Klotsvog by Margarita Khemlin, translated by Lisa C.Hayden, foreword by Lara Vapnyar

It's difficult that a character of a book remains in my mind because nasty, but absolutely I didn't like at all Maya Klotsvog the protagonist of the novel Klotsvog

written by Margarita Khemlin, translated by Lisa C.Hayden, foreword by Lara Vapnyar published by Columbia University Press. Not just her, but also the abusive men she met along her way. They are in some cases horribles, maybe direct consequences of her wrong actions and falsities.

That woman irritated me, because she was a powerful liar during all her existence; because firstly she married a man discoring she was pregnant of her former lover, cheating in different ways her husband but also the ex-lover, liquidated without too many explanations.

She married that first man for not remaining alone. Can a woman marry someone for this reason without to commit a terrible error because not in love?

Of course what it could be an idilliac love-story, this man was expecting children, and having been married, and still missing his first wife and children, would have adored to experience the same situation with this second wife, because a nightmare. Maybe he understood that Maya didn't mind at all of him and didn't love him; maybe he understood that the son was generated with another man, he started to drink, to be verbally abusive and distant, feeling that something profoundly was wrong in all that story although it is scaring  a situation like this one, where at first someone is clear, but the other is a liar for later living the horror in both sides. The violence of a frustrated man and the multiple lies of Maya. 

The first child she had had, Mishenka, "met" along his way and his first years, a lot of problems, in particular health problems because the pregnancy of Maya was tormented while he was still in his belly and he felt it; he felt that his arrival was a bit messy.

The divorce arrived pretty soon ad Maya continued to collect husbands and lovers remaining, you will see at the end, alone and without having met anymore her son from more than 40 years! At a certain point the daughter she had had with the second husband will ask her if for case Misha was her brother. These sufferances, these secrets, these pains have been lived by Maya as if her person wouldn't be touched after all by an existence built in such a horrible way.

Something she will remark often in the book, is "But that's not my point." If this lady would exist, I would ask her which is her point of view. This line gave me irritation as well.

This book has been written with a powerful method, you see my strong review of a poor character born thanks to the pen of ms. Khemlin. This book is wonderful if you want to understand dynamics sometimes existing in the life of a woman.

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori