Lucky Breaks

by Yevgenia Belorusets

Out of the impoverished coal regions of Ukraine known as the Donbass, where Russian secret military intervention coexists with banditry and insurgency, the women of Yevgenia Belorusets’s captivating collection of stories emerge from the ruins of a war, still being waged on and off, ever since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. Through a series of unexpected encounters, we are pulled into the ordinary lives of these anonymous women: a florist, a cosmetologist, card players, readers of horoscopes, the unemployed, and a witch who catches newborns with a mitt. One refugee tries unsuccessfully to leave her broken umbrella behind as if it were a sick relative; a private caregiver in a disputed zone saves her elderly charge from the angel of death; a woman sits down on International Women’s Day and can no longer stand up; a soldier decides to marry war. Belorusets threads these tales of ebullient survival with a mix of humor, verisimilitude, the undramatic, and a profound Gogolian irony. She also weaves in twenty-three photographs that, in lyrical and historical counterpoint, form their own remarkable visual narrative.

Genres: Short Stories, Ukraine, Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Ukrainian Literature

197 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Jenn Fields · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do yourself a favor and download the Kindle edition — the print is ridiculously small in the paperback (if you can get your hands on one here in the U.S.). Then do yourself another favor, if like me you're an English-edition reader in North America with little knowledge of Ukrainian history, much less the history of literature in Ukraine: Skip to the end and read the translator's note FIRST. The translator's note provides valuable context on the tradition of fragmented storytelling in Ukraine; recent history and distant history; writing/publishing in Russian vs. Ukrainian language; Belorusets' experience catching snippets of stories as a photographer and journalist in the Donbas region; and the experience of Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced people. This is collection of stories about modern Ukrainian women is a popular read in America right now, but ... This was a challenging read without all of that context from the note, and as I read it at the end of the book, I was swearing up and down about why the publisher didn't bother to put that at the front of the English translation to facilitate an attempt at learning about this corner of the world at war right now, and of course why the publisher chose such a ridiculously small font.

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a little uncomfortable and yet timely to be reading this collection of stories by Ukrainian photographer, journalist and writer, Yevgenia Belorusets while a full scale invasion of Ukraine is underway. The author’s time documenting the lives of people in the occupied eastern regions of the country inform this work. Each story is that of a woman (mostly) trying to make sense of life in Kyiv or elsewhere in the country. They are displaced or disoriented. Their stories are sad, pragmatic, satirical and often little magical. Photographs from two series are imbedded in the text but not connected. Many encounters could be happening right now.

A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2022/03/21/th...

[Paula Mota]

DNF

Primeira baixa do novo ano, para não destoar do final do anterior.
Acredito que seja um livro importante, que mereça a publicação, mas estas histórias protagonizadas por mulheres da região do Donbass são profundamente aborrecidas. Li as primeiras, piquei outras mais à frente e nenhuma me prendeu a atenção. Refere-se Gogol, Isaac Babel e Svetlana Alexievitch para elogiar Evguenia Bielorrussets, mas a escrita é prosaica e o conteúdo desinteressante.

Disse que ela tinha partido para o campo e se juntara ao movimento guerrilheiro. Foi assim mesmo que ele disse: “partiu para o campo”. Mas de que lado luta o seu grupo de guerrilheiros em que campos precisamente, ele não sabia. (...) Certamente, ela combate ao lado dos jihadistas”, disse ele de repente e riu-se. Ficámos um momento calados, e ele olhou-me à espera do que eu dissesse sobre a qualidade do seu sentido de humor. “O tempo passa, eu fico com mais juízo, começo a compreender para quê e para onde nós avançamos.”, acrescentou ele. “Já não sou o mesmo que era dantes. Ninguém faz de mim parvo assim de uma vez! Kiev ensinou-me a ver e a pensar. Isto aqui não é nosso ingénuo Donetsk. Mas o sentido de humor nunca me trai! Por ele não me venham ao bolso!” Riu-se de novo e em passo triunfante seguiu o seu caminho, a tratar dos seus assuntos.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow I read five books translated from another language in June. This was the fifth. I read it for one of my reading groups as a companion to Isla Kaminsky's poetry collection, Deaf Republic. Reading Ukraine, we are.

