The river by Laura Vinogradova
Latvian fiction
Original title – Upe
Translator – Kaija Staumanis
Source – Personal copy
I passed 16 years of blogging yesterday, and this book is the perfect example of all I had in mind for this blog. Translated book, from a small press, from a female writer from a country with very few books translated into English. This book is the second in a triptych of books that Open Letter has just released from Latavia. In some way, this is the sort of book I love and have always championed, those sorts of tales that touch me as a reader. Laura Vinogradova is someone who started off with a business degree before discovering her passion for writing a few years ago. She then published a couple of children’s books before this, which was her first book for Adults. It was nominated for the European Literature Prize and shortlisted for the Latvian Book of the Year.
Rute sits on a small stool in front of the stove, her head resting between her knees and her hands submerged in a bowl of warm water. She’s washing dishes, slowly and clumsily. She’s used to having a dishwasher, and the plates slip out of her hands, the forks prick her fingers. She sets the clean dishes on the floor next to the stool. Then she picks up the bowl of water, now full of coffee grounds and bits of food, to dump it outside behind the house. She opens the door carefully, the full bowl in her hands, and stops, startled: a young woman is in the yard, a little boy stands at her side and another child kicking in her stomach. Rute doesn’t see this, but can sense it. The woman’s coat is fastened only over her breasts, her stomach stronger than the buttons, splitting the coat in two.
Rute arrives athr fathers little house in the countryside !
Anyway, the book follows the stories of two sisters, or is it the story of Rute, the sister who is left behind? Her sister, Dina, disappeared many years ago, and is only present in the book through the frequent letters written by Rute to her sister, which litter the book. In the book, we meet Rute, a woman who seems to be at a crossroads in her life as she points out she is now maybe the older sister, as she is now much older than her sister was when they were last together. She is in a relationship, but she has also discovered that her father, a man she never really knew, has passed away. She heads to the property he owns in a small village. This is where she meets the couple next door and their young son. But it is also where the reality of who her father is, a man her mother said was a waste of space, comes alive in the eyes of the couple, an odd couple of single mother and brother next door, and the man she thought she knew is not the man he is. Add to this her escape from the city and perhaps her own problems. This is what happens when you step outside your own typical life, look at someone else’s life, a past you never had, and wonder where you move forward. All this, along with the small house that later develops its own problems, prompts Rute to reassess her own life and future.
Dear sis!
I planted the dahlias. For you. I dug up the ground with a dull shovel and tore out the weeds. Matilde was right the soil here is all clay. But I planted the bulbs and did some thinking. Ten years. Do you still remember me? Or think of me? Are you planting dahlias for me, somewhere?
Life seems to happen on its own. I would’ve never guessed that I’d one day be planting dahlias at our dad’s house. Never. But life happens. In all kinds of ways.
Sis, I want to tell you about the river. About me in the river. It makes me tremble and shiver. It makes me laugh.
It’s been so long since I’ve felt this alive. The water is fairly clear by the dock. Deep. I can’t touch the bottom, I’d have to go under a bit. You can cross it in no time. If you want get a good swim in you have to kind of circle around. You can feel the current. If you let it, it’ll carry you, though I don’t know how far.
Sis! I want to stay in the river.
I wish you’d come back …
Love you.
One Rute’s letter toher sister long disappeared but she still writes to her !
Now this is what I call a small epic, a novella that feels like an epic work. It packs a lot into a small book. Loss of a sister, moving forward with a relationship, our parents, and our own vision. In our lives, all these are looked at in this very short novel. As I said, this is the type of novel I love: personal, heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and a gem that needs to be widely read. It reminded me of those early Peirene books from well over 15 years ago, books that can be read in the time it would take to watch a film, and in this case, will leave you with a lot more than most modern films do. This tugs at what makes us human as readers. Do you have a favourite novella that feels epic ?
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