Stories of a Life
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Originally written as a series of viral Facebook posts, then released as a cult hit in St. Petersburg, Meshchaninova’s serialized memoir-novel tackles gender politics and abuse with honest, cutting language. Stories of A Life depicts the life of Natasha, a young woman who suffers abuse first at the hands of her stepfather Sasha and then by young men in the village nearby. This powerful, postmodern novel witnesses the Dickensian struggles of provincial life and reckons with the complicity of fellow women. Starkly down-to-earth yet funny and informal, Stories of A Life demands that we bear witness to the bleakness of a young womanhood in post-Soviet Russia. Meshchaninova is held in high regard as part of a new wave of women filmmakers in Russia, and with this collection cements her position as a woman willing to stare down the viewer and demand complicity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Russian film director Meshchaninova debuts with an arresting and frank autobiographical story that began as a series of Facebook posts and describes childhood in a society complicit with men and boys who openly prey on girls and young women. Natasha introduces her extended family ("There isn't a single normal person.... Sorry in advance") and sketches the murderers and harassers who walk free in Krasnodar, including a group of seven men who killed a girl when they were teens. At 14, Natasha starts a diary, where she lies about everything from her hair color to her sexual exploits. Her mother reads it and believes Natasha has leukemia, resulting in a costly "cure." Natasha learns her real father is not the man who divorced her mom when Natasha was five, but a coworker with whom her mother carried on an affair for 20 years. Underlying these early stories are references to Uncle Sasha, Natasha's second stepfather, who "murdered my childhood" by sexually assaulting her, which Natasha recounts in devastating detail in a late chapter that ends with a brutal revelation about her mother. Throughout, Meshchaninova sustains the effect of a woman still wrestling with the hatred she carries. This blunt coming-of-age story packs a heavy punch.