Lucky Breaks is a short story collection by Ukrainian photographer Yevgenia Belorusets. Though published in Ukraine in 2018, it was not translated and published in the US until this year. She wrote these short terse accounts to accompany her photos, some of which are reproduced in the book.

She focuses on women suffering through an earlier Russian invasion in Donbas. These women are refugees in Kyiv who have lost homes, jobs, people and most of all the sense of who they are. Belorusets conveys all this tragedy through humor and irony, though there is little here to feel good about.

It took a while for me to find my way through her style and her characters. But when I did I was sorely amazed by how she captured what she did. She looked, she photographed, she had conversations, she wrote, she penetrated the hidden unreported lives of women in a war zone.

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*
Schastlivye padeniia/ Shchaslivi padinnia

Ukrainietės fotografės, politinės aktyvistės, žurnalistės ir rašytojos Yevgenia Belorusets (Евгения Белорусец) dokumentinių apsakymų rinkinys. Tai istorijos daugumoje apie moteris. Istorijos apie bandymus (iš)gyventi, kuomet po 2014-tų metų Ukrainoje įvykusios revoliucijos prasidėjo neramumai rytų Ukrainoje. Šių pasakojimų dalyvės/-iai vis dar gyvena okupuotose teritorijose, kai kas prisitaikė, kai kas – ne, kai kas išvyksta, kai kas dingsta...kai kas kariauja. Daug juose nuogos ir žiaurios jų tiesos.

„AS FAR BACK as 2014, when everything was just beginning, a Ukrainian soldier would tell me that he married war.“
„War disarms? War tekes away hope and meaning, makes everything grey, and sucks life out of the city and the street, leaving nothing?
What do you mean? War is a great help for us. It provides us with distraction from ourselves. It absolves us from seeing ourselves close up. It‘s been some time now that we‘ve been peeking into ourselves through war only.
We hate ourselves. That‘s the problem. We hate any outcome of our public life, our activity. We even hate our owwn national culture, and so we can fall in love with it solely on the account of the afflictions, persecutions, and deaths that befall it.“ – „PHILOSOPHY“

Žodžiu, kaip pati autorė sako, kad ji norėjusi: „to reestablish the right of suppressed, unseen and unheard stories to be told.“

Visą rinkinį, kaip visumą, priskirčiau prie eksperimentinės prozos. Nors kai kurie apsakymai skaitėsi labiau kaip reportažai. Autorė miksuoja tikras istorijas su išgalvotomis. Štai ką apie tai sako pati autorė:
"Any document is partly a lie, and this is especially true of documentary photography, which only ever conveys a small part of reality. When we look at the world, we should, on the one hand, always believe a document, because this belief lies at the heart of our political position, our ability to act: we believe the document and it spurs us into action. On the other hand, we must, unfortunately, remember that any document is part of a subjective perspective on a situation, and may indeed be subjective to the point of absurduty."

Beje, knygoje nemažai autorės darytų fotografijų, tačiau čia jos ne tik kaip iliustracijos padedančios pajusti apsakymų nuotaiką, bet ir kaip atskiros istorijos.

Skaičiau knygą angliškai ir žiauriai vargau su dažnai keistai skambančiu vertimu. Autorė šiuos apsakymus rašė ukrainietiška rusų kalba. Anot vertėjos Eugene Ostashevsky: „Her language is subtly different from the kinds of Russian spoken in the Russian Fedaration; it is based on the rhythms and intonations of the Russian of Kyiv and Kharkiv, and continues the Russian-language line of Ukrainian lierature.“ Įdomu būtų paskaityti juos originalo kalba.


Yevgenia Belorusets

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed these little sketches of women in Kyiv and the Donbas region of Ukraine; I wanted to understand more about the world being demolished right now by Putin's war, and maybe this passage was all I needed to read: "You can’t really live in this country – you’re threatened from every side at every moment. That’s the kind of country it is. If you had the luck to be born here, you take things as they come."

Some of these stories are a bit surreal, some are quite dark and sad; we meet manicurists and hair stylists, florists, restaurant and cafe and bakery workers, and a woman who works in a shop selling semi precious stones. They made me want to visit Ukraine.

Here are a couple passages:

Why be gloomy when, after a row of the dreariest of days, a bright sunny day may follow? Even if it’s -7° outside and the snow shows no intention of melting under the sun.

