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Mēs. Latvija, XX gadsimts
Mleko matki
Historia obejmuje okres od zakończenia drugiej wojny światowej i opowiada o losach trzech pokoleń kobiet, w centrum narracji stawiając lata 70. i 80. XX wieku. Opowieść przepełniona jest rezygnacją – z męża i ojca, z marzeń i zamiarów, z pracy i przekonań, z przyjaciół i tych, których kochamy.
W tej drodze krzyżowej kobiet wszystkich pokoleń bardzo silny jest motyw przebaczenia. Od dzieciństwa jest ono ciągłym zadaniem córki w celu utrzymania przy życiu matki, która celowo pozbawiła córki mleka, by nie pozwolić na odziedziczenie swojego bólu i rozpaczy.
W tej drodze krzyżowej kobiet wszystkich pokoleń bardzo silny jest motyw przebaczenia. Od dzieciństwa jest ono ciągłym zadaniem córki w celu utrzymania przy życiu matki, która celowo pozbawiła córki mleka, by nie pozwolić na odziedziczenie swojego bólu i rozpaczy.
244 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2015
285 people are currently reading
9195 people want to read
About the author
Nora Ikstena
45 books167 followersNora Ikstena is a prose writer and essayist. Ikstena is one of the most visible and influential prose writers in Latvia, known for elaborat style and detailed approach to language. After obtaining a degree in Philology from the University of Latvia in 1992, she went on to study English literature at Columbia University. In her prose, Nora Ikstena often reflects on life, love, death and faith. Soviet Milk (2015, shortlisted for the Annual Literature Award for best prose), Besa (2012), Celebration of Life (1998), The Virgin's Lesson (2001) are some of her most widely appreciated novels.
The novel Amour Fou has been staged for theatre, and published in Russian (2010); other works have been translated into Lithuanian, Estonian, Georgian, Swedish, Danish, etc. Ikstena is also a prolific author of biographical fiction, non-fiction, scripts, essays, and collections of short prose. Her collection Life Stories (2004) was published in English in 2013, and Hindi in 2015. Her story Elza Kuga’s Old Age Dementia was included in the "Best European Fiction 2011" anthology.
Ikstena is an active participant in Latvia's cultural and political life, and a co-founder of the International Writers and Translators’ House in Ventspils. In 2006, she received the Baltic Assembly Prize in literature.
The novel Amour Fou has been staged for theatre, and published in Russian (2010); other works have been translated into Lithuanian, Estonian, Georgian, Swedish, Danish, etc. Ikstena is also a prolific author of biographical fiction, non-fiction, scripts, essays, and collections of short prose. Her collection Life Stories (2004) was published in English in 2013, and Hindi in 2015. Her story Elza Kuga’s Old Age Dementia was included in the "Best European Fiction 2011" anthology.
Ikstena is an active participant in Latvia's cultural and political life, and a co-founder of the International Writers and Translators’ House in Ventspils. In 2006, she received the Baltic Assembly Prize in literature.
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October 5, 2025
"لا تخافي يا ماما. كل ما تحتاجين إليه هو الرغبة في الحياة. الرغبة في أن تعيشي، وكل شئ سيكون علي ما يرام.."
حليب سوفيتي..رواية للكاتبة اللاتيفية نورا إكستينا التي صدر لها أكثر من عشرين كتاب و فازت بالعديد من الجوائز كما تحولت هذه الرواية إلى فيلم ذائع الصيت...
تدور أحداث الرواية حول أم و إبنتها حيث عاشت الأم أحداث إنضمام بلدها ليتفيا إلي الاتحاد السوفيتي و فقدانها لإستقلالها مما أثر عليها نفسياً لدرجة إنها لم يكن عندها غرائز أمومية ورفضت حتي إرضاع طفلتها و كانت تشعر أن إنجاب طفل وإقحامه في هذا العالم شئ غير منطقي...
"كان حليبي مراً: حليب عدم الفهم، أو حليب الهلاك، فحميت طفلتي منه.."
وزي ما كانت الام سلبية و مكتئبة ورافضة الحياة كانت إبنتها العكس تماماً ..شخصية إيجابية، عندها رغبة في العيش وتقريباً كانت هي التي تؤدي دور الأم مع والدتها وتعتبر رمز للأمل في الرواية و ستشهد إنهيار التكتل السوفيتي و عودة لاتفيا بلد مستقل مرة أخري...
الترجمة كانت ممتازة والشخصيات مرسومة بعناية..الكاتبة كانت تتنقل بين الفصول بين صوت البنت و أمها و أحيانا جدتها و إستطاعت من خلال حكاية ثلاثة أجيال من النساء أن تلقي الضوء علي النساء اللاتفيات أثناء السيطرة السوفييتية على بلادهن التي
تحولت إلى كابوس يومي في حياة الكثيرين...
الأحداث كانت بطيئة الي حد ما و السرد كان يشوبه الملل احياناً ولكن النهاية الرائعة ،أهمية الرواية والرسالة التي تحملها من الأسباب اللي خلتني أرفع التقييم من ٣ الي ٤ نجوم...
الأم كانت تشعر إن حليبها ملوث وبلدها محتلة ولذلك رفضت إرضاع إبنتها وعلي الرغم من استقلال لاتفيا الآن و إنهيار الإتحاد السوفيتي ولكن يأتي السؤال ..
هل الحرب اليوم بين روسيا وأوكرونيا ستعيد الحذاء الروسي مرة أخري إلي شرق أوروبا و يتحول مرة ثانية حليب الأمهات هناك الي حليب سوفيتي؟!
محدش عارف!
حليب سوفيتي..رواية للكاتبة اللاتيفية نورا إكستينا التي صدر لها أكثر من عشرين كتاب و فازت بالعديد من الجوائز كما تحولت هذه الرواية إلى فيلم ذائع الصيت...
تدور أحداث الرواية حول أم و إبنتها حيث عاشت الأم أحداث إنضمام بلدها ليتفيا إلي الاتحاد السوفيتي و فقدانها لإستقلالها مما أثر عليها نفسياً لدرجة إنها لم يكن عندها غرائز أمومية ورفضت حتي إرضاع طفلتها و كانت تشعر أن إنجاب طفل وإقحامه في هذا العالم شئ غير منطقي...
"كان حليبي مراً: حليب عدم الفهم، أو حليب الهلاك، فحميت طفلتي منه.."
وزي ما كانت الام سلبية و مكتئبة ورافضة الحياة كانت إبنتها العكس تماماً ..شخصية إيجابية، عندها رغبة في العيش وتقريباً كانت هي التي تؤدي دور الأم مع والدتها وتعتبر رمز للأمل في الرواية و ستشهد إنهيار التكتل السوفيتي و عودة لاتفيا بلد مستقل مرة أخري...
الترجمة كانت ممتازة والشخصيات مرسومة بعناية..الكاتبة كانت تتنقل بين الفصول بين صوت البنت و أمها و أحيانا جدتها و إستطاعت من خلال حكاية ثلاثة أجيال من النساء أن تلقي الضوء علي النساء اللاتفيات أثناء السيطرة السوفييتية على بلادهن التي
تحولت إلى كابوس يومي في حياة الكثيرين...
الأحداث كانت بطيئة الي حد ما و السرد كان يشوبه الملل احياناً ولكن النهاية الرائعة ،أهمية الرواية والرسالة التي تحملها من الأسباب اللي خلتني أرفع التقييم من ٣ الي ٤ نجوم...
الأم كانت تشعر إن حليبها ملوث وبلدها محتلة ولذلك رفضت إرضاع إبنتها وعلي الرغم من استقلال لاتفيا الآن و إنهيار الإتحاد السوفيتي ولكن يأتي السؤال ..
هل الحرب اليوم بين روسيا وأوكرونيا ستعيد الحذاء الروسي مرة أخري إلي شرق أوروبا و يتحول مرة ثانية حليب الأمهات هناك الي حليب سوفيتي؟!
محدش عارف!
August 4, 2019
“Motina užsitraukė dūmą, mes dar kurį laiką pasėdėjom prie Bembio kapo.
Ir kodėl jis suėdė savo vaiką, paklausiau motinos.
Tikriausiai gelbėjo jį nuo narvo, atsakė motina ir stipriai mane apkabino.”
Baigiau skaityti šią latvių literatūros žvaigždės knygą ir nežinau kaip nuo savęs nusiplauti tą liūdesį ir skausmą, kurio ji tokia sklidina.
Spoksau į miegantį sūnų ir bijau. Ar tikrai su motinos pienu sūnums ir dukroms persiduoda motinos slogutis? Motinos nenoras gyventi?
Ar visos į mus suinstaliuotos žaizdos iš praeities uždaro meilės latakus?
Jei motinos motina ją taip mylėjo, kodėl motina mylėti nesugeba?
Ši knyga yra išverstas, pulsuojantis, neužgyjantis mūsų tėvų skausmas. Vienodos virtuvių spintelės, servizai, vienodas nurodymas kaip gyventi, kaip dirbti, ką mėgti, kaip mylėti savo vaikus. Tiksliau, kaip jų nemylėti.
Taip ir užaugo neišmylėtųjų karta. Kuriems žindyti savo vaiką lygu vilioti svetimą vyrą, nes krūties kraštas kyšo. Kuriems apsikabinti savo vaiką lygu perlepinimui, o nuolatiniam grubiam tonui tinka pateisinimas “kitaip neklausys”.
50 metų mus laikė narve. Gal tikrai vienintelis išsigelbėjimo būdas - suėsti mylimiausius?
Apie tai yra “Motinos pienas”. Apie ištisas kartas motinų, nemeilę, meilę ir laiką, istoriją, kurių kartoti mūsų niekas neprivers.
Nes tik laisvėje meilė gali kvėpuot.
O man įkvėpt tai perskaičius - dar sunku.
Bet einu prie sūnaus prisiglausiu.
Ir kodėl jis suėdė savo vaiką, paklausiau motinos.
Tikriausiai gelbėjo jį nuo narvo, atsakė motina ir stipriai mane apkabino.”
Baigiau skaityti šią latvių literatūros žvaigždės knygą ir nežinau kaip nuo savęs nusiplauti tą liūdesį ir skausmą, kurio ji tokia sklidina.
Spoksau į miegantį sūnų ir bijau. Ar tikrai su motinos pienu sūnums ir dukroms persiduoda motinos slogutis? Motinos nenoras gyventi?
Ar visos į mus suinstaliuotos žaizdos iš praeities uždaro meilės latakus?
Jei motinos motina ją taip mylėjo, kodėl motina mylėti nesugeba?
Ši knyga yra išverstas, pulsuojantis, neužgyjantis mūsų tėvų skausmas. Vienodos virtuvių spintelės, servizai, vienodas nurodymas kaip gyventi, kaip dirbti, ką mėgti, kaip mylėti savo vaikus. Tiksliau, kaip jų nemylėti.
Taip ir užaugo neišmylėtųjų karta. Kuriems žindyti savo vaiką lygu vilioti svetimą vyrą, nes krūties kraštas kyšo. Kuriems apsikabinti savo vaiką lygu perlepinimui, o nuolatiniam grubiam tonui tinka pateisinimas “kitaip neklausys”.
50 metų mus laikė narve. Gal tikrai vienintelis išsigelbėjimo būdas - suėsti mylimiausius?
Apie tai yra “Motinos pienas”. Apie ištisas kartas motinų, nemeilę, meilę ir laiką, istoriją, kurių kartoti mūsų niekas neprivers.
Nes tik laisvėje meilė gali kvėpuot.
O man įkvėpt tai perskaičius - dar sunku.
Bet einu prie sūnaus prisiglausiu.
March 12, 2022
في البدءِ كانت لاتفيا، ثمَّ ضمّت إلى الاتحاد السوفييتي في 1940، واستعادت استقلالها في 1990. كيف يمكنُ لحدثٍ مثل هذه أن يؤثّر على حياةِ امرأة ولدت في 1969 وتبدو عاجزة عن التكيّف مع متطلبات العيش في بلدٍ شمولي، لمجرد أنها تعرف - بفضل ذاكرة أمّها - بأنه يمكن للحياة أن تكون على نحوٍ آخر، وأن الحياة كانت فعلًا، على نحوٍ آخر.
حليب سوفييتي رواية «عذبة» عن حكاية «مرّة»، عن اختلاط العام بالخاص، والتاريخي بالشَّخصي، والسياسي بالعائلي. إنها قصّة عن امرأة حسّاسة ومعطوبةِ بالكامِل، يفترض بها - وسط العطب - أن تكون أمًّا، رغم أنها تؤمنُ بأنَّ الشيء المنطقي الوحيد لهامستر حبيس هو أن يأكل أطفاله. يقولون بأن الإنسان قادر على التكيُّف مع أي شيء، هذه رواية تتحفّظ على هذا القول، إنها حكاية عن الفشل في التكيّف مع النظام، وعليهِ فنحن أمام شقيقة أخرى لـ 1984 لجورج أورويل.
أحببتُ اللغة المتقشّفة التي تفضي بالأكثر بقول الأقل. أحببتُ التعفّف عن الكلمات الصدّاحة والشعارات الكبرى والكليشيهات، أحببت التعفف عن التصدّي للفكرة بفكرةٍ مضادة، بل باتباع سياسة أنثوية بالكامل؛ مجابهة القسوة بالهشاشة. أحببتُ الوصف البديع للطبيعة، رغم كل ما تثيره الرواية من ألم كانت الجُمل غنائية على نحوٍ خافت.
يبدو أن الحرب السوفييتية الأوكرانية تفتح شهيّتي لقراءة التاريخ من خلال شهادات ضحاياه. أشخاص عاديون يريدون حياة عادية، أستطيع أن أصدّق قصصهم. بعد جنكيز داغجي التتري، جاءت نورا إسكتينا اللاتفية، وبترجمة أنيقة جدًا من ضحوك رقيّة.
شكرًا دار ممدوح عدوان على رواية فاتنة.
حليب سوفييتي رواية «عذبة» عن حكاية «مرّة»، عن اختلاط العام بالخاص، والتاريخي بالشَّخصي، والسياسي بالعائلي. إنها قصّة عن امرأة حسّاسة ومعطوبةِ بالكامِل، يفترض بها - وسط العطب - أن تكون أمًّا، رغم أنها تؤمنُ بأنَّ الشيء المنطقي الوحيد لهامستر حبيس هو أن يأكل أطفاله. يقولون بأن الإنسان قادر على التكيُّف مع أي شيء، هذه رواية تتحفّظ على هذا القول، إنها حكاية عن الفشل في التكيّف مع النظام، وعليهِ فنحن أمام شقيقة أخرى لـ 1984 لجورج أورويل.
أحببتُ اللغة المتقشّفة التي تفضي بالأكثر بقول الأقل. أحببتُ التعفّف عن الكلمات الصدّاحة والشعارات الكبرى والكليشيهات، أحببت التعفف عن التصدّي للفكرة بفكرةٍ مضادة، بل باتباع سياسة أنثوية بالكامل؛ مجابهة القسوة بالهشاشة. أحببتُ الوصف البديع للطبيعة، رغم كل ما تثيره الرواية من ألم كانت الجُمل غنائية على نحوٍ خافت.
يبدو أن الحرب السوفييتية الأوكرانية تفتح شهيّتي لقراءة التاريخ من خلال شهادات ضحاياه. أشخاص عاديون يريدون حياة عادية، أستطيع أن أصدّق قصصهم. بعد جنكيز داغجي التتري، جاءت نورا إسكتينا اللاتفية، وبترجمة أنيقة جدًا من ضحوك رقيّة.
شكرًا دار ممدوح عدوان على رواية فاتنة.
August 10, 2025
بروحٍ متسامحة، قامت الإبنة طوال عشرين عاماً بدور الأم لوالدتها. ربما ورثت ذلك الصبر والتحمل والحب الغير مشروط عن جدتها، التي لم تستطع بدورها أن تورث جيناتها الراغبة في مواصلة الحياة للأبنة (الأم المريضة) التي كان إنهاء حياتها هو شاغلها الأوحد.
في المراجعات النقدية التي قرأتها عن تلك الرواية الجميلة، وجدت إصراراً عتيداً على ربط مرض الأم النفسي بحادث فقدانها لوظيفتها كطبيبة وباحثة بعد الوشاية بها. ومن وجهة نظري، كان ذلك الحادث مجرد "مُحفز" لتدهور أكبر كان قادماً لا محالة لحالتها النفسية.
فالأم كان لديها منذ البداية احساس دائم بعدم الإنتماء، يسبقه احساس أخر بأنها ورثت جينات "تدمير الذات" من والدها الذي قضى أيامه الأخيرة في حالة سكر شبه دائمة بعد خروجه من المعتقل. وجاء حملها الغير مرغوب فيه وولادتها لابنتها كالقشة التي قضمت ظهر البعير. فكان اكتئاب ما بعد الولادة غولاً مخيفا نهش في روحها ولم يفارقها حتى نهاية حياتها.
على الرغم من أن جو الظلم والقهر في ظل الحكم السوفييتي الشيوعي الذي عاشته بطلات الرواية الثلاث (الجدة-الأم-الأبنة) والكفيل بقتل روح أي انسان يبدو مبررا قويا لقتل الرغبة في الحياة بالنسبة للأم، إلا أنني أرى أن ما حدث لها كان مرضا مُقدراً لها حتى وإن عاشت في دولة وأرض حرة. فهى ببساطة كانت مريضة وتسعى للموت بصرف النظر عن الزمن والمكان.
تتساءل الجدة مع حفيدتها في حزن عن السبب الذي جعل ابنتها كارهة للحياة لتلك الدرجة؟ ما الخطأ الذي ارتكبته وما هو ذنبها الذي جعل ابنتها تكرر محاولات انتحارها مرة تلو الأخرى؟
كانت هناك العديد من الحلقات المفقودة في رواية حياة الأم، والتي كانت جديرة بتقديم أرضية ثابتة يقف عليها من يريد معرفة سبب مأساتها. وكان من الواضح أن هم وهدف المؤلفة الأول كان في تجسيد الدمار الذي ألحقه الحكم السوفييتي بحياة الشعوب التي رضخت تحته، أكثر من تتبع الأشخاص نفسهم ككيانات شخصية مستقلة. فنجد أن هناك "مُراقب" معلن أو خفي يرافق الأبطال في كل تفاصيل حياتهم يماثل "الأخ الأكبر" في رواية جورج أورويل 1984 والتي وقعت يد الأم عليها بالصدفة ككتاب ممنوع مهمل منزوع غلافه ومجهول هويته. ووجدت في شخصيته الرئيسة "وينستون" المقابل الروائي لشخصيتها الحقيقية التي تتوق لعيش وجودها وهويتها الحقيقية التي محاها الحكم السوفيتي.
ربما قصدت بهذا أن تُظهر كيف يمحو الحكم الشمولي الروح الفريدة للإنسان ويحوله لمجرد كائن يحيا بلا إحساس حقيقي بذاته أو بذوات من حوله.
لا يملك من يقرأ الرواية إلا أن يحب تلك الأبنة التي أخلصت نفسها لمحاولة تحرير أمها من شياطين اكتئابها المخيف. لمست قلبي وهى تحاول بلا كلل أن تُزيل بجمال وجودها ضباب وفوضى وظلام حياة أمها الدائم. أوجع قلبي انتظارها اللانهائي لحب واحتواء الأم الذي سمعت عنه واشتاقت له ولم تجربه. أوجع قلبي احساس الأم الدائم بالذنب تجاه ابنتها المهملة منها وعدم الاستحقاق بالوجود في الحياة ظناً منها أنها لا تستحق منحة الأمومة.
مسني بشدة أيضا أن تلك قصة الكاتبة الحقيقية التي رغم ما عانته مع أمها لم تحمل لها أي شكل من المرارة أو اللوم على الحياة المخيفة التي عاشتها مع أم مريضة نفسيا. لم تحمل لها سوى الحب، والتمست لها عذرا وتعاطفا وفهما لمأساة عاشتها تلك الأم حرمتها رغما عنها من منح الحب لأقرب الناس اليها.
رواية رائعة جسدت بمنتهى العذوبة والصدق الحب في أكثر اشكاله تعقيدا ويأساً ومرارة. تجربة انسانية مميزة تستحق الشكر والامتنان لمن وافق أن يشاركنا فيها.
في المراجعات النقدية التي قرأتها عن تلك الرواية الجميلة، وجدت إصراراً عتيداً على ربط مرض الأم النفسي بحادث فقدانها لوظيفتها كطبيبة وباحثة بعد الوشاية بها. ومن وجهة نظري، كان ذلك الحادث مجرد "مُحفز" لتدهور أكبر كان قادماً لا محالة لحالتها النفسية.
فالأم كان لديها منذ البداية احساس دائم بعدم الإنتماء، يسبقه احساس أخر بأنها ورثت جينات "تدمير الذات" من والدها الذي قضى أيامه الأخيرة في حالة سكر شبه دائمة بعد خروجه من المعتقل. وجاء حملها الغير مرغوب فيه وولادتها لابنتها كالقشة التي قضمت ظهر البعير. فكان اكتئاب ما بعد الولادة غولاً مخيفا نهش في روحها ولم يفارقها حتى نهاية حياتها.
على الرغم من أن جو الظلم والقهر في ظل الحكم السوفييتي الشيوعي الذي عاشته بطلات الرواية الثلاث (الجدة-الأم-الأبنة) والكفيل بقتل روح أي انسان يبدو مبررا قويا لقتل الرغبة في الحياة بالنسبة للأم، إلا أنني أرى أن ما حدث لها كان مرضا مُقدراً لها حتى وإن عاشت في دولة وأرض حرة. فهى ببساطة كانت مريضة وتسعى للموت بصرف النظر عن الزمن والمكان.
تتساءل الجدة مع حفيدتها في حزن عن السبب الذي جعل ابنتها كارهة للحياة لتلك الدرجة؟ ما الخطأ الذي ارتكبته وما هو ذنبها الذي جعل ابنتها تكرر محاولات انتحارها مرة تلو الأخرى؟
كانت هناك العديد من الحلقات المفقودة في رواية حياة الأم، والتي كانت جديرة بتقديم أرضية ثابتة يقف عليها من يريد معرفة سبب مأساتها. وكان من الواضح أن هم وهدف المؤلفة الأول كان في تجسيد الدمار الذي ألحقه الحكم السوفييتي بحياة الشعوب التي رضخت تحته، أكثر من تتبع الأشخاص نفسهم ككيانات شخصية مستقلة. فنجد أن هناك "مُراقب" معلن أو خفي يرافق الأبطال في كل تفاصيل حياتهم يماثل "الأخ الأكبر" في رواية جورج أورويل 1984 والتي وقعت يد الأم عليها بالصدفة ككتاب ممنوع مهمل منزوع غلافه ومجهول هويته. ووجدت في شخصيته الرئيسة "وينستون" المقابل الروائي لشخصيتها الحقيقية التي تتوق لعيش وجودها وهويتها الحقيقية التي محاها الحكم السوفيتي.
ربما قصدت بهذا أن تُظهر كيف يمحو الحكم الشمولي الروح الفريدة للإنسان ويحوله لمجرد كائن يحيا بلا إحساس حقيقي بذاته أو بذوات من حوله.
لا يملك من يقرأ الرواية إلا أن يحب تلك الأبنة التي أخلصت نفسها لمحاولة تحرير أمها من شياطين اكتئابها المخيف. لمست قلبي وهى تحاول بلا كلل أن تُزيل بجمال وجودها ضباب وفوضى وظلام حياة أمها الدائم. أوجع قلبي انتظارها اللانهائي لحب واحتواء الأم الذي سمعت عنه واشتاقت له ولم تجربه. أوجع قلبي احساس الأم الدائم بالذنب تجاه ابنتها المهملة منها وعدم الاستحقاق بالوجود في الحياة ظناً منها أنها لا تستحق منحة الأمومة.
مسني بشدة أيضا أن تلك قصة الكاتبة الحقيقية التي رغم ما عانته مع أمها لم تحمل لها أي شكل من المرارة أو اللوم على الحياة المخيفة التي عاشتها مع أم مريضة نفسيا. لم تحمل لها سوى الحب، والتمست لها عذرا وتعاطفا وفهما لمأساة عاشتها تلك الأم حرمتها رغما عنها من منح الحب لأقرب الناس اليها.
رواية رائعة جسدت بمنتهى العذوبة والصدق الحب في أكثر اشكاله تعقيدا ويأساً ومرارة. تجربة انسانية مميزة تستحق الشكر والامتنان لمن وافق أن يشاركنا فيها.
April 7, 2018
It’s really exciting seeing the international book community experiencing a surge of interest in Latvian literature. I’m aware that there is a vibrant literary scene in Latvia, but translations of new Latvian fiction are slow in making their way to the West. So I was thrilled to read “Soviet Milk” by established author Nora Ikstena. This book won the Annual Latvian Literature Award in 2015, but has only just been translated and published in English. The story alternates between the perspectives of an unnamed mother and daughter over a number of years from 1969 to 1989. They have a tumultuous relationship with each other and both struggle to find their place in society because this was a period of time when Latvia was still under Soviet rule. The mother is a skilled doctor specializing in female fertility, but finds life in the communist system stiflingly oppressive. Equally the daughter struggles to grow and nurture her developing intellect in such a regimental system. This is a moving and achingly poignant story of an unconventional mother-daughter relationship and a country undergoing radical social change as Latvia regains its independence.
Read my full review of Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena plus an interview I conducted with the author on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena plus an interview I conducted with the author on LonesomeReader
July 14, 2019
"TARP PILKŲ DEBESŲ" GOES SOVIETMETIS -->
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"Motinos pieno" bibliotekoje laukti reikia ilgai, bet persiskaito jis greitai. Jo autorė Nora Ikstena pristatoma kaip populiariausia Latvijos rašytoja. Ant knygos užrašyta "Geriausias latvių romanas".
Knygoje pasakojama tarsi apie trijų, bet šiaip apie dviejų moterų gyvenimą Latvijoje sovietmečiu (močiutė, mama, dukra - such symbolism, beveik Ticiano "Išminties alegorija"); motina gimusi pokariu, 1944 m., dukra - simboliniais 1969-aisiais. Dukra romane įkūnija visas naujoves, išmintį, laisvės siekį.
(Plot twist: 1969-ieji simboliniai tik Vakarams! Kaip ir visas knygoje rodomas sovietmetis.)
Tuo tarpu mama įkūnija daugelį įmanomų sovietmečio priespaudos formų, beveik kaip vadovėlis (neeilinių gabumų gydytoja - diagnozuoja pacientes vien užmetusi akį, jai žadėta išskirtinė karjera, bet Sistema ją nugrūdo į kaimą, plius dar ji nenorėjo gyventi, plius dar patyrė sovietmečio psichiatrijos baisumus).
Kaip rašė Virga Zinovjeva, gana nesunku pamatyt, kad knyga rašoma "ant išvertimo" ir "ant pardavimo": ji pristato Vakarams sovietmetį, tiksliau - sovietmečio baisybes ir žmogaus pastangas išlikti. Kitaip tariant, tai tipiškas euroromanas. Ji parašyta gerai, skaitosi lengvai, turi tragizmo (soviet evilz) ir gerą pabaigą (freedom yayyyy). Turi esminius sovietmečio evilz elementus: absurdiška reakcija į SSKP CK lyderio laidotuves; ideologinis spaudimas mokykloj; rezistentas gerasis mokytojas (toks wannabe Robin Williams, net pavardė Blūmas), kurį išmeta, nes jis parodo vaikams pasaulį (= modernistinį meną); Sistemos sugriautas žmogaus gyvenimas ir karjera (niekur nebeįsidarbinsi, nes užkliudei kompartijos narį); skurdi kasdienybė (mandarinų paieškos); slaptos istorijos vakare apie laisvą Liet..Latviją; skundikas klasėje; mįslingos mirtys; smurtas šeimoje; prispaustos moterys; Baltijos kelias.
Jokiu būdu nenoriu pasakyti, kad kalbėti apie sovietmečio evilz yra kvaila ar banalu; ne, tai sveika ir gerai, kad tik kuo mažiau visokių neaišku iš kur atsirandančių nostalginių šnekų būtų. Bet kai tas sovietmečio pasakojimas trūks plyš stengiasi būti "teisingas" ir populiarus tarsi SEB banko atstovas telikui per rinkiminę kampaniją, meno tame lieka nedaug. Šitoj knygoj mane nuvylė ir suerzino: plakatiniai personažai, teisuoliškumas (taip pat ir istorinis) bei tiesiog blogas stilius.
1. Teisuoliškumas. Pvz: motina yra labai daug vilčių teikianti gydytoja, kuriai prognozuoja karjerą Leningrade, ji ten nuvažiuoja dirbti, bet "kepšteli" kompartijos narį ir ją iš visur išmeta. Galiausiai ji pusiau išsitremia į kaimą, kur vis dėlto gali dirbti ginekologe - ir labai gerai dirba, bet vis tiek lieka palaužta ir neatsistato, daug kartų bando žudytis. Vienoj vietoj ją palygina su varpu, iš kurio išimtas liežuvis ir jis negali skambėti. Mažytė smulkmenėlė: tai, ką ji padarė komunistui, - subaladojo veidą-galvą plaktuku, taigi beveik ar visai užmušė, taigi padarė nusikaltimą. Very complicated, very holivudiška, biški dviveidiška - aukštinti tai, ką čia pat smerki.
2. Plakatiniai personažai. Pvz: tragiško likimo motina yra dar visai įdomi, palyginti su dukra, kuri: atstoja motiną savo motinai, cookina, tvarkosi, gaivina motiną po savižudybės bandymų, yra geriausia mokinė klasėje, draugauja su populiariausiu mokyklos bernu, kitoj mokykloj draugauja su tos mokyklos populiariausiu bernu, įstoja į univerą nepaisant kitų prasčiau besimokiusiųjų, bet turėjusių protekcijas, dar mokykloj tampa tyliąja rezistente. Ne tik plokščias, bet dar ir nelogiškas personažas: vienam puslapy tampa rezistente ir nustoja mokytis pagrindinius mokyklos kursus, nes jie tokie sovietiniai, kitam puslapy "nuožmus vyras" pagrasina, kad neįstos į univerą, ir ji jau rašo skundus "per negaliu". Ok..
