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A review by ambra_
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
3.0
Three stars thanks to the well-written stories 'There's someone in the house' and 'The black coat'.
The other stories all disappointed me. I read reviews saying these stories are in line with Gogol and Dostoyevski. Petrushevskaya has been called a contemporary Tolstoy. So I had the highest of hopes: stories like those of my favourite writers, but with less of the sexism and racism due to being written by a woman in the 21-century?
I wanted to like this book so badly. I wanted to love it. But I felt like the stories were repetitive, the characters had no depth and the underlying themes and messages had as least as much sexism and racism seeping through as all the - nonetheless beloved - old Russian classics.
I'm gonna read Petrushevskaya's autobiography soon. I have watched hours worth of interviews with her and I deeply admired her. She's been through hell and back and I hope her autobiography captures everything she's seen better than her fictional works.
The other stories all disappointed me. I read reviews saying these stories are in line with Gogol and Dostoyevski. Petrushevskaya has been called a contemporary Tolstoy. So I had the highest of hopes: stories like those of my favourite writers, but with less of the sexism and racism due to being written by a woman in the 21-century?
I wanted to like this book so badly. I wanted to love it. But I felt like the stories were repetitive, the characters had no depth and the underlying themes and messages had as least as much sexism and racism seeping through as all the - nonetheless beloved - old Russian classics.
I'm gonna read Petrushevskaya's autobiography soon. I have watched hours worth of interviews with her and I deeply admired her. She's been through hell and back and I hope her autobiography captures everything she's seen better than her fictional works.