Youth, October and The Capital. From 2000 to 2002 he worked at the literary magazine Book's Revue, and hosted the TV show with the same name on Rossiya. From 2007 to 2008 he maintained a weekly column in the journal The Russian Reporter. In 2008 he also wrote essays there. He hosted the television show Alphabet of Reading on Culture. Themes and style of his literary works are individual, ranging from Gothic and realistic stories, fairy tales and historical narrations, often with a touch of humour. "His works are richly descriptive and evocative of the uniquely Russian worldview, while at the same time tapping into universal human emotions and experiences".

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stargorod is a fictional provincial town invented by Nikolai Leskov – the characters of his novel The Cathedral Clergy lived in that town. Peter Aleshkovsky recounts the story taking place in this town in the modern days.
The hero of the novel – nicknamed Skunk – is born into this world by a promiscuous and dipsomaniac mother out of wedlock… So his life doesn’t taste like sugar…

Zoika didn’t manage to get him into a nursery school, so he was dragged along to his mother’s workplace. There he had total freedom to play in the store room, or run all over the warehouse where he was allowed to eat any fruit he fancied, but most of the time he ran around in the waste land behind the shop. As before he got on better with animals than with other children. He made friends with the dogs, and could watch their extravagant marriages for hours on end.

He knows no kind words… Poverty and wretchedness… School is like a prison… He steals… Secretly he lives a criminal life… He keeps accumulating hatred like others accrue money… He leaves home…

Within two days he had picked some more pockets, bought a coarse quilted jacket, a pair of trousers, a heavy cotton shirt, a stout pair of rubber boots, a waterproof cape, a hand-axe, a frying pan, a clasp-knife, a skein of twine, a packet of candles, a kilogram each of salt and sugar, some tea, a plastic bottle of oil, some flour, two loaves of black bread, an idiotic-looking fur hat with a leather top in case of severe frost, three pairs of woolly stockings, a scarf and a polonecked sweater. It was all rather bulky, and his rucksack, stuffed full and bulging, bumped awkwardly between his shoulders.
Early in the morning he was already on the outskirts of town, beyond the outpost of the traffic police. He made no attempt to hitch a lift, walking along the roadside, heading steadily northwards.

He goes far north on foot… He spends the full of hardship winter by the side of a lake eating game and fish… When in the spring he returns to his hometown he finds everything there being as bad as before… He starts seeing a girl but to no avail… And while accidentally spending a night in church he has a weird vision…    

Already Skunk could differentiate their voices. Not one, but a whole pack of them were singing the song of the chase, which ended in repulsive, rasping giggles. He suddenly saw them distinctly in his mind’s eye, half-human, half-dog, standing on all fours on the clifftop, covered in hair in front, bare and slippery smooth behind, with long, thin rats’ tails. The wind carried the stench from their jaws down to him. Skunk could even hear their heavy breathing, and shuddered at the sound of their great fangs snapping.

After knocking unconscious his mother’s lover – a deadly dangerous felon – he has to leave again… Barely escaping the wildfire he is rescued by a highly religious eremite and passes the winter in his hermitage… 
To those who live so-called ordinary life their life isn’t ordinary – it is full of misfortune and bitterness.

[Kevin Tole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this second hand off a listing site and as I'd never heard of Aleshkovsky other than through the GLAS publications I thought it was worth a punt. When the book turned up it had a hand-written dedication on the frontispiece by Aleskkovsky to Malcolm Bradbury, who I suppose we could call the father of the Creative Writing Course. There's a photo of Aleshkovsky on the back cover which makes him look a bit like a young Peter Kaye and this has all the elements of a first stab-in-the-dark 'Northern Lights'-for-Russia.

The dedication was not surprising in a way. Aleshkovsky is lauded in the reviews I have seen as an illustrator of contemporary life in provincial Russia post-glasnost. This book tells the story of Skunk aka Daniil Koryov, born illegitimately to Zoika in the provincial town of Stargorod (whether this is based on the Stargorod in the Omsk oblast I don't know), an alcoholic good-time girl when young.... and then an alcoholic collector of petty criminals and gangsters later in life when the bloom of youth has gone to be replaced with the drudgery of toil-for-money and vodka. Skunk is promptly dropped onto his legs shortly after his birth and henceforth has short puny wiry legs.

A quiet but determined life follows where Skunk is not exactly the outsider nor is he at all the insider. His major difference from his background is a non-affinity with alcohol having smelt it and lived it for most of the time as he grew up. Following an eventful though always in the background childhood and adolescence, Skunk for one reason or another walks out into the tiaga and becomes a self-sufficient hunter having blagged or stolen the things he needs.

The book follows the life of Skunk who we are supposed to take as a specimen of contemporary provincial Russia. It is written in a straight narrative style which is unremarkable but which holds you. There are some sections which DO grip you and survival in the tiaga is always interesting. There are some interesting views on Russian Orthodox religion versus Catholicism and a general feel that Aleshkovsky has a grip with Russian religious faith. This may stem from his period working as a church renovator.

Beyond this there is not a lot. Straight descriptive. A here-is-what-you-get-and-make-of-it-what-you-will attitude. Uncomplicated writing without being 'insight through sparcity'. What we the readers appear to be asked to do is to take it as read that this IS what a provincial Russian is like. This is when I kind of had to suspend my belief. I don't believe this portrait. I don't believe it's as simple as that presented here. As such the book is more than three star but less than four.

Anyway. Its worth getting hold of to show you the lower edge of contemporary Russian writing (though the blurb informs me he's been up for the Russian Booker three times). He has since acquired a decent reputation within Russian media presenting various TV gazetter style programmes and written for various periodicals. There is a lot better out there but this is still worth the read for AN aspect of contemporary Russia. It definetly has the feel of something done on a Creative Writing course which might explain the handwritten dedication to Bradbury at the front.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skunk: a life... Hmmm.
Now this was a effortless read and entertaining, albeit odd in places. However, I don't think I got it. It's about an odd little boy who has a penchant for the wilderness, basically. But what was all the religious content about? Was it about the changing face of Russia or was it something altogether more complex? Or was it an attempt to encapsulate the feeling of spirituality? I just couldn't say.
Furthermore, the end of this long tale of boyhood to manhood seemed to end rather abruptly. For me personally this book was in the same spirit as Crime & Punishment, but Raskilnakov was crazier.
Yet, if you are interested in Russia and its wildernesses and traits then I think this book captures them succinctly.