3. Tiesiog blogas stilius, patosas, logika etc etc. Pvz:
...šiaip tai nebuvo :D
OMG akivaizdūs išgyvenimai PLZ NOOOO :(
Biški pasimečiau zoologinėje metaforoje 0_0
*
Trashinti šitą knygą nelabai sąžininga/adekvatu - tai populiarioji literatūra, tokia pati, koks yra ir "Tarp pilkų debesų"; skirta edukacijai, tokia wannabe "Nepakeliama būties lengvybė". Bet sovietmečio pasakojimai - šio dešimtmečio ir šios geografinės zonos pigi prekė, o ir neaukšto kurso valiuta, be kita ko, tipo turinti ugdyti ir istorinį-tautinį sąmoningumą. Popsas tikrai gali tą daryti - bet ne toks ir ne taip, ne per aukizmą ir kaltinamąjį toną. Geriau jau tada pažiūrėti "Černobylį", Wajdos "Povaizdį" arba Matuszyńskio "Paskutinę šeimą", arba Zviagincevo "Nemeilę". Visame tame - pakankama dozė santūriai, be suabsoliutinimų perteikto ir absurdo, ir bejėgiškumo, ir žlugdančios, naikinančios sistemos, ir sunkių pasirinkimų tarp blogo ir blogesnio.
UNPOPULAR OPINION -->
CLICK TO FIND OUT -->
POPULAR NOVEL TRASHED BY ANONYMOUS USER!
SHOCKING!!!
10 THINGS YOU WILL HATE ABOUT "MOTINOS PIENAS" -->
SO SHOCKING!
PEOPLE CANNOT BELIEVE -->
--> CLICK TO FIND -->
CONTROVERSIAL: READ TO FIND OUT
MOST PEOPLE WILL DISAGREE
PLEASE CLICK --> HELP FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING -->
"Motinos pieno" bibliotekoje laukti reikia ilgai, bet persiskaito jis greitai. Jo autorė Nora Ikstena pristatoma kaip populiariausia Latvijos rašytoja. Ant knygos užrašyta "Geriausias latvių romanas".
Knygoje pasakojama tarsi apie trijų, bet šiaip apie dviejų moterų gyvenimą Latvijoje sovietmečiu (močiutė, mama, dukra - such symbolism, beveik Ticiano "Išminties alegorija"); motina gimusi pokariu, 1944 m., dukra - simboliniais 1969-aisiais. Dukra romane įkūnija visas naujoves, išmintį, laisvės siekį.
(Plot twist: 1969-ieji simboliniai tik Vakarams! Kaip ir visas knygoje rodomas sovietmetis.)
Tuo tarpu mama įkūnija daugelį įmanomų sovietmečio priespaudos formų, beveik kaip vadovėlis (neeilinių gabumų gydytoja - diagnozuoja pacientes vien užmetusi akį, jai žadėta išskirtinė karjera, bet Sistema ją nugrūdo į kaimą, plius dar ji nenorėjo gyventi, plius dar patyrė sovietmečio psichiatrijos baisumus).
Kaip rašė Virga Zinovjeva, gana nesunku pamatyt, kad knyga rašoma "ant išvertimo" ir "ant pardavimo": ji pristato Vakarams sovietmetį, tiksliau - sovietmečio baisybes ir žmogaus pastangas išlikti. Kitaip tariant, tai tipiškas euroromanas. Ji parašyta gerai, skaitosi lengvai, turi tragizmo (soviet evilz) ir gerą pabaigą (freedom yayyyy). Turi esminius sovietmečio evilz elementus: absurdiška reakcija į SSKP CK lyderio laidotuves; ideologinis spaudimas mokykloj; rezistentas gerasis mokytojas (toks wannabe Robin Williams, net pavardė Blūmas), kurį išmeta, nes jis parodo vaikams pasaulį (= modernistinį meną); Sistemos sugriautas žmogaus gyvenimas ir karjera (niekur nebeįsidarbinsi, nes užkliudei kompartijos narį); skurdi kasdienybė (mandarinų paieškos); slaptos istorijos vakare apie laisvą Liet..Latviją; skundikas klasėje; mįslingos mirtys; smurtas šeimoje; prispaustos moterys; Baltijos kelias.
Jokiu būdu nenoriu pasakyti, kad kalbėti apie sovietmečio evilz yra kvaila ar banalu; ne, tai sveika ir gerai, kad tik kuo mažiau visokių neaišku iš kur atsirandančių nostalginių šnekų būtų. Bet kai tas sovietmečio pasakojimas trūks plyš stengiasi būti "teisingas" ir populiarus tarsi SEB banko atstovas telikui per rinkiminę kampaniją, meno tame lieka nedaug. Šitoj knygoj mane nuvylė ir suerzino: plakatiniai personažai, teisuoliškumas (taip pat ir istorinis) bei tiesiog blogas stilius.
1. Teisuoliškumas. Pvz: motina yra labai daug vilčių teikianti gydytoja, kuriai prognozuoja karjerą Leningrade, ji ten nuvažiuoja dirbti, bet "kepšteli" kompartijos narį ir ją iš visur išmeta. Galiausiai ji pusiau išsitremia į kaimą, kur vis dėlto gali dirbti ginekologe - ir labai gerai dirba, bet vis tiek lieka palaužta ir neatsistato, daug kartų bando žudytis. Vienoj vietoj ją palygina su varpu, iš kurio išimtas liežuvis ir jis negali skambėti. Mažytė smulkmenėlė: tai, ką ji padarė komunistui, - subaladojo veidą-galvą plaktuku, taigi beveik ar visai užmušė, taigi padarė nusikaltimą. Very complicated, very holivudiška, biški dviveidiška - aukštinti tai, ką čia pat smerki.
2. Plakatiniai personažai. Pvz: tragiško likimo motina yra dar visai įdomi, palyginti su dukra, kuri: atstoja motiną savo motinai, cookina, tvarkosi, gaivina motiną po savižudybės bandymų, yra geriausia mokinė klasėje, draugauja su populiariausiu mokyklos bernu, kitoj mokykloj draugauja su tos mokyklos populiariausiu bernu, įstoja į univerą nepaisant kitų prasčiau besimokiusiųjų, bet turėjusių protekcijas, dar mokykloj tampa tyliąja rezistente. Ne tik plokščias, bet dar ir nelogiškas personažas: vienam puslapy tampa rezistente ir nustoja mokytis pagrindinius mokyklos kursus, nes jie tokie sovietiniai, kitam puslapy "nuožmus vyras" pagrasina, kad neįstos į univerą, ir ji jau rašo skundus "per negaliu". Ok..
3. Tiesiog blogas stilius, patosas, logika etc etc. Pvz:
Motina pažvelgė į mus visus tokius skausmo persmelktu žvilgsniu, kad man pasidarė gėda savo netramdomo kumelaitės džiaugsmo. (p. 126)
Prie mūsų namų jis mane pirmiausia pabučiavo į skruostą, tada savo lūpomis apėmė manąsias, bet aš laikiau jas tvirtai suspaustas.
Tai buvo mano pirmasis bučinys. (p. 127)
...šiaip tai nebuvo :D
Dvi raudonos juostos ir viena balta, pasakė patėvis, braukdamas pirštu per fotografiją. Mes turėjom savo valstybę ir savo vėliavą.
Dabar ir man ištryško ašaros, nes taip buvo sakiusi ir motina. (p. 136)
Apie motiną, kuri gyveno kaimo užkampyje, nes nenorėjo gyventi dviejų gyvenimų, nenorėjo nė to vieno, kuriame ji jautėsi tokia pat paniekinta kaip anksčiau Latvija. (p. 137)
Stotyje mane pasitiko Jesė. Jos veide akivaizdžiai atsispindėjo išgyvenimai. (p. 137)
OMG akivaizdūs išgyvenimai PLZ NOOOO :(
Aš nekenčiau mažo, storo vojenruko visa širdimi. Ilgainiui mano vaizduotėje jis tapo visos šios paralelinio gyvenimo košės pagrindiniu kaltininku. Atgrasia, gličia rupūže, įsiropštusia į mūsų vandens lelijų tvenkinį, surijusia visus taikius laumžirgius, kuri tupėjo ant lapo ir kurkė, ir vis labiau pampo, ir visiems tą rūpužę tekdavo nuryti. (p. 142)
Biški pasimečiau zoologinėje metaforoje 0_0
Aš buvau taip pabūgusi jo nuožmumo, kad drebėjau ir tylėjau. (p. 154)
*
Trashinti šitą knygą nelabai sąžininga/adekvatu - tai populiarioji literatūra, tokia pati, koks yra ir "Tarp pilkų debesų"; skirta edukacijai, tokia wannabe "Nepakeliama būties lengvybė". Bet sovietmečio pasakojimai - šio dešimtmečio ir šios geografinės zonos pigi prekė, o ir neaukšto kurso valiuta, be kita ko, tipo turinti ugdyti ir istorinį-tautinį sąmoningumą. Popsas tikrai gali tą daryti - bet ne toks ir ne taip, ne per aukizmą ir kaltinamąjį toną. Geriau jau tada pažiūrėti "Černobylį", Wajdos "Povaizdį" arba Matuszyńskio "Paskutinę šeimą", arba Zviagincevo "Nemeilę". Visame tame - pakankama dozė santūriai, be suabsoliutinimų perteikto ir absurdo, ir bejėgiškumo, ir žlugdančios, naikinančios sistemos, ir sunkių pasirinkimų tarp blogo ir blogesnio.
December 1, 2021
Told through alternating voices, this is the story of a mother and a daughter, both born in Latvia. The mother grows up under Soviet rule after WW2, and her daughter’s never known anything else. Their fractured relationship forms a chronicle of Latvia, from the 1940s through to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet era and finally independence. The mother’s promising career in medicine grinds to a halt after a moment of rebellion, and she’s relocated to a backwater clinic. The daughter does well at school but gradually finds the limitations of what she can or can’t say, know or not know, hard to bear. Nora Ikstena’s autobiographical narrative’s filled with symbols and metaphors for repression, a sense of being caged, as the mother abandons her quest for a meaningful existence, trading in Moby Dick for a battered remnant of Orwell’s 1984, which she reads over and over, seeing herself in the tortured hero Winston. The mother slowly withdraws from the world, unable to connect.
It’s a fascinating story but quite a frustrating one too, it’s not clear what about the mother’s relentless decline traces back to the strictures of Soviet dictatorship, and what her own personal demons. I was also uncertain about the role that the maternal plays here, the idea of the good mother. The imagery can be rich, particularly the descriptions of the natural world but as the book progresses, the accumulation of signs and symbols representing life under a stifling regime can also be a little too much, heavy-handed, and repetitive. And the transition between voices is sometimes jarring because they’re not always clearly differentiated. The other aspect of the novel that doesn’t quite work for me is the way that references to Christianity operate at various points: in the context of enforced atheism presumably understood as radical, but harder to relate to outside of that system. And it’s ironic that this was apparently a controversial publication in contemporary Latvia, now primarily Christian, because it includes a character defined as intersex. Jesse who’s a puzzling, almost saintly figure, first a patient then the mother’s friend and helper. Ikstena’s portrait of living in a totalitarian state contains aspects familiar to anyone who’s read about life behind the Iron Curtain, but it’s also an unusual perspective on Latvian history, the yearning for autonomy and a national identity. So, although I found this far from perfect, there was enough that was gripping and enlightening to make it worthwhile reading. Translated here by Margita Gailitis.
I read this as a 'Read Women' group read, which was a great way to explore Ikstena's novel.
Rating: 3/3.5
It’s a fascinating story but quite a frustrating one too, it’s not clear what about the mother’s relentless decline traces back to the strictures of Soviet dictatorship, and what her own personal demons. I was also uncertain about the role that the maternal plays here, the idea of the good mother. The imagery can be rich, particularly the descriptions of the natural world but as the book progresses, the accumulation of signs and symbols representing life under a stifling regime can also be a little too much, heavy-handed, and repetitive. And the transition between voices is sometimes jarring because they’re not always clearly differentiated. The other aspect of the novel that doesn’t quite work for me is the way that references to Christianity operate at various points: in the context of enforced atheism presumably understood as radical, but harder to relate to outside of that system. And it’s ironic that this was apparently a controversial publication in contemporary Latvia, now primarily Christian, because it includes a character defined as intersex. Jesse who’s a puzzling, almost saintly figure, first a patient then the mother’s friend and helper. Ikstena’s portrait of living in a totalitarian state contains aspects familiar to anyone who’s read about life behind the Iron Curtain, but it’s also an unusual perspective on Latvian history, the yearning for autonomy and a national identity. So, although I found this far from perfect, there was enough that was gripping and enlightening to make it worthwhile reading. Translated here by Margita Gailitis.
I read this as a 'Read Women' group read, which was a great way to explore Ikstena's novel.
Rating: 3/3.5
Read
March 30, 2024The night before finishing this book I dreamt I was in Latvia, there everything was forbidden, apart from washing your clothes at midday. I freely admit that this doesn't have much to do with the novel, but then dreams can be unreliable.
This novel is narrated by two women in an identical voice and concerns three generations of women in Latvia. The Grandmother who gives birth circa 1945 to the Mother who gives birth to the daughter in circa 1969. The mother is a gifted doctor, while when the novel closes in 1989 the daughter is still a student. Other reviews mention that this is autobiographical. What strikes me is that this is strongly allegorical - it is a story about Latvia under Soviet occupation from 1945 to 1989. The generations of woman are Latvia even as Marianne is France.
Grandmother lived in the period of independent Latvia and is strengthened by her memory of the old flag, her partner had been part of the Presidential guard before WWII. The daughter/granddaughter grows up at the tail end of the Soviet period, while this is oppressive, actually her narrative is about the rebirth of the Nation, first she learns that she is oppressed, she experiences the nature of Soviet coercion, but ultimately she learns too that she is strong, and at the close of the novel she is ready to begin adult life and to continue the life of the Nation, up to that point she feels herself as still connected to her mother by her umbilical cord so she is in a way only truly born as Latvia achieves independence. The mother however is born at the beginning of the Soviet take over and she gets full exposure to the Soviet system. She is highly gifted,capable, and develops a potentially mystic ability to diagnose illness, however the political situation means that her life is one of depression. Symbolically, a speciality of her's is helping women to conceive whose husbands are not capable, from which we are to understand that Soviet power saps the virility of men. Indeed it is a topsy turvey social and political order to the point that the mother becomes a father figure. She is unwilling to breast feed her daughter, who develops an aversion to milk and we met an intersex person, a contemporary and friend of the mother, if she could get hold of synthetic hormones then she could have a female puberty but for political reasons this is impossible, again indicating the unnaturalness of the political situation.
What I liked about the novel was that it reminded me of Professor Martens' Departure, Departure is a far subtler piece of fiction though it shares with this the anxiety about who you can talk with and what you can say to them, although Departure is set in the time of Nicholas II one can read it as the reality of a person belonging to a small community embedded in a large one, and whether it is Tsarist or Soviet, you are better off being guarded
It struck me that this was published very recently (2015) for a birth of a nation book (1991) and one which on the face of it would not have been particularly controversial, in Riga at least in 1990. I wondered given that there was an opportunity for the grandmother and her husband to flee at the end of WWII, and the stepgrandfather's time in the presidential guard of an authoritarian regime if there are hints here at a more than slightly conservative political basis for this novel.
