|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
Product Description
The literary event of Halloween: a book of otherworldly power from Russia's preeminent contemporary fiction writer.
Vanishings and aparitions, nightmares and twists of fate, mysterious ailments and supernatural interventions haunt these stories by the Russian master Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, heir to the spellbinding tradition of Gogol and Poe. Blending the miraculous with the macabre, and leavened by a mischievous gallows humor, these bewitching tales are like nothing being written in Russia — or anywhere else in the world — today.
About the Author
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya was born in Moscow in 1938 and is the only indisputable canonical writer currently writing in Russian today. She is the author of more than fifteen collections of prose, among them the short novel The Time: Night, shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize in 1992, and Svoi Krug, a modern classic about the 1980's Soviet intelligentsia. Petrushevskaya is equally important as a playwright: since the 1980s her numerous plays have been staged by the best Russian theater companies. In 2002, Petrushevskaya received Russia's most prestigious prize, The Triumph, for lifetime achievement. She lives in Moscow.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
spellbinding,
By
This review is from: There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (Paperback)
Collection of stories that are spellbinding and could only come from a truly great story teller. In these stories the language acts like a veil uncovered bones of great truth, culture and memory. She brings to light like Tony Morrison events shrouded in mystery, fate and chance. The tragic elements are often shrugs of acceptance but oh so unforgettable in this life time. Crafted narratives and startling realizations are compelling from start to finish. Now I want to read more!
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
There once lived a woman...,
By Josepha K (Calgary) - See all my reviews
This review is from: There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (Paperback)
Don't start reading this at night because you won't be able to stop... and if you can you probably won't be able to get to sleep...
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews) 18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
scary fairy tales indeed.,
By Emily Felger - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (Paperback)
I'd heard good things about this book, so when I saw it at the bookstore the other day, I picked it up, and didn't put it down until I finished it that evening. The stories read more like fairy tales than traditional ghost stories. They all have an otherworldly quality, but sometimes the supernatural element does not appear until the end, and often she leaves questions unanswered. The worlds Petrushevskaya describes are bleak, spooky, and thoroughly believable. Unlike many short story collections, these stories never felt uneven. Each story is as good, if not better, than the one preceding it, and I imagine I will get even more out of the book when I read it a second time.
I'd definitely recommend this book to fans of Angela Carter of Kelly Link, or a horror buff looking to read something a little more "literary". 17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Orchards of Unsual Possibilities",
By S. Dellosa "misfit salon" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (Paperback)
Twisted, ghostly, and apocalyptic describe these tales, with characters that are on the brink of madness or despair. Most start out like simple, but slightly off folk tales - "There once lived a woman whose son hanged himself," "There once lived a girl who was killed, then brought back to life," "There once lived a girl who found herself in an unknown place, on a cold winter night."
Then suddenly the stories take us out of ordinary existence and into strange, nightmarish worlds, described by the author as "orchards of unusual possibilities." Some recognizable tropes appear, but the landscape is completely unfamiliar and disconcerting. Instead of a child lost in the woods, we have a father with no children, a husband with no wife. He has no memory of who his family is and yet he keeps searching for them. "There once lived a father who couldn't find his children. He went everywhere, asked everyone--had his little children come running in here? But whenever people responded with the simplest of questions--'What do they look like?' 'What are their names?' 'Are they boys or girls?'--he didn't know how to answer. He simply knew that his children were somewhere, and he kept looking." What starts out seemingly as a ghost story, There's Someone in the House, becomes something quite different. Who or what is the woman in the house battling against? A ghost, her daughter or herself? "...Someone is secretly, soundlessly creeping from room to room. That's how it seems. The woman doesn't tell anyone about her poltergeist: It's still hiding, not knocking, not causing mischief, not setting anything on fire. The refrigerator isn't hooping around the apartment; the poltergeist isn't chasing her into a corner. Really there is nothing to complain about. But something has definitely moved in, some kind of living emptiness, small of stature but energetic and pushy, sneaking and slithering along the floor..." A mother frets over her Thumbelina-sized cabbage patch child Profound illumination comes to a woman lost in the woods with nothing but matches to light her way. A family quarantines itself when a disfiguring infectious disease ravages their town In these realms of the unusual, nothing is ever straightforward or neatly wrapped up; like disturbing dreams from which one awakens, they are not easily explained or forgotten. [...] 10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderfully "odd" perspective,
By Deborah L. Clayton - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (Paperback)
I read a review of this book in the local paper but I have to admit, it was the title that lead me to buy it. The book is full of short stories that take you down a path and at the end you say "whoa, didn't see that coming." This author is someone I will definitely buy more of - she definitely has an off kilter view of the world.
|
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