The neighbor woman, who became her best friend, opened a coffeehouse in the center of Kyiv and gave our a woman a job there, where she served coffee called “Delicious Dream,”, “Meditation,” “Magical World,”and “Flying Over an Ocean of Wishes.”

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

These very short stories about women in Eastern Ukraine were written by a Ukrainian activist, turned photojournalist, turned writer. They are snapshots of women in, or relocated from, the region of eastern Ukraine over which the current war is being followed. The writing is somewhat untraditional (a little less accessible than most), but they are very powerful.

[Taylor Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imaginative and fanciful, cutting, ironic, and insightful, these stories illuminate the human condition of peripheral existence in all of its glorious, depressing character.

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF
Нищо не схванах, явно е твърде арт…
Прилича малко на някои съвременни образци на родната литература, които стават за прочит единствено от автора си. Май се води постмодернизъм…
Но самите снимки са симпатични.

1,5 ⭐️ Само заради снимките - единствено те ми бяха ясни, но думите бяха загуба на авторски труд и твърде самовлюбени и отвлечени. Авторката явно не умее да разказва истории пред други хора, а само превърта преработени до неузнаваемост арт откъслеци в главата си.

[Vivek Tejuja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished reading this sometimes fantastic, and sometimes not so collection of short stories and vignettes by Ukrainian photographer, journalist, and writer. Each story in this book is centered on a woman (most of the time) in Kyiv or elsewhere in Ukraine. These stories aren’t about Putin, or his invasion. These stories are about everyday living and all about anonymous people – from a refugee to a florist to card players to readers of horoscopes, a world unto itself.

Belorusets’ writing is sometimes playful, mostly tragic, and all about surviving with some humour along the way. There are also twenty-three photographs in this collection, each telling its own story, and forming their own unique visual narrative. The translation by Eugene Ostashevsky is on-spot and extremely lucid. I was just a little miffed to not see the translator’s name on the cover. Also, as a side-note, read it online or hear it. The print is way too fine and you might end up straining your eyes like I did.

Lucky Breaks is a surreal collection of stories from a region that has come to fore, sadly for all the wrong reasons. But do read this book to know more about Ukraine, its people, and how they live and feel.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw this in a bookstore in a display of Ukrainian writers and had to buy it. And I'm glad I did, because it was so, so good. A collection of short stories largely centered in impoverished Ukrainian coal country. This collection also centers women, and the unreality of living in the kinds of covert conflict that has been going on there for so long.

The translator's note at the end was so helpful in establishing context for the author and this work, for writing in Russian vs. Ukrainian, etc.

I got so much more than I expected here, this was wonderful.

[Christopher]

A feminist, schizophrenic collage of related short stories reminiscent of Kurkov’s Grey Bees, and Sebald, but different because the stories are closer to prose poems. The photographs are adjacent to the language, rather than the stories being illustrations; they set the scene in a way that adds depth.

Ok, so stylistically, this has nothing to do with the Kurkov—the commonality being that the Donbas conflict is going on in the background while everyday people are living. But, in this one, the war is even further in the background than in Grey Bees.

[Megan Stroup Tristao]

"You can't really live in this country—you're threatened from every side at every moment. That's the kind of country it is. If you had the luck to be born here, you take things as they come."

To be honest, this book was challenging for me and I had to re-read many pages. It is written in very short chapters/stories that focus on different women living in Ukraine, often Kyiv or the Donbas region. Every now and then, I would come across a phenomenal story like "The Woman with the Black, Broken Umbrella," but often I felt like I was missing the point.

Translated from Russian.

[Wendelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a short story collection by young literary writer Yevgenia Belorousets, hailing from the Donbas region, Ukraine. The collection takes the form of brief profiles of everyday people, and it's astonishingly moving. If there's one theme I could see, it's about earnest, idealistic people, young women mostly, who are displaced by their fate, to lead lives that are in their own retelling sad, isolated, quietly hopeless or threadbare. The sentences are quite powerful:
"The approach of the day when she had to pay next month's rent filled her with dread; she was losing weight and sometimes, in the evenings, she would peek into a future so bleak that it frightened her, causing her to flee to a cafe or anywhere else not to be alone."
"At that very moment, I felt that I was turning into a completely different person-- a European, an inhabitant of a great and ancient land. I turned into an inhabitant of a country that knows neither frontiers nor obstacles, neither variety in the manner of dress or of professing ways to love."
"The proximity of a human creature aroused in her an even more tragic sense of life than total soliude. She had not one person to talk to, and often repeated to herself, "Not one? No one around! Good God, are these people? They are like soup leftovers, not people... As for some clear, heartfelt exchange, no chance. I'm dying, I have no one to turn to in the end and say, "You were gracious to me!""
"Suicide, on yes, the only field where youth can show what they're made of, apply themselves and exercise imagination."
""If she wasn't in the metro, wasn't seeing train cars depart into the blackness of the tunnel nor the thinning crowds hurrying to the exit or connecting train, she would be seized with anxiety.
Only the noise of the metro had the power to soothe this restless soul."
"Xenia stood as close as possible to the yellow line, which may not be crossed when the train is arriving...a far-off rumbling signaled the approach of a train. A gust of air hit her back... car after car rushed past Xenia, carrying away not only the curse, but all the other sorrows that had vexed her over the years.""
--from multiple stories in the book.

[Felicity · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had I read the translator's portentous afterword before Lucky Breaks, as some reviews recommend, I might not have read the stories at all. I spent some weeks working in Ukraine in 2014, and I am familiar with the history of the country and with Nikolai Gogol, whom the translator identifies as a key source of inspiration to Belorusets. The translator emphasises the feminism and fragmentariness of these stories of women affected by war, both of which he finds embedded in the author's use of comma-spliced sentences, which 'may perhaps be interpreted as a gesture of resistance to the standards of correctness upheld by the apparatus of the Russian state'. Apart from the fact that comma-spliced sentences are far more likely to offend American grammarians than Russian ideologues, I'm not persuaded either that these fragmentary stories about women's experience of war, illustrated by a seemingly random section of photographs, are intrinsically feminist or that they bear the political weight he would like them to uphold. The woman's relationship with the broken black umbrella -- a man's umbrella! -- that she alternately abandons and reclaims seems to me more pathological than political, but perhaps the significance lies in the meeting with the woman in the kiosk, who envies the 'freedom' of the possessor and dispossessor of the umbrella. This casual encounter, incidentally, takes place on the Boulevard of International Friendship. In the spirit of international understanding, I waded through the brief encounters with such typically 'feminist' occupations as florist, manicurist, cosmetologist etc., guided by the overbearing narrative guide -- the women don't speak for themselves -- only to reaffirm my prior commitment to Gogol's and Bulgakov's innovative literary fiction, Benjamin's Arcade Projects for establishing the substantial cultural value of fragments, and Sebald's use of photographs to complement his text.

[Jim Reddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories about women affected by war in Ukraine. The stories are very short, from one to four pages.

The stories are also quite surreal and fragmented, more sketches than actual stories. After reading a few I read the afterword by the translator. It helped me gain a better understanding of Ukraine’s history and of the author’s intentions and storytelling style.

In the end though, the stories just blended together into a haze of random surrealness. I gather that was the author’s intention but I enjoyed and got more out of the translator’s afterword than the actual stories.

If you decide to read this I highly recommend getting it on Kindle. The print in the paperback edition is minuscule.

[Audrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found these short stories very difficult to read and to understand. The author is Ukrainian and to tell the truth my book club chose to read this book because of the current war in Ukraine and the fact that we definitely sympathize with the people of Ukraine in this unjust war. The stories are definitely mystical and almost told using stream of conscience in language. I would invite other readers to comment after reading some or all of the stories.

[Virginprune · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first quarter of this book is terrible. Childish, pretentious - I nearly gave up and threw it away, seeing it as a crude cynical attempt to rush a cheaply-produced reprint/translation in the light of current events in Ukraine. Actually, it really picks up around the middle (but sags again later...) - not really much left in the way of value in a 100 page booklet. Maybe it'll grow on me.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nope. Tried to read it on long plane ride but could not get past first 25 pages (it's only 100 pages long). Pretentious nonsense. Can't imagine why NY Times Book Review put it on front page. Glad I had back up book on kindle.

[lina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liked a few of the stories but I forgot most of them and they had abrupt and unclear endings. Butttt I did like a few quotes:

'I like the form of a word - rounded as an empty glass, a vessel bereft of meaning'

'But it may possibly be that he doesn’t feel anything and has turned into a cliff, into the doorman guarding my evening'

'Many people say that the most important thing for us is to have peace. But I'm going to say to you that peace doesn't matter. Something else matters. But I don't know what. I just know peace isn't it.'