This novel is narrated by two women in an identical voice and concerns three generations of women in Latvia. The Grandmother who gives birth circa 1945 to the Mother who gives birth to the daughter in circa 1969. The mother is a gifted doctor, while when the novel closes in 1989 the daughter is still a student. Other reviews mention that this is autobiographical. What strikes me is that this is strongly allegorical - it is a story about Latvia under Soviet occupation from 1945 to 1989. The generations of woman are Latvia even as Marianne is France.
Grandmother lived in the period of independent Latvia and is strengthened by her memory of the old flag, her partner had been part of the Presidential guard before WWII. The daughter/granddaughter grows up at the tail end of the Soviet period, while this is oppressive, actually her narrative is about the rebirth of the Nation, first she learns that she is oppressed, she experiences the nature of Soviet coercion, but ultimately she learns too that she is strong, and at the close of the novel she is ready to begin adult life and to continue the life of the Nation, up to that point she feels herself as still connected to her mother by her umbilical cord so she is in a way only truly born as Latvia achieves independence. The mother however is born at the beginning of the Soviet take over and she gets full exposure to the Soviet system. She is highly gifted,capable, and develops a potentially mystic ability to diagnose illness, however the political situation means that her life is one of depression. Symbolically, a speciality of her's is helping women to conceive whose husbands are not capable, from which we are to understand that Soviet power saps the virility of men. Indeed it is a topsy turvey social and political order to the point that the mother becomes a father figure. She is unwilling to breast feed her daughter, who develops an aversion to milk and we met an intersex person, a contemporary and friend of the mother, if she could get hold of synthetic hormones then she could have a female puberty but for political reasons this is impossible, again indicating the unnaturalness of the political situation.
What I liked about the novel was that it reminded me of Professor Martens' Departure, Departure is a far subtler piece of fiction though it shares with this the anxiety about who you can talk with and what you can say to them, although Departure is set in the time of Nicholas II one can read it as the reality of a person belonging to a small community embedded in a large one, and whether it is Tsarist or Soviet, you are better off being guarded
It struck me that this was published very recently (2015) for a birth of a nation book (1991) and one which on the face of it would not have been particularly controversial, in Riga at least in 1990. I wondered given that there was an opportunity for the grandmother and her husband to flee at the end of WWII, and the stepgrandfather's time in the presidential guard of an authoritarian regime if there are hints here at a more than slightly conservative political basis for this novel.
September 22, 2018
'Soviet Milk' is a novel which mixes despair with a kind of wistful beauty; the claustrophobia of Soviet Latvia is combined with the wistful, ethereal beauty of the Latvian countryside; a country in which the quivers of moon-light on the softly-set snow are off-set by the brutality of the regime which sought to crackdown on any sort of expression, any truth which disagreed with its own narrow definitions of it. The story follows a mother and her daughter; the mother's life overtaken by alcoholism and depression, a daughter whose precocity and problems with authority dimly echo her own mother's adolescence. Yet, despite their similarities, both exist in a vacuum from one another, unable to fully comprehend each other; the daughter unable to recognise the immense sense of unfulfilled ambitions of her mother and her inability to cope to exist within the prison cell of Latvian society; at one point her mother points out that her daughter's pet hamster, which cannibalised its children not longer after they were born, may have done so because it was unable to cope with them living in a cage. Yet her mother fails to see that the freedom so long hoped to feel will be fulfilled in her daughter, instead she is largely absorbed with her own demons-that her literary heroes are Winston Smith and Captain Ahab is telling, both are individuals who feel weighed down by their sense of self-oppression and both are indomitable in escaping it.
However it is not so much the political or sociological aspects of 'Soviet Milk' which remains with the reader, although these are, of course, interesting; it is the little moments of beauty that Ikstena is able to intersperse into the novel; the pale moonlight on a cold winter night which imbues the atmosphere with an iridescent beauty, the fragrance of the moss on a quiet afternoon of mushroom picking-these are the moments which stay with the reader, the small moments between a mother and daughter whose relationship is often fractured and distant.
However it is not so much the political or sociological aspects of 'Soviet Milk' which remains with the reader, although these are, of course, interesting; it is the little moments of beauty that Ikstena is able to intersperse into the novel; the pale moonlight on a cold winter night which imbues the atmosphere with an iridescent beauty, the fragrance of the moss on a quiet afternoon of mushroom picking-these are the moments which stay with the reader, the small moments between a mother and daughter whose relationship is often fractured and distant.
March 7, 2019
This seems like a good novella to read if you're interested in exploring the history of the Baltic States through literature. It's about lives lived, a daughter and mother, under the final 20 years of Soviet communism, a period not covered so often in other recently translated novels I've encountered, and it's one of the too-small number of Latvian books translated to English.
But if you are already familiar with the history, and/or were alive, even in the West, to see it on the news, the book (or perhaps this English translation) over-explains the basics of events and general tendencies, and avoids some specific vocabulary; for example samizdats aren't called samizdats, but "photocopies of smuggled books". It still includes some beautiful descriptions of local scenery and everyday items, but it feels like a novel written with an eye to a mainstream foreign market, or for young people in its home region. Maybe these explanations were added in the translation, but I'd have expected Peirene Press to assume a greater level of knowledge than this in their audience - perhaps the translation was done this way to make it palatable for sale to less boutique-y publishers outside the UK.
That would be understandable, as novels about difficult mother-daughter relationships - a small subset of those also with references to milk in the title (e.g. Deborah Levy's Hot Milk) - have been a recent publishing trend. I'm not sure that Soviet Milk stands out enough from these - although perhaps the mother having a serious full-time professional job (a gynaecologist) helps it to differ from all the books about mothers who were housewives, who were unable to work, or who did not identify themselves with a career. There are, though, some experiences in Soviet Milk which don't get a lot of coverage in fiction and drama, especially being a young carer, and being in a lone parent family which has a decent income.
I didn't especially like the way that the story was presented, and from a more objective standpoint this is, frankly, petty. I'd noticed Soviet Milk described as "autofiction" shortly before I read it, and I would rather have read this story presented as a memoir, with the adult daughter's understanding and analysis sitting alongside events rather seeing things presented from the child point of view, including incidents where a lack of wider knowledge and context underlay the apparent negative feeling, e.g. Hamsters do sometimes eat their young - this was well known at my primary school. Latchkey kids were a common phenomenon in Western countries in the 1970s too, and under Russian communism from its earliest days. The lack of childcare whilst the mother worked was systemic rather than a personal failing. A child doesn't experience such things in the aggregate, yes, but these understandings are part of the process of mature, informed adult making-sense of the past. (I often asked myself, especially in the early part of the book, whether it was framed the way it was as a literary device, or because it reflected where the writer was at psychologically. If the latter, my criticism was particularly unfair.) Sometimes understandings emerged as the narrator grew up, but I had already felt frustrated and irritable too often while reading the book, and I would rather have read this material in a different narrative framework.
I usually find it contrived when characters in novels are very passionate readers and find books a means of survival - it seems like a cheap tactic designed to get a certain type of reader on side, when a lot of real people get solace in other ways: however it also makes sense in the family context, as the mother's obsession with literature probably contributed to her daughter becoming a writer; and besides literature feels more valuable when it is something genuinely difficult to obtain, as it was under Soviet Communism, than when there is a surfeit.
And, whilst it isn't an issue that affects me personally, there are some women readers who would find it a problem that the book symbolically equates breastfeeding with being a good mother.
There were a lot of moments, especially in the first two thirds of the book, when I felt the book could have done a better job of explaining why characters felt as they did. It was just assumed the reader would get things. It seemed to be on an oddly surface level for a psychological novel. About many of the situations and sentences, there were questions a counsellor would ask to probe further. I want a memoir or autofiction to answer more of those. Although this silence could also be an effect of the setting, of living under the Soviet system: one had to keep some doors closed in one's head (about Latvian independence, personal feelings or their intertwining) and the type of self-reflection now encouraged by Western psychology was not a readily available tool - so why would narratives about c.1969-89 use it? Perhaps it is also a question of the ultimate unfathomability of chronic severe depression to a person who only gets reactively depressed: regardless of whether you grok it, it simply has to be accepted that it exists and some people experience it; and a child or teenager witnessing it may not understand it that way, and also has plenty of other problems to deal with.
I wasn't totally convinced by the mother's first person narrative. The voices were too similar, especially given their differences in age in the daughter's earlier years, and, although asterisks always marked a change of narrator, I sometimes forgot and would only realise a few paragraphs in that it was now someone different telling the story, and I would skip back and re-read with that context. It didn't go into much depth in describing how the mother felt in being away from the city and not fulfilling her youthful ambitions. She was living in what, to many, could seem like an idyllic location doing useful work with lower pressure than in an urban setting (the sort of life of which great memoirs are made - being a rural doctor with a great rapport with patients in a vanished world). I had to try and extrapolate, and remember that while that sounds idyllic to me now, I'd have felt exiled too if I'd had no choice but to live in such an area much before the age of 35 (she is only about 25 at the start). But it's a psychological novel: shouldn't it be saying what that meant to her? Should the reader have to mess around with guesswork and projection? Better for it to be a memoir in which the narrator says openly that she didn't understand such and such about her mother, or she imagined her mother might have felt like____. But fiction has more of an international market than memoir, so if you are writing in a small language, autofiction is a cannier choice.
As my irritation decreased, a day or two after finishing the book, it became easier to see a few positives. The mother is presented as excellent at her job and worthy of respect for that. It is absolutely not some kind of searing indictment of her as a person. It shows without telling the paradox that her child gave her motivation to live and do useful work despite her severe depression, at the same time that she wasn't terribly good or suitable as a mother (although there are also many worse out there). In a society where motherhood was not put on a pedestal, she perhaps would have made a conscious decision not to have a kid. The mother is an example of a sort of person known in psychological literature to be especially sensitive to conditions around her, conditions which don't affect the majority that way. It's previously been difficult to provide accessible supporting links for this idea, but this recent review of a new book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, now makes it possible. In Soviet Milk there isn't any of that romanticisation or overt association between mental illness and brilliance which is common in western literature, including medical memoir, see for example Kay Redfield Jamison. (The mother's bosses are instead puzzled by their coexistence in one person.) The mother's abilities academically and in bedside manner, and the severity of her depression, are both major features of her life, but they are not seen as inevitably interdependent.
The background feelings about Communism and independence were particularly similar to those I've previously encountered in Estonian literature (e.g. Sofie Oksanen). I guess this is inevitable given the similar circumstances and location of the countries, and the shortness of this book not providing more space to explore what is distinctively Latvian. There are a couple of Latvian books I've been thinking about reading for years, High Tide by Inga Ābele, and Flesh-Coloured Dominoes by Zigmunds Skujiņš, but Soviet Milk is the first time I've actually got round to reading one. For the first experience of reading a book from a country, there was surprisingly little that felt new about it. Although it would take more than one novella to get a feel for a country's literature and its distinctiveness.
I am puzzled by the very high average rating for Soviet Milk. It strikes me as a work similar to Guguły by Wioletta Greg: a short autobiographical or semi-autobiographical book about a girl growing up in the later years of the Communist Bloc, containing both lyrical descriptions and tough experiences - one which is going to connect strongly with some readers but not be overwhelmingly special to others. Yet Greg's book has an average of 3.79. In Soviet Milk, there is more material on the psychological repressiveness and occasional benefits of the Communist regime, because the family was more directly affected, and because the writer is five years older, but this subject had been documented in many novels before. There must be something unusual about Soviet Milk within the context of Latvian literature, and which I am missing. It would be good to know more background about it.
(Read Jan 2019, review Feb 2019.)
But if you are already familiar with the history, and/or were alive, even in the West, to see it on the news, the book (or perhaps this English translation) over-explains the basics of events and general tendencies, and avoids some specific vocabulary; for example samizdats aren't called samizdats, but "photocopies of smuggled books". It still includes some beautiful descriptions of local scenery and everyday items, but it feels like a novel written with an eye to a mainstream foreign market, or for young people in its home region. Maybe these explanations were added in the translation, but I'd have expected Peirene Press to assume a greater level of knowledge than this in their audience - perhaps the translation was done this way to make it palatable for sale to less boutique-y publishers outside the UK.
That would be understandable, as novels about difficult mother-daughter relationships - a small subset of those also with references to milk in the title (e.g. Deborah Levy's Hot Milk) - have been a recent publishing trend. I'm not sure that Soviet Milk stands out enough from these - although perhaps the mother having a serious full-time professional job (a gynaecologist) helps it to differ from all the books about mothers who were housewives, who were unable to work, or who did not identify themselves with a career. There are, though, some experiences in Soviet Milk which don't get a lot of coverage in fiction and drama, especially being a young carer, and being in a lone parent family which has a decent income.
I didn't especially like the way that the story was presented, and from a more objective standpoint this is, frankly, petty. I'd noticed Soviet Milk described as "autofiction" shortly before I read it, and I would rather have read this story presented as a memoir, with the adult daughter's understanding and analysis sitting alongside events rather seeing things presented from the child point of view, including incidents where a lack of wider knowledge and context underlay the apparent negative feeling, e.g. Hamsters do sometimes eat their young - this was well known at my primary school. Latchkey kids were a common phenomenon in Western countries in the 1970s too, and under Russian communism from its earliest days. The lack of childcare whilst the mother worked was systemic rather than a personal failing. A child doesn't experience such things in the aggregate, yes, but these understandings are part of the process of mature, informed adult making-sense of the past. (I often asked myself, especially in the early part of the book, whether it was framed the way it was as a literary device, or because it reflected where the writer was at psychologically. If the latter, my criticism was particularly unfair.) Sometimes understandings emerged as the narrator grew up, but I had already felt frustrated and irritable too often while reading the book, and I would rather have read this material in a different narrative framework.
I usually find it contrived when characters in novels are very passionate readers and find books a means of survival - it seems like a cheap tactic designed to get a certain type of reader on side, when a lot of real people get solace in other ways: however it also makes sense in the family context, as the mother's obsession with literature probably contributed to her daughter becoming a writer; and besides literature feels more valuable when it is something genuinely difficult to obtain, as it was under Soviet Communism, than when there is a surfeit.
And, whilst it isn't an issue that affects me personally, there are some women readers who would find it a problem that the book symbolically equates breastfeeding with being a good mother.
There were a lot of moments, especially in the first two thirds of the book, when I felt the book could have done a better job of explaining why characters felt as they did. It was just assumed the reader would get things. It seemed to be on an oddly surface level for a psychological novel. About many of the situations and sentences, there were questions a counsellor would ask to probe further. I want a memoir or autofiction to answer more of those. Although this silence could also be an effect of the setting, of living under the Soviet system: one had to keep some doors closed in one's head (about Latvian independence, personal feelings or their intertwining) and the type of self-reflection now encouraged by Western psychology was not a readily available tool - so why would narratives about c.1969-89 use it? Perhaps it is also a question of the ultimate unfathomability of chronic severe depression to a person who only gets reactively depressed: regardless of whether you grok it, it simply has to be accepted that it exists and some people experience it; and a child or teenager witnessing it may not understand it that way, and also has plenty of other problems to deal with.
I wasn't totally convinced by the mother's first person narrative. The voices were too similar, especially given their differences in age in the daughter's earlier years, and, although asterisks always marked a change of narrator, I sometimes forgot and would only realise a few paragraphs in that it was now someone different telling the story, and I would skip back and re-read with that context. It didn't go into much depth in describing how the mother felt in being away from the city and not fulfilling her youthful ambitions. She was living in what, to many, could seem like an idyllic location doing useful work with lower pressure than in an urban setting (the sort of life of which great memoirs are made - being a rural doctor with a great rapport with patients in a vanished world). I had to try and extrapolate, and remember that while that sounds idyllic to me now, I'd have felt exiled too if I'd had no choice but to live in such an area much before the age of 35 (she is only about 25 at the start). But it's a psychological novel: shouldn't it be saying what that meant to her? Should the reader have to mess around with guesswork and projection? Better for it to be a memoir in which the narrator says openly that she didn't understand such and such about her mother, or she imagined her mother might have felt like____. But fiction has more of an international market than memoir, so if you are writing in a small language, autofiction is a cannier choice.
As my irritation decreased, a day or two after finishing the book, it became easier to see a few positives. The mother is presented as excellent at her job and worthy of respect for that. It is absolutely not some kind of searing indictment of her as a person. It shows without telling the paradox that her child gave her motivation to live and do useful work despite her severe depression, at the same time that she wasn't terribly good or suitable as a mother (although there are also many worse out there). In a society where motherhood was not put on a pedestal, she perhaps would have made a conscious decision not to have a kid. The mother is an example of a sort of person known in psychological literature to be especially sensitive to conditions around her, conditions which don't affect the majority that way. It's previously been difficult to provide accessible supporting links for this idea, but this recent review of a new book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, now makes it possible. In Soviet Milk there isn't any of that romanticisation or overt association between mental illness and brilliance which is common in western literature, including medical memoir, see for example Kay Redfield Jamison. (The mother's bosses are instead puzzled by their coexistence in one person.) The mother's abilities academically and in bedside manner, and the severity of her depression, are both major features of her life, but they are not seen as inevitably interdependent.
The background feelings about Communism and independence were particularly similar to those I've previously encountered in Estonian literature (e.g. Sofie Oksanen). I guess this is inevitable given the similar circumstances and location of the countries, and the shortness of this book not providing more space to explore what is distinctively Latvian. There are a couple of Latvian books I've been thinking about reading for years, High Tide by Inga Ābele, and Flesh-Coloured Dominoes by Zigmunds Skujiņš, but Soviet Milk is the first time I've actually got round to reading one. For the first experience of reading a book from a country, there was surprisingly little that felt new about it. Although it would take more than one novella to get a feel for a country's literature and its distinctiveness.
I am puzzled by the very high average rating for Soviet Milk. It strikes me as a work similar to Guguły by Wioletta Greg: a short autobiographical or semi-autobiographical book about a girl growing up in the later years of the Communist Bloc, containing both lyrical descriptions and tough experiences - one which is going to connect strongly with some readers but not be overwhelmingly special to others. Yet Greg's book has an average of 3.79. In Soviet Milk, there is more material on the psychological repressiveness and occasional benefits of the Communist regime, because the family was more directly affected, and because the writer is five years older, but this subject had been documented in many novels before. There must be something unusual about Soviet Milk within the context of Latvian literature, and which I am missing. It would be good to know more background about it.
(Read Jan 2019, review Feb 2019.)
January 21, 2024
اول قراءة على تطبيق أبجد.. تجربة ممتعة بغض النظر عن قتامة الرواية..
أحب الكاتبات وأرى أنهن يعبرن عن مشاعر النساء التي لا يعلمها غيرهن.
تروي الكاتبة قصة "لاتفيا" البلد التي انضمت بالقوة للاتحاد السوفييتي، وأجبر أهلها على الخضوع القهري من خلال ثلاثة أجيال من النساء، كانت لكل منهن ردة فعل مختلفة على هذه الأحداث.
في كتب التربية يقولون أن الابن في الأسر المضطربة يحاول أن ينجو بنفسه لأنه لا يجد من يرعاه، وقد يأخذ دور المسؤول وإن كان هذه الدور يحرمه من طفولته وهكذا فعلت الابنة في هذه الرواية.
بين الأمل واليأس ننتقل مع أصوات الرواية، صوت الأم وصوت الابنة، تتعاطف الابنة مع الأم في غالب الأحيان وإن كانت لا تعفيها من اللوم أيضا..
علاقة معقدة ونهاية حزينة مختلطة بالأمل.
❞ أردت التحدث عن لاتفيانا التي ازدراها الاتحاد السوفييتي وألمانيا، وعن اللاجئين، وعن عمليات الإعدام والترحيل إلى سيبيريا، وعن الذين بقوا وسكتوا أما نحن، الجيل الثالث، فتم إسكاتنا منذ البداية أردت التحدث عن والدتي التي عاشت في مكان معزول في البلد؛ لأنها لم تستطع أن تعيش حياتين، ولم تتقبل حياة الازدراء، كما ازدريت لاتفيا. ❝
❞ قلت إن الجرس ذكرني بك
صمت الجميع ولم يكن لدي المزيد؛ لأقوله كان صمتاً رهيباً، لكنني لم أستطع أن أوضح بإيجاز لماذا ذكّرني هذا الجرس بك؛ لهذا السبب بقيت صامتة -
ولماذا بالفعل ذكرك الجرس بي؟
لأنه يبدو لي غالباً، أن شخصاً ما سرق فرحتك في الحياة، قطعها مثل لسان ذلك الجرس، ولا يمكنك الرنين بعد الآن، مثل الجرس تماماً هل استأت؟ حدقت فيها - لحمي ودمي - كانت رغبتها في الحياة أقوى من الشيطان ❝.
"سمعت جيسي تقول، وهي تحاول مواساة ابنتي: لا تتكلمي هكذا. يجب تقبّل الظروف والتعامل معها وفق ما لدينا. إننا مرهقون من حمل الأعباء الثقيلة. علينا قبول كل شيء بتواضع، حتى شد الفرش السلكية. بعد ذلك نستعيد قوانا الروحية".
أحب الكاتبات وأرى أنهن يعبرن عن مشاعر النساء التي لا يعلمها غيرهن.
تروي الكاتبة قصة "لاتفيا" البلد التي انضمت بالقوة للاتحاد السوفييتي، وأجبر أهلها على الخضوع القهري من خلال ثلاثة أجيال من النساء، كانت لكل منهن ردة فعل مختلفة على هذه الأحداث.
في كتب التربية يقولون أن الابن في الأسر المضطربة يحاول أن ينجو بنفسه لأنه لا يجد من يرعاه، وقد يأخذ دور المسؤول وإن كان هذه الدور يحرمه من طفولته وهكذا فعلت الابنة في هذه الرواية.
بين الأمل واليأس ننتقل مع أصوات الرواية، صوت الأم وصوت الابنة، تتعاطف الابنة مع الأم في غالب الأحيان وإن كانت لا تعفيها من اللوم أيضا..
علاقة معقدة ونهاية حزينة مختلطة بالأمل.
❞ أردت التحدث عن لاتفيانا التي ازدراها الاتحاد السوفييتي وألمانيا، وعن اللاجئين، وعن عمليات الإعدام والترحيل إلى سيبيريا، وعن الذين بقوا وسكتوا أما نحن، الجيل الثالث، فتم إسكاتنا منذ البداية أردت التحدث عن والدتي التي عاشت في مكان معزول في البلد؛ لأنها لم تستطع أن تعيش حياتين، ولم تتقبل حياة الازدراء، كما ازدريت لاتفيا. ❝
❞ قلت إن الجرس ذكرني بك
صمت الجميع ولم يكن لدي المزيد؛ لأقوله كان صمتاً رهيباً، لكنني لم أستطع أن أوضح بإيجاز لماذا ذكّرني هذا الجرس بك؛ لهذا السبب بقيت صامتة -
ولماذا بالفعل ذكرك الجرس بي؟
لأنه يبدو لي غالباً، أن شخصاً ما سرق فرحتك في الحياة، قطعها مثل لسان ذلك الجرس، ولا يمكنك الرنين بعد الآن، مثل الجرس تماماً هل استأت؟ حدقت فيها - لحمي ودمي - كانت رغبتها في الحياة أقوى من الشيطان ❝.
"سمعت جيسي تقول، وهي تحاول مواساة ابنتي: لا تتكلمي هكذا. يجب تقبّل الظروف والتعامل معها وفق ما لدينا. إننا مرهقون من حمل الأعباء الثقيلة. علينا قبول كل شيء بتواضع، حتى شد الفرش السلكية. بعد ذلك نستعيد قوانا الروحية".
January 17, 2020
Mačiau, kad rimti skaitovai-kritikai vertina šią knygą griežtai, tai net nejauku duoti tas 5 žvaigždutes... Na bet ir taip gyvenime gausu pagundų neišdrįsti prisipažinti, kad tau kažkas nuoširdžiai patiko, ypač kai prieš pat tau pasisakant, kažkas tą dalyką sumala į miltus. Nors galbūt aš labiau vertinu ne pačią knygą, o jos atspindį manyje.
Iki šiol sovietmečio, kuriame negyvenau, tragizmą suvokiau labiau per protą, per faktus ir pasakojimus, kurie taip ir likdavo kitų žmonių tragedijomis. Ši knyga man padovanojo galimybę visa tai išjausti širdimi. Kartu su knygos moterimis dusau nuo priespaudos, ištraukto liežuvio, atimtos laisvės elgtis pagal savo sąžinę ir realizuoti savo talentus. Tikiu, kad tai tik viena sovietmečio pusė, bet man to užtenka, kad labiau vertinčiau savo gimimo datą.
Man labai patiko, kad knygoje galėjome išgirsti du balsus - tiek motinos, tiek dukros. Tai padėjo įsijausti į kiekvienos iš jų kančią ir nesmerkti motinos, kuri iš šono atrodytų kaip beširdė motinos pareigų neatliekanti pabaisa. Man pavyko ją pamilti, suprasti jos elgesį ir nesmerkti.
Man taip pat labai patiko knygos kalba, simboliai, metaforos, vis pasikartojantis pieno ir narvo motyvas.Dažnai nesusimąstau apie vertėjų darbą, bet šįkart tikrai pajutau, kaip puikiai išversta ši knyga.
Tik pasidarė neramu, kad mes, būdami laisvi, vis dar labai dažnai tyliai kenčiame neteisybę tarsi kažko bijodami. Akivaizdu, kad narve gyvenę tėvai sunkiai gali išmokyti savo vaikus gyventi laisvėje. Gyvename geriausiais laikais, bet tas iš kartos į kartą perduodamas nematomas protėvių palikimas vis dar spaudžia pečius ir širdį. Išmokom laisvai pirkti, bet kažin ar kada išmoksime leisti sau laisvai mąstyti?
Iki šiol sovietmečio, kuriame negyvenau, tragizmą suvokiau labiau per protą, per faktus ir pasakojimus, kurie taip ir likdavo kitų žmonių tragedijomis. Ši knyga man padovanojo galimybę visa tai išjausti širdimi. Kartu su knygos moterimis dusau nuo priespaudos, ištraukto liežuvio, atimtos laisvės elgtis pagal savo sąžinę ir realizuoti savo talentus. Tikiu, kad tai tik viena sovietmečio pusė, bet man to užtenka, kad labiau vertinčiau savo gimimo datą.
Man labai patiko, kad knygoje galėjome išgirsti du balsus - tiek motinos, tiek dukros. Tai padėjo įsijausti į kiekvienos iš jų kančią ir nesmerkti motinos, kuri iš šono atrodytų kaip beširdė motinos pareigų neatliekanti pabaisa. Man pavyko ją pamilti, suprasti jos elgesį ir nesmerkti.
Man taip pat labai patiko knygos kalba, simboliai, metaforos, vis pasikartojantis pieno ir narvo motyvas.Dažnai nesusimąstau apie vertėjų darbą, bet šįkart tikrai pajutau, kaip puikiai išversta ši knyga.
Tik pasidarė neramu, kad mes, būdami laisvi, vis dar labai dažnai tyliai kenčiame neteisybę tarsi kažko bijodami. Akivaizdu, kad narve gyvenę tėvai sunkiai gali išmokyti savo vaikus gyventi laisvėje. Gyvename geriausiais laikais, bet tas iš kartos į kartą perduodamas nematomas protėvių palikimas vis dar spaudžia pečius ir širdį. Išmokom laisvai pirkti, bet kažin ar kada išmoksime leisti sau laisvai mąstyti?
March 28, 2019
Man trūksta žodžių, koks tai geras ir koks sunkus kūrinys. Vietomis gniaužė kvapą nuo jausmų ir patirčių aprašymų. Buvo gaila visų, labiausiai dėl to, kad nei viena iš jų nenorėjo ir nematė reikalo savęs gailėti. Liko mintis, kad mes taip dažnai pamirštam, kiek daug ir kaip toli gali mūsų veiksmų pasekmės nukeliaut
February 5, 2019
Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2019
I don't have time to write a lengthy review, but fortunately Antonomasia, Neil, Paul and Gumble's Yard have already done that very well.
That this book is currently bottom of the Mookse group's rankings for the Republic of Consciousness Prize longlist is really more an indication of the strength of the list more than a criticism of this book, which is interesting, readable and eventually quite moving. The Latvian perspective on the latter days of Soviet communism and its fall is not one we hear very often, in fact I don't think I have ever read a Latvian book before.
The main stories are personal, as the narration is alternated between a daughter recalling her childhood from her birth in 1969 through to the fall of the Berlin wall, and her depressed and suicidal mother, who has lost a good job in a St Petersburg hospital after defending a victim of domestic violence, and leads a frustrated life in the country. The daughter is mainly brought up by her grandparents in Riga - although the grandmother does not get a narrative voice of her own, she is in some ways the strongest character.
I don't have time to write a lengthy review, but fortunately Antonomasia, Neil, Paul and Gumble's Yard have already done that very well.
That this book is currently bottom of the Mookse group's rankings for the Republic of Consciousness Prize longlist is really more an indication of the strength of the list more than a criticism of this book, which is interesting, readable and eventually quite moving. The Latvian perspective on the latter days of Soviet communism and its fall is not one we hear very often, in fact I don't think I have ever read a Latvian book before.
The main stories are personal, as the narration is alternated between a daughter recalling her childhood from her birth in 1969 through to the fall of the Berlin wall, and her depressed and suicidal mother, who has lost a good job in a St Petersburg hospital after defending a victim of domestic violence, and leads a frustrated life in the country. The daughter is mainly brought up by her grandparents in Riga - although the grandmother does not get a narrative voice of her own, she is in some ways the strongest character.
October 29, 2015
Iztulkot! Vajag iztulkot krieviski, angliski, vāciski, franciski, spāniski un pārējās ES valodās! Lai lasa un izjūt, ko dod filozofēšana Vecajā Eiropā, kuru plānprātīgi ļaudis Āzijā realizē dzīvē. Francijā joprojām ir komunisti, kas koķetē ar Krieviju. Kādēļ mums šis eksperiments bija vajadzīgs?
Iztulkot! Un nākamā gada grāmatu izstādē Vācijā šīs trīs prezentēt: Nora Ikstena "Mātes piens", Māra Zālīte "Pieci pirksti" un Kaspars Pūce "Pūcesbērna patiesie piedzīvojumi Padomijā". Vecajai Eiropai ir jājūt, kādas sekas rodas no neprātīgas filozofēšanas.
Un pašiem ar vajag šos trīs lasīt un pārlasīt. Lai atcerās tās brīvības alkas, lai nedomā, ka viss ir pierasts. Brīvība nav Divdabis.
