A complicated, straining existence, and a memoire, moving, beautiful sometimes sad and "raw." In this way can be synthetized the first book by Sophia Shamliyev
This book is an intimate, intricate and naked description of Sophia's existence, in its absurdities, in its obstacles, in its victories.
It is written going deep; a writing-style dense of meanings for capturing the obscurity and mystery that sometimes life present us.
It's also an historical voyage, this one, with vivid descriptions of Soviet Russia, the country where the author was born in and knew so well before to leaving it with his dad; customs and traditions, folklore and magic.
Sophia remembers that Russians are followers of numerology, tea leaf readings, evil eye spells, sharing some of the most important superstitions. "If you forget something inside when you're already out the door you must look at yourself in the mirror upon reentry. This way you make it back home in one place."
It's not simple to growing up, to become adults: less the existence of a baby is stressed, more he/she will become an happy adult.
Sometimes life is different; it wants to add pain, asperity starting in the first phase of the existence. It's unfair, but life doesn't notice it.
Of course it happens because of various factors. In the case of Sophia, the problem was an alcholic mother.
Not everyone pick up the parents that they would want the most for growing up; the ones with which to become adults.
It's a luxury that can't be choosen because parents should be two.
In the case of Sophia, the story was more complicated.
She tells that there were people who wanted to adopt her like her granny Galina wanted to do and one day: "Instead of taking me to court....She and my dad sat on opposite sides of our living room and asked me to walk to the one I would choose to live with if I could."
I felt for her the dilaniating feeling of a kid who had to choose the best parent, the best person in grade of giving her the best education and love, tenderness, friendship, severity, serenity. It's an abnormality and it's unfair; this choice remains as you will read for all the life, lived vividly. Confusion of course, will be great in a kid, because it's a story of love. Who should a kid love more? Her granny? Her dad? Who should a kid trust more? Why excluding someone? Why a choice?
Sophia in this sense remembers a phrase by Gertrude Stein: "There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer."
But...It's a privilege, although dilaniating, to be in grade to choose where and with whom to spend the existence.
I found interesting the traditions about the dead ones, and how Russians try to re-capture the spirit of the person passed away so that he/she can continues to stay close to them.
In the Soviet Russia there wasn't Christmas but Sofia's family prepared a Christmas's Tree opening the gifts with the arrival of the New Year. Sophia remembers that her dad in the old communist country that was Russia didn't never mention her mother and God.
Babies must be loved. The arrival of Sophia hasn't been so loved.
In fact while she was pregnant, the mother of Sophia, told to the husband that she was too weak for an abortion. In the Soviet Union there weren't anesthetics and an abortion wasn't a good practice at all. Sophia writes that her dad "Reluctantly agreed to let her keep me."
Sophia's dad enjoyed to spend time with her. Sophia remembers that her father accompanied her to museums, ballets, and opera every weekend although the absence of the mother was felt tremendously by Sophia. She writes at some point that "...Every library became my foster home and every book a coded path to grappling with the absent woman who never actually raised me."
Once grown up the choice of Sophia will be the one of experiencing in first person what it means to be a mother. Sophia, who hadn't had a mother, who would have wanted so badly to be hugged by her mother for once, became a mother, hugging and loving her children.
Anais Nin returns various times in the book; at first because of her hot relationship with Henry Miller; later because she sold pornographic stories to earning some money for an abortion, deciding of not having children.
Nin is in the mind of Sophia, because she lost two babies describing in detail what happened and her sensations.
Questions regarding the future of her children are many, while, persists in the existence of Sophia this biggest hole: that mother she hasn't had.
This one will be a reason for mourning for what she hasn't had although Sophia does it with intellectual profoundity, using precious words, sofisticated phrases and lines, defining her feelings with passion.
The author describes herself as a person "Without solid plans. I live too far away. An abandoner. A coward. An infidel."
Sophia tells that common couples in general wants to see people part of the existence of the other one; places where their partner grew up. So, with her boyfriend, she went to Russia, for later cheating him and marrying the man with which she would have had two children.
The first baby was born on 12/12/12 she tells. A magical day.
Sophia adds she believes in fear and she started to drive just at 27 and thanks to her husband.
Then memories will focus on her children and a visit at a common house's friend.
Sophia talks of her children, and the other girlfriend does the same, later offering her something to eat. High cholesterol, Sophia accepts fruits; it cleans veins. Sophia writes about tooth problems while she was waiting Franny, and at some point writes: "I don't believe we belong to each other the way my father does, but I am in the business of making the same polarities of magnets touch without repelling; I'm in the real of the unbelievable."
Speaking about abuses, once Sophia has had a relationship with an abused boy. It's common that ex-children abused don't go crazy for sex.
Sophia didn't laugh when her boyfriend told her the horror. She listened, she helped him to recover and later convinced him of having some sex together. Sophia wrote: "He confessed that maybe he can't, but really really really he wants to..."
Another important thematic touched by this book is what it means to be Jewish. For some Jewish is a real sin marrying a Christian but Sophia did it and tells that baptized both her children.
Who knows, she asks to herself, if she is becoming like her mother?
Splendid I love this book because of the sincerity of the author. An author who reveals a lot; she is frank regarding her feelings, her sentiments, for her family, her country, Russia, understanding also that the phantom of her mother, that mother she hasn't never had, influenced her life. Fortunately Sophia is a mother. A wonderful one I guess, at the end in peace also with her own mother!
The end of this book will let you cry a lot.
Highly recommended.
I thank NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this ebook.
Anna Maria Polidori
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