'She kept pointing to herself and saying: I am a microsubstance'

'Only the smallest particles can survive in Ukraine'

'Exhausted people. Exhausted by Europe, by Ukraine, by the memory of the Soviet Union, by the very thought of having to lead an inconspicuous meager life among worlds gaping to swallow them.'

'Our real flag, she explained, is the spot left on the wall by the hammer and the sickle. Not the yellow-blue flag, but a white, empty flag showing only the shadows of the hammer and sickle'

'It's pleasant having clothes on you that make you feel at home. A house never fits snug over the body.'

'Belorusets confronts in both her documentary photography and her fiction: the problem of representing somebody else.'

[Maaike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dit was een ingewikkelde leeservaring… het boek bestaat uit veel korte verhalen, vergezeld van foto’s, vaak over laagopgeleide vrouwen die hard moeten werken voor hun inkomen (schoonheidsspecialistes, fabrieksarbeiders) en soms vanuit het perspectief van de uitbuitende elite - meer een kunstproject om de gevolgen van de 2014 oorlog in Oekraïne invoelbaar te maken, dan een roman. Vond vooral het verhaal A woman at the Cosmetologist’s sterk. De oorlog in de Donbas komt in alle verhalen direct of indirect voor, met een sfeer van onderling wantrouwen en propaganda, over aanpassen aan leven in een oorlogsgebied (het verhaal over het stadje waar bewoners aan de hand van hun horoscoop naar buiten gaan om bombardementen te vermijden!) en de moeite met het opbouwen van een nieuw bestaan voor IDPs. Sommige noties begreep ik toevallig beter omdat ik terwijl ik het las ook bijeenkomsten had met Oekraïense vrouwen (bijv. hoe zij de mannelijke intellectuele clubs bespotten..). Het nawoord van de vertaler geeft ook een nieuwe kijk op het boek met goede uitleg over het gebruik van Russisch en Oekraïens door de schrijfster. Conclusie: mega interessant, veel om over na te denken, mooi hoe ze juist vrouwen centraal stelt aan wie normaal geen regel gewijd wordt, maar zeker geen lekker wegleesboek.

[Tristan Bath · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think she intended these snapshots from (pre-2022 invasion) Ukraine at war to be quite so universal... But these women are nonetheless grappling simply with life as much as anything else. A beautiful document that captures a seldom seen side of Ukraine in the 21st century.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and thought-provoking read, looking into the daily lives of people living in areas of Ukraine that were invaded by Russia in 2014. The author is a photojournalist, and her insights might seem like a photo of the people about whom she writes. But while photos capture a moment in time, Belorusets' written words capture more than just a moment; they look deeply into peoples' minds and experiences.

[Lorna Dielentheis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, rounding down because the reading experience was difficult.

I really loved the idea of this book and certain vignettes were really incredible. "Lena in Danger" was probably my favorite, and I also loved the cosmetologist one and the horoscopes one. I did really enjoy the short format of the stories, but a lot of them started to bleed together, and I think the quality of writing was literally lost in the translation. The language itself was somewhat abrupt and didn't flow nicely, which made it hard to follow. This is unrelated to my rating of the book, but the font size was incredibly small in the copy of the book I had. Like size 8. Who can read that? It felt like a strain both to physically read this and to continuously follow along and reset myself after each story. Also I hate to say it but for me, the photos did not add much. I think they may have if they were reproduced larger with better quality. Or, I can imagine this entire book as an art installation, with stories and photos, and I think that would be an ideal way to consume this.

I did like the structure though, and the way the stories of war were both realistic and fanciful. Reading this also made me curious about Ukrainian history, something I know next to nothing about. And I think also reading this in light of the current invasion of Ukraine added another layer to it. I think if I had really taken my time with this, maybe read only a couple stories a night, and had 100% focus, I would have loved it a lot more. But unfortunately I neither had the energy or patience to do that this week and needed to get it returned to the library.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Наверное лучше прочитать эту книгу в оригинале. Либо перевод совсем плохой, либо я ничего в жизни этих женщин не понимаю…

“You can't really live in this country - you're threatened from every side at every moment. That's the kind of country it is. If you had the luck to be born here, you take things as they come."

[Carla (literary.infatuation) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short story collection centering “ordinary” women in Eastern Ukraine, propelled by a subtle hint of magical, is a fictitious mirror into the effects of war in Eastern Ukraine on women’s property, spirits and futures. It was definitely interesting and literary and very unique.

[Joan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I abandoned this book; it was unreadable. The font was literally microscopic even with reading glasses. Had I realized this sooner I would have either not purchased it or returned it. Another reviewer also noted this. This was a first for me.

[Nicola · Rating 2 out of 5]

very boring and hard to get through, unfortunately

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full review on my blog: The Exiled Soul

https://theexiledsoul.com/2022/04/18/...

Lucky Breaks by Ukrainian writer and photojournalist, Yevgenia Belorusets in translation of Eugene Ostashevsky is a collection of vignettes accompanied by a series of black and white photos taken by the author herself and placed carefully within the text. Even though these photographs do not illustrate any of the events described in the book, they do help to convey however the world in which the stories take place by adding an additional layer of depth and lyricism to the meaning of the stories presented.

It is worth mentioning that Yevegenia Belorusets shared her war diary via Isolarii for the period of 41 days between 24 February and 5 April 2022. I highly recommend you check her entries to see the unique vantage of what people of Ukraine have been experiencing in the last months.

About Lucky Breaks Belorusets said that its objective was “to re-establish the right of suppressed, unseen, and unheard stories to be told.” This book is an essential read for the current times.

This series of short stories, originally written in Russian and published in 2018 and first translated into English in 2022, explores the lives of Ukrainian women, displaced, forced to seek refuge in other parts of Ukraine as a result of the war in Eastern Ukraine which started in 2014. Some stories take place in Kyiv, some in a warzone, and others in the territories occupied by the Russia-backed separatists. All these snapshots of a singular life presented in those stories focus on how traumatic historical events transform one’s everyday life, how military and political turmoil upends the lives of the ‘ordinary’ women who endured so many senseless losses. We get a glimpse into what’s now and what’s been.

The book centres on women – women from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all ages, women whose age is difficult to decipher because “they are young but tired (…), they can be mistaken for someone twenty years older”. Many of the protagonists are painfully lonely in their despair to rebuild their lives in Kyiv and other parts of western Ukraine, longing for relationships, love but often sticking to their wartime habits. Their daily existence amounts to the mere survival in the ruins of war, being displaced and out of place, without social network, with no social status, with no ability to articulate profound trauma that penetrates every aspect of their lives.

The protagonists we encounter in these stories often have no words to describe their emotions, their state of mind and being. Their daily behaviour is affected by what they have experienced. They rarely receive any substantial support for their permanent psychological wounds. In order to exist they must go to work, to pay bills. They are all traumatised souls, ‘ordinary women’, without financial security and comfort, without any safety net. In all cases portrayed in Lucky Breaks the issue of class and economic status is crucial and profoundly impacting daily existence of these women.

Some stories include elements of the supernatural to emphasize how ‘supernatural’, almost unreal it feels for those displaced by war to exist in their daily life. They feel disoriented, in constant grief, lost without their families, without life they had built in Eastern Ukraine, forced to find a new employment in a new place, forced to deal with the indifference, often stuck in poorly paid jobs, the only jobs they can get.

Each story is a snapshot of one life – some stories are testimonies – sometimes illogical, unverifiable, some take a form of an interview – conversation. Most protagonists of the stories show the obsessiveness with small objects of a daily use – the metaphor for deeply traumatized people. One of the women keeps losing and retrieving a black, broken umbrella from the station. An umbrella symbolizes other losses in her life; things that we take for granted. Another woman can’t stop compulsively thinking about her lost apartment in Eastern Ukraine.

Stories depict the lives of women, sisters, friends, those who are completely lost, confused living in a confused reality. We meet the midwife in her 50s. We meet a florist from Donetsk who is ‘great at flowers, but unsuited for real life’, who knew how to exist only within the walls of her flower shop – which was the meaning of her life. We meet a woman who medicates herself with the visits to a cosmetologist. We meet an affluent, educated, lonely woman who used to run a major company in Eastern Ukraine and now with her home and company destroyed, she is working as a cleaner in Kyiv. We witness a woman who loses her ability to walk in the middle of the street because of trauma. We meet a woman who must take up three jobs in Kyiv to survive. We meet a woman with a degree in economics and an interest in arts and culture who cannot find a suitable job, but her bills are piling up. She lives in constant stress of not having enough money on top of dealing with trauma of being a displaced – out of place person. We learn the story of a manicurist from Donetsk who has been missing for two years and her salon being turned into a warehouse – we don’t know her whereabouts. We learn about someone’s sister who was taken by the armed strangers with no one to ask for her whereabouts – she suddenly reappears without saying anything with everyone else going on as if nothing happened. We learn about a Ukrainian woman falling in love with a Russian man and the consequences of their feelings on them, in particular on her, and those around them.