Iztulkot! Un nākamā gada grāmatu izstādē Vācijā šīs trīs prezentēt: Nora Ikstena "Mātes piens", Māra Zālīte "Pieci pirksti" un Kaspars Pūce "Pūcesbērna patiesie piedzīvojumi Padomijā". Vecajai Eiropai ir jājūt, kādas sekas rodas no neprātīgas filozofēšanas.
Un pašiem ar vajag šos trīs lasīt un pārlasīt. Lai atcerās tās brīvības alkas, lai nedomā, ka viss ir pierasts. Brīvība nav Divdabis.
October 25, 2015
Smeldzīga, ak vai, cik smeldzīga grāmata. Tāda, ko iesūkt sevī vienā elpas vilcienā un negribēt atrauties no lappusēm par spīti visam.
Stāsts par padumjajiem laikiem, kas samaitā tik daudz nevainīgu dzīvju, par depresiju, par mātēm un meitām, par pekli un centieniem ievilkt citā cilvēkā gribu dzīvot.
Klusa, piezemēta, tomēr tik spēcīga grāmata, kas nelaiž vaļā un rada aizdomīgu kamolu kaut kur kakla rajonā.
Stāsts par padumjajiem laikiem, kas samaitā tik daudz nevainīgu dzīvju, par depresiju, par mātēm un meitām, par pekli un centieniem ievilkt citā cilvēkā gribu dzīvot.
Klusa, piezemēta, tomēr tik spēcīga grāmata, kas nelaiž vaļā un rada aizdomīgu kamolu kaut kur kakla rajonā.
November 15, 2017
4,5 zvaigznes. Atkal tie simboli un alegorijas. Paliek jautājums, cik lielā mērā mātes depresiju ietekmēja pastāvošā iekārta. Vieni dzīvo, kamēr citi nespēj un negrib, bet tā ir bijis visos laikos. Spēcīgi uzrakstīts romāns. Vairāk pārdomu https://gramatas.wordpress.com/2017/1...
March 17, 2020
Nē, es neraudu, kāds vienkārši griež sīpolus.
November 1, 2024
رواية عاطفية جداً ترويها الكاتبة على لسان الأم و إبنتها، بين مشاعر الأمومة الممزقة و التي لطخت مبكرا بسواد الاكتئاب النفسي و مشاعر الطفولة التي تتوق للفرح وصنع ذكريات سعيدة مع الأم رغم قساوة الحاضر.
الأم طبيبة النساء المثقفة المكتئبة جدا و فاقدة للرغبة في الحياة وحاولت الانتحار مرات عديدة لتنهي بذالك معاناتها اليومية مع مرارة الإحتلال و ضم بلادها لتيفيا عنوة للإتحاد السوفييتي والتي لم تستطع العيش تحت قسوة المنفى ووالوحدة.
ابنتها الحنونة ورغم سنواتها الثلاثة عشر فقط فقد اعتنت جيدا بأمها مع مرور السنوات، حاولت إنتشال أمها من براثن الاكتئاب و ومحاوالاتها الطفولية في إيقاد شغف بالحياة في قلب الأم المكلومة المسلوبة لكل رغبة في الحياة.
رواية نسجت خيوطها في خطين متوازيين بين صوت الأم الحزينة و الفتاة المطيعة الإيجابية التي أحببتها جدا و أحببت جدا طريقة حبها و معاملتها لوالدتها.
مع سرد الجدة لبعض الأجزاء الصغيرة.
رواية حكت معاناة ثلاث نساء من عبر ثلاثة أجيال وأحوال البلاد المحتلة و المسلوبة، و الأحوال السياسية والاجتماعية للبلادهن في تلك الحقبة الزمنية.
مرارة الإحتلال ومرارة أم فقدت كل شيء ومرارة فتاة أدركت باكراً جدا أن أمها لا تريد هذه الحياة وقد ترحل في أي وقت، موجعة مؤلمة.
الأم طبيبة النساء المثقفة المكتئبة جدا و فاقدة للرغبة في الحياة وحاولت الانتحار مرات عديدة لتنهي بذالك معاناتها اليومية مع مرارة الإحتلال و ضم بلادها لتيفيا عنوة للإتحاد السوفييتي والتي لم تستطع العيش تحت قسوة المنفى ووالوحدة.
ابنتها الحنونة ورغم سنواتها الثلاثة عشر فقط فقد اعتنت جيدا بأمها مع مرور السنوات، حاولت إنتشال أمها من براثن الاكتئاب و ومحاوالاتها الطفولية في إيقاد شغف بالحياة في قلب الأم المكلومة المسلوبة لكل رغبة في الحياة.
رواية نسجت خيوطها في خطين متوازيين بين صوت الأم الحزينة و الفتاة المطيعة الإيجابية التي أحببتها جدا و أحببت جدا طريقة حبها و معاملتها لوالدتها.
مع سرد الجدة لبعض الأجزاء الصغيرة.
رواية حكت معاناة ثلاث نساء من عبر ثلاثة أجيال وأحوال البلاد المحتلة و المسلوبة، و الأحوال السياسية والاجتماعية للبلادهن في تلك الحقبة الزمنية.
مرارة الإحتلال ومرارة أم فقدت كل شيء ومرارة فتاة أدركت باكراً جدا أن أمها لا تريد هذه الحياة وقد ترحل في أي وقت، موجعة مؤلمة.
February 18, 2019
Re read following its longlisting for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize and shortlisting for the EBRD prize.
This book was published by the UK small press, Peirene Press a boutique publishing house with a traditional commitment to first class European literature in high-quality translation.
Perhaps what is most impressive about this book is its origin – certainly the first Latvian novel I have read and I expect one of the few to have been translated into English
As with all Peirene novels, the book opens with a quote from the founder Meike Ziervogel explaining the book and implicitly her reasoning behind publishing it. In this case, to quote it in full:
The book opens with each character recounting their birth – the daughter in 1969 (9 months after Jan Palach’s self-immolation in Prague); the mother in October 1944 (the month when the Russian forces liberated Riga from the German occupation). Thereafter the book has alternate first party sections written by the two of them – although often they will continue to narrate the same scene (or say the daughter will say what her mother is doing or saying): further I found it hard to distinguish between the voices (or at least the translated voices) of the two characters which seemed a weakness to the book given their very different generations and characters.
A clear “milk” theme runs through the book – but at times I felt it was overlaboured and unnatural at least in English: for example the water of a river in Summer is described as “warm as milk” which really did not work for me, and I still have no idea what Jesse – stop fussing! We’re on the Milky Way playing dipping our legs in until our feet disappear really is meant to signify.
I understand from Paul’s review of this book that there is a chance that this translation may have been deliberately condensed to fit the Peirene housestyle, described by the TLS as Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting; literary cinema for those fatigued by film and to be honest if this is the case then I think the novel was all the stronger for it – I felt I was already struggling to be interested the Latvian poetry and Soviet songs which were simplified or condensed in this translation.
I found some of the side-characters in the book – a hamster which eats its own children and a hermaphrodite odd and rather over-engineered imagery for the situation of the two main characters. The book also seems to rely far too frequently on dreams to convey character development and feeling.
Where the book I feel succeeds best is in the excellent insight not just into Latvian society but
into how the effect of the Soviet occupation (and the complexities of the impact of the Great Patriotic War on Latvia) played out across different generations.
The grandmother, scarred by her own history, both her first husband’s deportation and the complex past of her new husband (once a soldier in the Great Patriotic War, both his service in the guard of Latvia’s president and his brother’s voluntary enlisting in the German army were obscured by this illustrious background) effectively keeps her head down, at least when not in the privacy of her own home, for many years. She urges the mother to be an active member of the Communist youth organisation ... a honourable and faithful young Soviet citizen.
The mother reacts the opposite – within me blossomed a hatred for the duplicity and hypocrisy of this existence. We carried flags in the .. parade[s] in honour of … Communism, while at home we crossed ourselves and waited for the English army to come and free Latvia from the Russian boot – a bitterness which turns into despair and lethargy after her promising career as a doctor falls foul of the Soviet authorities in Leningrad.
The daughter meanwhile is initially naïve about the history of her own country, uncomprehending of her mother’s despair and resignation, initially ignorant of her grandparent’s secret patriotism – but overtime develops her own more naïve and optimistic pro-freedom views, which are shaken when she is force to denounce a liberal teacher but which still allow her to greet with joy the loosening of Soviet Power and the fall of the Berlin wall which ends the book.
Overall certainly an interesting book – full of many faults which if it were in English would make it a below average literary novel, but redeemed by the insight it gives into a different society.
This book was published by the UK small press, Peirene Press a boutique publishing house with a traditional commitment to first class European literature in high-quality translation.
Perhaps what is most impressive about this book is its origin – certainly the first Latvian novel I have read and I expect one of the few to have been translated into English
As with all Peirene novels, the book opens with a quote from the founder Meike Ziervogel explaining the book and implicitly her reasoning behind publishing it. In this case, to quote it in full:
At first glance this novel depicts a troubled mother-daughter relationship set in the Soviet-ruled Baltics between 1969 and 1989. Yet just beneath the surface lies something far more positive: the story of three generations of women, and the importance of a grandmother in giving her granddaughter what her daughter is unable to provide – love, and the desire for life.
The book opens with each character recounting their birth – the daughter in 1969 (9 months after Jan Palach’s self-immolation in Prague); the mother in October 1944 (the month when the Russian forces liberated Riga from the German occupation). Thereafter the book has alternate first party sections written by the two of them – although often they will continue to narrate the same scene (or say the daughter will say what her mother is doing or saying): further I found it hard to distinguish between the voices (or at least the translated voices) of the two characters which seemed a weakness to the book given their very different generations and characters.
A clear “milk” theme runs through the book – but at times I felt it was overlaboured and unnatural at least in English: for example the water of a river in Summer is described as “warm as milk” which really did not work for me, and I still have no idea what Jesse – stop fussing! We’re on the Milky Way playing dipping our legs in until our feet disappear really is meant to signify.
I understand from Paul’s review of this book that there is a chance that this translation may have been deliberately condensed to fit the Peirene housestyle, described by the TLS as Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting; literary cinema for those fatigued by film and to be honest if this is the case then I think the novel was all the stronger for it – I felt I was already struggling to be interested the Latvian poetry and Soviet songs which were simplified or condensed in this translation.
I found some of the side-characters in the book – a hamster which eats its own children and a hermaphrodite odd and rather over-engineered imagery for the situation of the two main characters. The book also seems to rely far too frequently on dreams to convey character development and feeling.
Where the book I feel succeeds best is in the excellent insight not just into Latvian society but
into how the effect of the Soviet occupation (and the complexities of the impact of the Great Patriotic War on Latvia) played out across different generations.
The grandmother, scarred by her own history, both her first husband’s deportation and the complex past of her new husband (once a soldier in the Great Patriotic War, both his service in the guard of Latvia’s president and his brother’s voluntary enlisting in the German army were obscured by this illustrious background) effectively keeps her head down, at least when not in the privacy of her own home, for many years. She urges the mother to be an active member of the Communist youth organisation ... a honourable and faithful young Soviet citizen.
The mother reacts the opposite – within me blossomed a hatred for the duplicity and hypocrisy of this existence. We carried flags in the .. parade[s] in honour of … Communism, while at home we crossed ourselves and waited for the English army to come and free Latvia from the Russian boot – a bitterness which turns into despair and lethargy after her promising career as a doctor falls foul of the Soviet authorities in Leningrad.
The daughter meanwhile is initially naïve about the history of her own country, uncomprehending of her mother’s despair and resignation, initially ignorant of her grandparent’s secret patriotism – but overtime develops her own more naïve and optimistic pro-freedom views, which are shaken when she is force to denounce a liberal teacher but which still allow her to greet with joy the loosening of Soviet Power and the fall of the Berlin wall which ends the book.
Overall certainly an interesting book – full of many faults which if it were in English would make it a below average literary novel, but redeemed by the insight it gives into a different society.
January 15, 2019
Longlisted for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize
The judges' citation:
My grandmother and step-grandfather were the closest thing I had to parents. My mother stood somewhere outside her family. Our lives revolved around her - but not for maternal nurturing.
One of the pleasures of translated fiction is reading literature from different languages and countries and I think this is the first Latvian novel I have read.
Thanks are due to the translator, Margita Gailitis, and to another of our wonderful small independent presses, Pereine, this novel being the first in their 2018 Life In Exile series:
The story is told in alternating first person narration from the mother and daughter, although there is no real attempt at distinct voices for the two characters, and that combined with the lack of proper names, and also the fact that the mother and daughter often narrate the other story, does makes it a little tricky at times to remember who said what - perhaps a deliberate artistic effect?
In October 1944, the mother of the family is born in Riga amid the chaos of war and, at the bombed out hospital, the ravages of nasal typhoid fever, which her mother, the grandmother of the family, attempts to combat by squirting her milk into my nose. Pus, milk and blood together drip from my tiny nose. I gag and breath, gag and breathe.
Two months later, her father is deported to Siberia, when he tries to resist some soldiers chopping down the spruce trees from which he makes a living of sorts, and her mother - the grandmother - remarries, hearing that he has died, although he does eventually return, a broken man, who only the daughter visits.
Although bought up by her step-father and the her mother as an ostensibly good Soviet citizen, at their home and in her heart a very different loyalty reigns, leaving her confused and angry:
Within me bloomed a hatred for the duplicity and hypocrisy of this existence. We carried flags in the May and November parades in honour of the Red Army, the Revolution and Communism, while at home we crossed ourselves and waited for the English army to come and free Latvia from the Russian boot.
In October 1969 her daughter is born - 1969 being, symbolically, the year of both Woodstock but, in the Soviet occupied countries, of Jan Palach. Her reaction to her daughter's birth is very different to the grandmother, disappearing until her breast milk dries up:
I disappeared for days so I wouldn’t have to feed my child. My milk was bitter: the milk of incomprehension, of extinction. I protected my child from it.
She becomes increasingly detached from her daughter and the grandmother (their life where I didn’t fit, but inhabited it like a ghost from another world to whose mystery I was increasingly drawn). That other world is that of gynecology and obstetrics, the emerging sciences of fertility treatment and hormone therapy, and she finds a role in Leningrad:
Leningrad was waiting for me with its new scientific discovering and free spirit which oppressed Riga was not allowed
Leningrad is later key to her daughter's emotional wakening as taken by a teacher, with a dissident streak, to the Hermitage she faints in front of the (unnamed in the text) painting 'Moonlit night on the Dnieper' by Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi
But when things go wrong for the mother in Leningrad and she falls foul of the Soviet authorities, she returns not to Riga but instead seeks exile in the Latvian countryside where she spends the rest of her life and the rest of the book, working in an ambulatory health centre, unable to accept the compromises of life in the Soviet system.
Meanwhile her daughter's life alternates between her mother's house, where she attends primary school, and her grandmother and step-grandfather in Riga, where she attends secondary school, as the timeframe moves towards another symbolic year, 1989, her 20th birthday, and the fall of the Berlin Wall which ends the novel and brings the promise of the yearned-for freedom for Latvia.
