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A review by khelemer
Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories by Maria Reva
5.0
“The statue of Grandfather Lenin, just like the one in Moscow, 900 kilometers away, squinted into the smoggy distance…”
The opening words of Maria Reva’s GOOD CITIZENS NEED NOT FEAR immediately signal what it’s about through the image of a selfsame figure, serving both as a reminder of the perceived identical landscapes across the Soviet years and as a “model" citizen in the truest sense of the term. The characters in this novel (despite its pretense as a book of short stories, the intricately interconnected narratives really do deserve the moniker) face the manifold tropes associated with Soviet life and literature, from the enterprise of creating and selling illegal bone records to a fresh take on the trope of the Soviet apartment building mishap. The perceived flattening of life before the fall is tested through vibrant characters asserting themselves amidst a bleak backdrop, while after the fall, the stories reveal how pulling the rug out from under such a world causes the whole thing to collapse. If the first part of the book shows citizens manipulating a lifeless landscape, the latter half of the book illustrates a grotesque afterlife, an undead city full of the ghosts of the past in the forms of the teeth of a saint, insect larvae, and graves swallowing people whole.
Reva’s masterful work is a delightful read from start to finish, appealing both to readers familiar with her various topics from censorship to Chernobyl tourism in (post-)Soviet reality as well as to anyone who enjoys tightly bound narratives teeming with humor and wit, as well as the air of desperation as characters inquire if “as soon as you want something, you lack it; and if you do get it, it can easily be taken away."
The opening words of Maria Reva’s GOOD CITIZENS NEED NOT FEAR immediately signal what it’s about through the image of a selfsame figure, serving both as a reminder of the perceived identical landscapes across the Soviet years and as a “model" citizen in the truest sense of the term. The characters in this novel (despite its pretense as a book of short stories, the intricately interconnected narratives really do deserve the moniker) face the manifold tropes associated with Soviet life and literature, from the enterprise of creating and selling illegal bone records to a fresh take on the trope of the Soviet apartment building mishap. The perceived flattening of life before the fall is tested through vibrant characters asserting themselves amidst a bleak backdrop, while after the fall, the stories reveal how pulling the rug out from under such a world causes the whole thing to collapse. If the first part of the book shows citizens manipulating a lifeless landscape, the latter half of the book illustrates a grotesque afterlife, an undead city full of the ghosts of the past in the forms of the teeth of a saint, insect larvae, and graves swallowing people whole.
Reva’s masterful work is a delightful read from start to finish, appealing both to readers familiar with her various topics from censorship to Chernobyl tourism in (post-)Soviet reality as well as to anyone who enjoys tightly bound narratives teeming with humor and wit, as well as the air of desperation as characters inquire if “as soon as you want something, you lack it; and if you do get it, it can easily be taken away."