Women we encounter in Lucky Break who found refuge in other parts of Ukraine often reflect on what happened to the people they used to know in Eastern Ukraine, their neighbours living in the same building in Donetsk. One of them who now works as a cleaner in Kyiv used to have an affluent life. She recalls her neighbour who used to run a technology company, another one who also worked in a housing management – they all gone, disappeared. There is no one to ask about them whether they are alive or gone forever.

In one of the stories, the protagonist mentions that we, as a society, love celebrating women but only a certain type of women. We often forget about the women ‘in some backwater, small places, remote places’ – they are often invisible, especially older women, disabled women, single women.

We witness the impact of the war on people who previously did not have much interest in politics; a florist for whom her flower shop used to be her life. During the war she suddenly disappears; her business was replaced by the warehouse for propaganda materials. There are rumours that she joined the partisans, but no one know on which side. There is this omnipresent uncertainty throughout all the stories – there is a repeated motif of some strangers, some armed men, civilians being unsure who are those armed people: ours or theirs.

The narrator in many of these stories is wandering through the streets of Kyiv randomly encountering the women who become the heroines of those vignettes. The narrator is an emphatic observer of human suffering. Belorusets’s sensitivity reminds me of other great Eastern and Central European writers such as Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Mikhail Sebastian, Hanna Krall, Imre Kertesz, Zbigniew Herbet.

This is a powerful book of an extraordinary impact on the reader. I read the American edition published by New Directions. There will be the UK edition of Lucky Breaks published by Pushkin Press at the end of May. I highly recommend everyone this book. Not only this book is an essential read for the current times, but also the writing is so unique, with unmatched sensitivity, not comparable to anything I have read in the anglophone market.

I can only wish that more books like Lucky Breaks by the contemporary Ukrainian and Eastern European writers will be translated into English to access a wider readership.

[Dirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Out the outset, I must echo two points made by another reviewer. First, a reader should consider the Kindle version of this book, or, if available, a book on tape, because the type in the paperback edition is painfully small (8 point?). Second, do yourself a favor and read the translator's afterword before diving into the stories themselves. The afterword explains that Belorusets began as an activist and then became a photographer before turning to writing. Her photography leaned toward a journalistic/ethnographic studies approach to her subjects, an approach that is mirrored in the snapshot quality of the short stories in Lucky Breaks and their limited focus on subjects living in a particular place and time--war torn Ukraine prior to the February 23, 2022, "special military operation" mounted by Russian forces--that may be foreign to most readers.

With Belorusets' photography background in mind, one can gain a better appreciation of her short stories as capturing, on their surfaces, whatever occurs in the moment-in-time scenes framed in their compositions, without a narrator's intrusion or explanation, and deriving their storytelling ability from the actions and expressions of the characters. Although I'm not saying that the translator is wrong, I can't completely agree with the assertion that the stories are feminist in nature. It's true that the central characters in the stories are predominantly women, but more generally speaking they are the people most typically underrepresented, or completely ignored, in narratives involving wars: the non-combatant victims of collateral damage other than physical injury or death. Combat involving forces beyond their control uproots these characters from their communities, homes, jobs, relationships, and, by extension, their identities and world views. These characters are dislodged, dispossessed, disaffected, disoriented, and disillusioned, a debilitating congeries of impacts that reduce them to the status of refugees in their own country. It makes for disturbing reading, which is why my three-star rating doesn't mean that I like Lucky Breaks, but I respect it for revealing the multi-faceted complexity of war and its effects on the broader population, effects that are rarely addressed in the "which team is winning" approach that is the stock in trade of traditional journalism. Regardless of whether one country or another is declared a victor, it should be understood that these damaged lives won't then be miraculously repaired, and that the injuries may be felt, and may fester, for generations to come.