This is novel heavy on symbolism. Milk features not just as breast milk, but also as the milk it is compulsory for children to drink in the Soviet era schools, which the daughter rebels against, as a reference to pre-Soviet Latvian history: My father used to talk about the time when Latvia was independent, and about the Milk Restaurant , which stood when the Hotel Latvia now reached for the sky. and even to the waters of the rivers and the Black Sea at Alushtai where the daughter and grandmother holiday, water warm as milk. Indeed the Latvian original title would translate as Mother's Milk, but Edward St Aubyn and others have already used that in English, and the Soviet Milk title serve equally well.
Other elements include the only true friend the mother makes in her internal exile, a hermaphrodite (a metaphor perhaps for Latvia under Soviet rule) and the daughter's pet hamster who dies:
“What happened?” asked my mother
“He are his children and afterwards died longing for freedom,” I replied.
“A brave hamster,” my mother said.
The mother also identifies strongly with two literary characters, first Ishmael from Moby Dick [and, as he does in turn Ishmael from the bible, another exile] and later Winston from a samizdat copy of 1984.
Literature is also key as her daughter eventually comes to her own understanding of her mother's perspective and the yoke under which Latvia struggles, in particular when she comes across, via the same teacher who took her to Leningrad, the works of the poet Klāvs Elsbergs (not actually named in the text, at least in the English version). Elsberg later dies, in 1987, in suspicious circumstances (the novel itself claims as fact that he was pushed to his death).
However this did highlight an issue I had with the translation, or rather the editing of the translation, as interestingly there is a chapter of the novel by the same translator on the Latvian Literature website, a platform to promote international rights of Latvian works (http://www.latvianliterature.lv/uploa...).
The chapter with the dual translations is the one where the daughter discovers Elsbergs but begins with an incident when the children are bullied by a military instructor, a voyenruk.
The website version - I suspect the original used to promote the rights - reads:
It turned out that her klapan – the mask’s valve was closed, which she hadn’t noticed, and she nearly smothered while waiting for the voyenruk’s order.
With all my heart I hated this short, fat voyenruk. Bit by bit in my imagination he became the main culprit responsible for this mess of Soviet parallel lives. This repulsive, slimy toad who had crawled into our water lily pond, devoured all the peace loving dragon-flies, and now was squatting and croaking on a lily-pad, swelling ever fatter. And we all had to swallow that toad!
And then a ray of light pierced this hopelessness.
which becomes in the Peirene edition:
One friend fainted because it turned out that her mask's valve was closed. She nearly suffocated while waiting for the order.
I hated that short, fat instructor. In my imagination he became the culprit for this Soviet absurdity of parallel lives Then a ray of light pierced my hopelessness.
It reads better but some of the poetry has been lost - and indeed later in the chapter this is literally the case:
Website version:
Here then is an example - a poem titled ‘Krasta runa’ – ‘The Seashore Speaks’, written by a young poet, only ten years older than we were. Teacher Blūms began to recite:
To stand so long chilled to the bone, letting my nose weep,
With quite a Latvian joy I allow my soul, my head to freeze.
The sea rises and crashes, rises and breaks apart again
(Others rise and crash, rise and break apart again.)
Forever and ever, time after time, now or never
Hang on, stay mum, sit tight, stifle the soul’s hunger.
He had read the poem in Latvian but it was a different language. I, the vunderkind and the other girl sat transfixed, as if doused with water. Just a moment ago, we in our gas masks had gasped for air waiting for the voyenruk’s order, but here someone was standing on the sea shore, where waves rose and broke.
But the Peirene version now reads simply:
Our first text was a poem titled 'Krasta runa' - 'The Seashore Speaks' - written by a poet only ten years older than us. Teacher Blūms recited - and we three sat transfixed. Just a moment ago, we had been gasping for air in our gas masks, waiting for our orders. Now we were standing on the seashore, where waves rose and broke.
NB the Latvian original of the poem:
Ilgi stāvēt un salt, un
degunam tecēt sev lieku,
Dvēseli izsaldēju un galvu
ar tīri latvisku prieku.
Jūra veļas un sabrūk, un
veļas atkal un jūk.
(Citi veļas un sabrūk, un
veļas atkal un jūk.)
Mūžu mūžos, laiku laikos,
tagad vai nekad.
Turies, mute, paciet, sēža,
aizveries, dvēseles bad!
Has the desire to make Peirene novel less than 200 pages, digestible in a single sitting, led to some loss of poetry and imagery? A major pity if so.
But nevertheless, still a very worthwhile book and a contender for the Man Booker International longlist.
The judges' citation:
This is classic Peirene Press: a short, intense novel that seems to contain more than is possible in 140-odd pages. Set in the 1970s and 80s in the Soviet-controlled Baltics, and telling the story of three generations of women, Soviet Milk may be the first Latvian novel you’ve read; we hope there is more to come.Throughout my childhood the smell of medicine and disinfectant replaced the fragrance of mother’s milk.
My grandmother and step-grandfather were the closest thing I had to parents. My mother stood somewhere outside her family. Our lives revolved around her - but not for maternal nurturing.
One of the pleasures of translated fiction is reading literature from different languages and countries and I think this is the first Latvian novel I have read.
Thanks are due to the translator, Margita Gailitis, and to another of our wonderful small independent presses, Pereine, this novel being the first in their 2018 Life In Exile series:
Peirene Press takes its name from a Greek nymph who turned into a water spring. The poets of Corinth discovered the Peirene source and, for centuries, they drank this water to receive inspiration.The idea of metamorphosis fits the art of translation beautifully. To turn a foreign book into an enjoyable English read involves careful attention to detail.Nora Ikstena's Mātes piens published in 2015, was indeed a bestseller in the Baltics and tells the story of three generations of a family centred around Riga - which I will try to refer to as the grandmother, mother and daughter in this review.
Peirene specializes in contemporary European novellas and short novels in English translation. All our books are best-sellers and/or award-winners in their own countries. We only publish books of less than 200 pages that can be read in the same time it takes to watch a film.
The story is told in alternating first person narration from the mother and daughter, although there is no real attempt at distinct voices for the two characters, and that combined with the lack of proper names, and also the fact that the mother and daughter often narrate the other story, does makes it a little tricky at times to remember who said what - perhaps a deliberate artistic effect?
In October 1944, the mother of the family is born in Riga amid the chaos of war and, at the bombed out hospital, the ravages of nasal typhoid fever, which her mother, the grandmother of the family, attempts to combat by squirting her milk into my nose. Pus, milk and blood together drip from my tiny nose. I gag and breath, gag and breathe.
Two months later, her father is deported to Siberia, when he tries to resist some soldiers chopping down the spruce trees from which he makes a living of sorts, and her mother - the grandmother - remarries, hearing that he has died, although he does eventually return, a broken man, who only the daughter visits.
Although bought up by her step-father and the her mother as an ostensibly good Soviet citizen, at their home and in her heart a very different loyalty reigns, leaving her confused and angry:
Within me bloomed a hatred for the duplicity and hypocrisy of this existence. We carried flags in the May and November parades in honour of the Red Army, the Revolution and Communism, while at home we crossed ourselves and waited for the English army to come and free Latvia from the Russian boot.
In October 1969 her daughter is born - 1969 being, symbolically, the year of both Woodstock but, in the Soviet occupied countries, of Jan Palach. Her reaction to her daughter's birth is very different to the grandmother, disappearing until her breast milk dries up:
I disappeared for days so I wouldn’t have to feed my child. My milk was bitter: the milk of incomprehension, of extinction. I protected my child from it.
She becomes increasingly detached from her daughter and the grandmother (their life where I didn’t fit, but inhabited it like a ghost from another world to whose mystery I was increasingly drawn). That other world is that of gynecology and obstetrics, the emerging sciences of fertility treatment and hormone therapy, and she finds a role in Leningrad:
Leningrad was waiting for me with its new scientific discovering and free spirit which oppressed Riga was not allowed
Leningrad is later key to her daughter's emotional wakening as taken by a teacher, with a dissident streak, to the Hermitage she faints in front of the (unnamed in the text) painting 'Moonlit night on the Dnieper' by Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi
But when things go wrong for the mother in Leningrad and she falls foul of the Soviet authorities, she returns not to Riga but instead seeks exile in the Latvian countryside where she spends the rest of her life and the rest of the book, working in an ambulatory health centre, unable to accept the compromises of life in the Soviet system.
Meanwhile her daughter's life alternates between her mother's house, where she attends primary school, and her grandmother and step-grandfather in Riga, where she attends secondary school, as the timeframe moves towards another symbolic year, 1989, her 20th birthday, and the fall of the Berlin Wall which ends the novel and brings the promise of the yearned-for freedom for Latvia.
This is novel heavy on symbolism. Milk features not just as breast milk, but also as the milk it is compulsory for children to drink in the Soviet era schools, which the daughter rebels against, as a reference to pre-Soviet Latvian history: My father used to talk about the time when Latvia was independent, and about the Milk Restaurant , which stood when the Hotel Latvia now reached for the sky. and even to the waters of the rivers and the Black Sea at Alushtai where the daughter and grandmother holiday, water warm as milk. Indeed the Latvian original title would translate as Mother's Milk, but Edward St Aubyn and others have already used that in English, and the Soviet Milk title serve equally well.
Other elements include the only true friend the mother makes in her internal exile, a hermaphrodite (a metaphor perhaps for Latvia under Soviet rule) and the daughter's pet hamster who dies:
“What happened?” asked my mother
“He are his children and afterwards died longing for freedom,” I replied.
“A brave hamster,” my mother said.
The mother also identifies strongly with two literary characters, first Ishmael from Moby Dick [and, as he does in turn Ishmael from the bible, another exile] and later Winston from a samizdat copy of 1984.
Literature is also key as her daughter eventually comes to her own understanding of her mother's perspective and the yoke under which Latvia struggles, in particular when she comes across, via the same teacher who took her to Leningrad, the works of the poet Klāvs Elsbergs (not actually named in the text, at least in the English version). Elsberg later dies, in 1987, in suspicious circumstances (the novel itself claims as fact that he was pushed to his death).
However this did highlight an issue I had with the translation, or rather the editing of the translation, as interestingly there is a chapter of the novel by the same translator on the Latvian Literature website, a platform to promote international rights of Latvian works (http://www.latvianliterature.lv/uploa...).
The chapter with the dual translations is the one where the daughter discovers Elsbergs but begins with an incident when the children are bullied by a military instructor, a voyenruk.
The website version - I suspect the original used to promote the rights - reads:
It turned out that her klapan – the mask’s valve was closed, which she hadn’t noticed, and she nearly smothered while waiting for the voyenruk’s order.
With all my heart I hated this short, fat voyenruk. Bit by bit in my imagination he became the main culprit responsible for this mess of Soviet parallel lives. This repulsive, slimy toad who had crawled into our water lily pond, devoured all the peace loving dragon-flies, and now was squatting and croaking on a lily-pad, swelling ever fatter. And we all had to swallow that toad!
And then a ray of light pierced this hopelessness.
which becomes in the Peirene edition:
One friend fainted because it turned out that her mask's valve was closed. She nearly suffocated while waiting for the order.
I hated that short, fat instructor. In my imagination he became the culprit for this Soviet absurdity of parallel lives Then a ray of light pierced my hopelessness.
It reads better but some of the poetry has been lost - and indeed later in the chapter this is literally the case:
Website version:
Here then is an example - a poem titled ‘Krasta runa’ – ‘The Seashore Speaks’, written by a young poet, only ten years older than we were. Teacher Blūms began to recite:
To stand so long chilled to the bone, letting my nose weep,
With quite a Latvian joy I allow my soul, my head to freeze.
The sea rises and crashes, rises and breaks apart again
(Others rise and crash, rise and break apart again.)
Forever and ever, time after time, now or never
Hang on, stay mum, sit tight, stifle the soul’s hunger.
He had read the poem in Latvian but it was a different language. I, the vunderkind and the other girl sat transfixed, as if doused with water. Just a moment ago, we in our gas masks had gasped for air waiting for the voyenruk’s order, but here someone was standing on the sea shore, where waves rose and broke.
But the Peirene version now reads simply:
Our first text was a poem titled 'Krasta runa' - 'The Seashore Speaks' - written by a poet only ten years older than us. Teacher Blūms recited - and we three sat transfixed. Just a moment ago, we had been gasping for air in our gas masks, waiting for our orders. Now we were standing on the seashore, where waves rose and broke.
NB the Latvian original of the poem:
Ilgi stāvēt un salt, un
degunam tecēt sev lieku,
Dvēseli izsaldēju un galvu
ar tīri latvisku prieku.
Jūra veļas un sabrūk, un
veļas atkal un jūk.
(Citi veļas un sabrūk, un
veļas atkal un jūk.)
Mūžu mūžos, laiku laikos,
tagad vai nekad.
Turies, mute, paciet, sēža,
aizveries, dvēseles bad!
Has the desire to make Peirene novel less than 200 pages, digestible in a single sitting, led to some loss of poetry and imagery? A major pity if so.
But nevertheless, still a very worthwhile book and a contender for the Man Booker International longlist.
November 15, 2023
Romanas, palikęs labai keistą, slogų įspūdį. Centrinė figūra yra motina, kuri nenori gyventi. Moteris akivaizdžiai serga psichikos liga (šizoafektinis sutrikimas, bipolinis?), periodiškai ją ištinka panikos priepuoliai, kliedesiai, manijos. Dėl neapgalvoto poelgio (mėsos plaktuku kelis kartus trenkia į veidą kaimynui, nes tas sumušė žmoną) išmetama iš medicinos universiteto, netenka galimybės tapti mokslininke. Šios ligotos, tačiau gabios po visų peripetijų į kaimą dirbti išsiųstos ginekologės-akušerės motina tampa jos pačios dukra. Liūdna negydomos (tais laikais net nediagnozuojamos) psichikos ligos istorija. Jei ši linija būtų plėtojama nuosekliai, romanas būtų visai kitoks. Tačiau siekiama daug daugiau nei papasakoti psichikos liga sergančios moters, jos motinos ir dukros istoriją - motina N. Ikstenai yra savotiškas sovietų suluošintos Latvijos simbolis. Tai pavergtos, išniekintos Latvijos istorija pasakojama, o ne kažkokios motinos. Tačiau sovietmetis vaizduojamas labai stereotipiškai, paviršutiniškai. Plakatiškai. Veikėjai arba geri, arba blogi. Daugybė nelogiškumų. Daug patetikos. Pabaiga apskritai nokautuoja: motinai vis blogėja ir blogėja, tačiau dukra, nors niekada nebuvo itin politiška ir savo motina rūpinosi, taip aistringai laukia Latvijos nepriklausomybės, kad tiesiog palieka motiną mirti prieš tai dar papriekaištavusi, kodėl šioji sėdi užsidariusi kambaryje, nelaukia Nepriklausomybės, nesidžiaugia. Simboliška, bet taip groteskiškai. Atrodo, pati N. Ikstena nesuprato savo personažės, nesugebėjo jos atskleisti - arba tiesiog norėjo pasakyti daugiau, giliau, nei pavyko.
July 11, 2020
SOVIET MILK (2018) is a novella which examines Latvian history from 1945 to the fall of the Berlin wall. It was a bestseller in Latvia, unsurprisingly.
It is narrated in alternating sections by an unnamed mother and her daughter. The mother is a fertility specialist whose life begins and ends during the Soviet period. Her promising career has been ruined because of an episode which was absurdly considered a Soviet related crime. She is a tragic figure, destroyed by alcohol and pills, slowly poisoned by Latvian history. The daughter struggles to understand her mother's depression, and takes care of her mother since she was a child. As she grows up and becomes interested in literature she begins to feel that something dangerous lurks in the shadows. She rises thanks to her intelligence and empathy, but at a cost.
