We bought this because of the nonfiction link to A Gentleman in Moscow, and Bird, Mom, and I passed it around. This short memoir chronicles the childhood of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, who was born in the Metropol but spends little time there throughout her wild, chaotic upbringing. Told in vignette-style chapters that seem to overlap and occasionally go out of order, Petrushevskaya shares her experiences alternating between near-homelessness and schools/camps with rigid expectations. Sometimes I was cringing at the feral society she found on the streets, beyond the reach of her aunt and grandmother. Sometimes I was sympathetic toward the unreasonable strictness of the structures that attempted to socialize her.
But Petrushevskaya’s language is the stuff of fairy tales (in fact, now I want to go read her other books, including There Once Lived a Woman who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby). So the rhythm of the sentences and the pretty diction make the horrible things she writes about seem bearable. It’s presented in the way of children – this is just how things are. Her faith that her mother would return someday was a little heartbreaking from an adult perspective, but little Lyudmila is just so sure. Mama will come back. No one else will do.
It was the writing itself, presenting uncomfortable realities in such a pleasant way, that made me like the book.
3/5 stars on Goodreads
The Grammar Changeling 