Milk is the particular obsession of both mother and daughter. Milk as poison, as an insidious Soviet poison, something the mother hopes to save her daughter from.
SOVIET MILK is a gloomy story of survival, of women and their lives under Soviet occupation. It is about the brutal and dehumanising life within the Soviet Union.
I cannot recommend this novel enough. It is a short, sad but life-affirming book. A necessary reminder of what life looks like in authoritarian regimes.
It is narrated in alternating sections by an unnamed mother and her daughter. The mother is a fertility specialist whose life begins and ends during the Soviet period. Her promising career has been ruined because of an episode which was absurdly considered a Soviet related crime. She is a tragic figure, destroyed by alcohol and pills, slowly poisoned by Latvian history. The daughter struggles to understand her mother's depression, and takes care of her mother since she was a child. As she grows up and becomes interested in literature she begins to feel that something dangerous lurks in the shadows. She rises thanks to her intelligence and empathy, but at a cost.
Milk is the particular obsession of both mother and daughter. Milk as poison, as an insidious Soviet poison, something the mother hopes to save her daughter from.
SOVIET MILK is a gloomy story of survival, of women and their lives under Soviet occupation. It is about the brutal and dehumanising life within the Soviet Union.
I cannot recommend this novel enough. It is a short, sad but life-affirming book. A necessary reminder of what life looks like in authoritarian regimes.
April 8, 2024
2,6*
Netikiu, kad tai geriausias latvių romanas. Esu skaičiusi jos romaną "Gyvenimas ira gyvenimas yra gyvenimas", kuris man, beje, labai patiko. O šiaip, savo gėdai prisipažįstu, kad nesu labai pažįstama su kaimyninės šalies literatūra :( Tad, gal Nora Ikstena yra geriausia latvių rašytoja (kaip skelbia lietuviškas viršelis), bet ir geriausieji parašo blogesnių knygų.
Man ji skaitėsi bangomis - nuostabius pasažus keitė labai jau prėski puslapiai, lyg būtų rašiusi kita rašytoja, kliuvo abejinga pasakojimo maniera. Hmmm. Dar pagalvojau, kad gal šiandien autorė ji rašytų kitaip "/
Bet tai kaip lietuviško leidimo viršelis ne į temą. Va, koks puikius sakartveliškas:
Netikiu, kad tai geriausias latvių romanas. Esu skaičiusi jos romaną "Gyvenimas ira gyvenimas yra gyvenimas", kuris man, beje, labai patiko. O šiaip, savo gėdai prisipažįstu, kad nesu labai pažįstama su kaimyninės šalies literatūra :( Tad, gal Nora Ikstena yra geriausia latvių rašytoja (kaip skelbia lietuviškas viršelis), bet ir geriausieji parašo blogesnių knygų.
Man ji skaitėsi bangomis - nuostabius pasažus keitė labai jau prėski puslapiai, lyg būtų rašiusi kita rašytoja, kliuvo abejinga pasakojimo maniera. Hmmm. Dar pagalvojau, kad gal šiandien autorė ji rašytų kitaip "/
Bet tai kaip lietuviško leidimo viršelis ne į temą. Va, koks puikius sakartveliškas:
April 4, 2019
Ko gero viena geriausių mano skaitytų knygų apie dukters ir motinos, anūkės ir senelių tarpusavio ryšį, įstrigo ilgam. Prisipažinsiu, dar niekada nesu skaičiusi nei latvių, nei estų literatūros. Knygos tema - sovietmetis Latvijoje iki Baltijos kelio - iš karto patraukė dėmesį. Skaudžiausias Baltijos šalių istorinis laikotarpis vis dar nudiegia aštriais tvinksniais jį prisimenant, skaitydamas supranti, kad esame ne kaimynai, ne konkurentai, esam broliai iki dienų pabaigos. Autorei puikiai pavyko šią temą atskleisti per ryškius trijų kartų moterų paveikslus, jų asmenines dramas.
May 18, 2023
قصة جميلة فيها اجزاء سياسية
عجبني أن الراوية بتتأرجح كل فصل ع لسان الأم والفصل التالي بلسان الأبنة حتى تري الجانبين
لطيف ✨
عجبني أن الراوية بتتأرجح كل فصل ع لسان الأم والفصل التالي بلسان الأبنة حتى تري الجانبين
لطيف ✨
December 3, 2018
From their website:
Peirene Press is an award-winning boutique publishing house, specialising in contemporary European novellas and short novels in English translation. We only publish books of less than 200 pages that can be read in the same time it takes to watch a film. We pride ourselves on publishing truly big stories in small packages.
We seek out the best of European fiction, producing high-quality first-translations of European best sellers. We work with international agents and publishers to bring our readers truly original books, exposing them to new authors and unfamiliar worlds.
Soviet Milk comes to us from Latvia. I have never before read a book that started life in Latvian. It is ostensibly the story of a woman and her daughter. It opens with each character relating the details of their birth and from there it alternates first person narration by the mother and the daughter. This can be tricky as the two have very similar voices so it is not immediately obvious who is speaking, especially as each narrator often relates stories about the other person. I found one of the few male characters in the book helpful as he is stepfather in one narrative and step-grandfather in the other and he is mentioned in most chapters. He’s a useful means of distinction! In one narrative the mother’s life gradually disintegrates and in the other the daughter gradually comes of age.
This is a book of repeating themes and symbolism. The milk of the book’s title plays many roles: mother’s milk, a Milk Restaurant, a compulsory drink for school children, water referred to as being as warm as milk. And there are other motifs that recur.
But I think the book is about a lot more than this. At one point one of our narrators says:
I wanted to talk about our Latvia being mocked by the Soviet Union and Germany, about refugees, about executions and deportations to Siberia, about the ones who remained and were silenced, as we, the third generation, were already silenced. I wanted to talk about my mother, who lived in a desolate place in the country because she could not live two lives – and could not accept a life of mockery, as Latvia had been mocked. I wanted to share all this but I didn’t.
And this mention of the “third generation” is also significant as the grandmother figure is key to the story. The comparison across three generations of Latvian life is an important part of the book. At one point we read
The large oval mirror should have shown me full-length, but I could only see half of me. My hands were crossed over my chest. At first I seemed to see my grandmother. I had her face – her prominent cheekbones, humped nose, grey eyes and high forehead. Then the image in the mirror changed and I saw myself as my mother, her eyes closed, asleep. And then I saw myself with a lightly glowing skin as if taken from a greetings card, but nonetheless myself.
All three generations merged in a single image which seems symbolic of something the book is communicating about Latvian history, although I am not quite sure how to explain this.
There are excellent reviews already on GR from Gumble’s Yard and Paul and the comments in Paul’s review about the translation to English are interesting.
As I read the book, I saw the story of three generations of women (grandmother, mother, daughter) and, more obliquely, the story of three generations of Latvian history. The mother’s story is very sad. The daughter’s story is a story of growing up that at one point threatens to become “The Dead Poets Society” but fortunately only for a few pages. At 196 pages, I have to say that it would be a long movie that took the same amount of time as it took me to read this. I’m not a slow reader, but I reckon it was a good three hours. But that was three hours well spent as I thought it was an excellent and thought-provoking story.
Peirene Press is an award-winning boutique publishing house, specialising in contemporary European novellas and short novels in English translation. We only publish books of less than 200 pages that can be read in the same time it takes to watch a film. We pride ourselves on publishing truly big stories in small packages.
We seek out the best of European fiction, producing high-quality first-translations of European best sellers. We work with international agents and publishers to bring our readers truly original books, exposing them to new authors and unfamiliar worlds.
Soviet Milk comes to us from Latvia. I have never before read a book that started life in Latvian. It is ostensibly the story of a woman and her daughter. It opens with each character relating the details of their birth and from there it alternates first person narration by the mother and the daughter. This can be tricky as the two have very similar voices so it is not immediately obvious who is speaking, especially as each narrator often relates stories about the other person. I found one of the few male characters in the book helpful as he is stepfather in one narrative and step-grandfather in the other and he is mentioned in most chapters. He’s a useful means of distinction! In one narrative the mother’s life gradually disintegrates and in the other the daughter gradually comes of age.
This is a book of repeating themes and symbolism. The milk of the book’s title plays many roles: mother’s milk, a Milk Restaurant, a compulsory drink for school children, water referred to as being as warm as milk. And there are other motifs that recur.
But I think the book is about a lot more than this. At one point one of our narrators says:
I wanted to talk about our Latvia being mocked by the Soviet Union and Germany, about refugees, about executions and deportations to Siberia, about the ones who remained and were silenced, as we, the third generation, were already silenced. I wanted to talk about my mother, who lived in a desolate place in the country because she could not live two lives – and could not accept a life of mockery, as Latvia had been mocked. I wanted to share all this but I didn’t.
And this mention of the “third generation” is also significant as the grandmother figure is key to the story. The comparison across three generations of Latvian life is an important part of the book. At one point we read
The large oval mirror should have shown me full-length, but I could only see half of me. My hands were crossed over my chest. At first I seemed to see my grandmother. I had her face – her prominent cheekbones, humped nose, grey eyes and high forehead. Then the image in the mirror changed and I saw myself as my mother, her eyes closed, asleep. And then I saw myself with a lightly glowing skin as if taken from a greetings card, but nonetheless myself.
All three generations merged in a single image which seems symbolic of something the book is communicating about Latvian history, although I am not quite sure how to explain this.
There are excellent reviews already on GR from Gumble’s Yard and Paul and the comments in Paul’s review about the translation to English are interesting.
As I read the book, I saw the story of three generations of women (grandmother, mother, daughter) and, more obliquely, the story of three generations of Latvian history. The mother’s story is very sad. The daughter’s story is a story of growing up that at one point threatens to become “The Dead Poets Society” but fortunately only for a few pages. At 196 pages, I have to say that it would be a long movie that took the same amount of time as it took me to read this. I’m not a slow reader, but I reckon it was a good three hours. But that was three hours well spent as I thought it was an excellent and thought-provoking story.
December 28, 2022
"لا تخافي يا ماما. كل ما تحتاجين إليه هو الرغبة في الحياة. الرغبة في أن تعيشي، وكل شئ سيكون علي ما يرام.."
...
July 7, 2019
Lengva gražiai parašyta knygelė apie kartų santykius blogoje politinėje sistemoje. Būtų tikrai neblogas skaitinys prieš miegą, bet kai šitiek iš visų pusių girdisi liaupsių, tai norisi kiek kitaip pasisakyti. Pirmiausia tai yra sovietmetį egzotizuojanti knygelė, t.y. paverčianti sovietines patirtis paklausiomis prekėmis. Tą prekės patrauklumą, aišku, galima išgauti ne vienu būdu. Čia pasirinktas būdas - baisi sistema/ menkas bejėgis žmogus, kai skaitant turėtų užvirti kraujas dėl smulkesnių ir stambesnių neteisybių (šiaip neužverda, bent man).
Iki pradėdama skaityti girdėjau, kad tai yra knyga apie sovietmetį Latvijoje, "sugriovusį gyvenimus" kelioms kartoms. Esu tikra, kad ir autorės tezė būtų būtent tokia. Norint žiūrėti į savo ar ko kito gyvenimą kaip sugriautą, visada tam yra ne vienas variantas. Jei ne sovietmetis, tai kas nors kitas: kokia nors kita sistemiška arba nesistemiška neteisybė, arba, pavyzdžiui, tiesiog negailestingas likimas, arba smulkesni faktoriai kaip tėvas, motina, atsitiktinis blogas žmogus, pvz. gydytojas, mokytojas, kaimynas etc.
Tam, kad gyvenimai matytųsi kaip sugriauti, būtina viena sąlyga - žinojimas, kokie jie turi būti, jeigu jie teisingi ir nesugriauti, jeigu viskas vyksta puikiai, geroje sistemoje, geroje šeimoje, geroje visuomenėje, gražioje aplinkoje, etc. Šitas "žinojimas" ir išspinduliuojamas pirmiausia tokiomis knygomis kaip šita, ir todėl neapsiverčia liežuvis sakyti, kad patinka. Man daug labiau patinka džiaugimasis bet kokiu, visiškai modelio neatitinkančiu gyvenimu, o ne verkimas dėl "sugriauto" :)
Iki pradėdama skaityti girdėjau, kad tai yra knyga apie sovietmetį Latvijoje, "sugriovusį gyvenimus" kelioms kartoms. Esu tikra, kad ir autorės tezė būtų būtent tokia. Norint žiūrėti į savo ar ko kito gyvenimą kaip sugriautą, visada tam yra ne vienas variantas. Jei ne sovietmetis, tai kas nors kitas: kokia nors kita sistemiška arba nesistemiška neteisybė, arba, pavyzdžiui, tiesiog negailestingas likimas, arba smulkesni faktoriai kaip tėvas, motina, atsitiktinis blogas žmogus, pvz. gydytojas, mokytojas, kaimynas etc.
Tam, kad gyvenimai matytųsi kaip sugriauti, būtina viena sąlyga - žinojimas, kokie jie turi būti, jeigu jie teisingi ir nesugriauti, jeigu viskas vyksta puikiai, geroje sistemoje, geroje šeimoje, geroje visuomenėje, gražioje aplinkoje, etc. Šitas "žinojimas" ir išspinduliuojamas pirmiausia tokiomis knygomis kaip šita, ir todėl neapsiverčia liežuvis sakyti, kad patinka. Man daug labiau patinka džiaugimasis bet kokiu, visiškai modelio neatitinkančiu gyvenimu, o ne verkimas dėl "sugriauto" :)
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April 24, 2018
Why would a mother refuse to bond with or breastfeed her baby?
Milk is a recurring motif in this harrowing and evocative account of three generations of women living under Soviet rule in Latvia, but it is never the milk of human kindness. The impact of radical cultural oppression is especially harsh for women, who must maintain a façade of ideal family life in a state-sanctioned glorification of motherhood, at the expense of intellectual freedom and fulfilment - with damaging psychological repercussions.
Excerpt:-
"I never raised questions among my woman patients, never counselled anyone to have an abortion. But giving birth and letting a child enter this world in this time and place seemed to me as senseless as everything else that was going on around us. We were cut off from the world. We were destined for a somnambulant existence and condemned to call it life. And I found myself at the heart of this somnambulism ...Driven from a brilliant Soviet medical career, from its congresses, its bribes and backhanders. Excluded from science and its future discoveries."
Reviewed for Whichbook.net
Milk is a recurring motif in this harrowing and evocative account of three generations of women living under Soviet rule in Latvia, but it is never the milk of human kindness. The impact of radical cultural oppression is especially harsh for women, who must maintain a façade of ideal family life in a state-sanctioned glorification of motherhood, at the expense of intellectual freedom and fulfilment - with damaging psychological repercussions.
Excerpt:-
"I never raised questions among my woman patients, never counselled anyone to have an abortion. But giving birth and letting a child enter this world in this time and place seemed to me as senseless as everything else that was going on around us. We were cut off from the world. We were destined for a somnambulant existence and condemned to call it life. And I found myself at the heart of this somnambulism ...Driven from a brilliant Soviet medical career, from its congresses, its bribes and backhanders. Excluded from science and its future discoveries."
Reviewed for Whichbook.net
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