There once lived a mother who loved her children, until they moved back in: three novellas about family

This was an incredibly interesting collection of three novellas to start 2026 off with a bang, with an equally interesting back story. As the introduction (by the translator) expands on, Petrushevskaya wrote these 3 novellas between 1988 and 2002, but because they lay bare the hardship, brutality and often tragedy associated with every day domestic life in Russia, it was many years before they could be published due to Russian censorship. "She spoke for all those who suffered domestic hell in silence, the way Solzhenitsyn spoke for the countless nameless political prisoners".

Petrushevskaya doesn't hold back in these three novellas: the domestic lives she describes in each are violent, bleak and depressing, yet she has fun with them too, show more and as a reader you reach the end quite discombobulated, not sure if it's right to have enjoyed something so monstrous quite so much.

The longest novella is The Time is Night, in which the protagonist, an ageing poet tries desperately to survive in her own home as her grown up son and daughter exploit her and her apartment in every which way they can, whilst she also deals with her mother in the sanitarium. In Chocolates with Liqueur, a husband applies his ready violence towards getting rid of his family so he can move on with his new love interest, and in Among Friends a mother commits an unspeakable act in a demonstration of the strength of a mother's love.

I really enjoyed this collection, not just for sheer readability, but also because they give an insight into life behind many a closed Russian apartment door. Petrushevskaya takes the stories to the extreme, but her writing was fuelled by the every day troubles and tragedies of the average Russian on the street, living in overcrowded identical State managed dwellings and dealing with violence and alcoholism as part of the fabric of every day life.

4.5 stars - a collection that does absolute justice to the hallowed reputation of the Russian short story greats. show less

‘’Oh, great mother nature! Why do you have to trick us? Why do you need all this mucus, stench, violence, our sleepless night and exhausting work? Presumably to make things right, but nothing ever turns out right.’’

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s stories in this volume are part of an absurd, nightmarish universe. Except that this ‘’universe’’ is very, very real. This is the living Hell of the Soviet society, built on lies, treachery, corruption and violence. This is beautiful Moscow turned into a den of worms where people try to survive another day in communal apartments because All Hail the Great Collectivization, beloved comrades! This is the journey within the turbulence of their feelings, the terror of living with your show more enemy. This is how the future is destroyed, this is how family members turn into enemies over a piece of bread, a potato and a few centimetres of space. This is why we need to study some serious History.

The Time Is Night: A poet is trying to survive under a series of threats. Eviction, a daughter who can’t close her legs, creating babies by the minute, a son who is a coward, a criminal and an all-around accomplished Soviet parasite. Poetry echoing Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva and her grandson are the only sources of light in her life. But they are far from enough…

Chocolates With Liqueur: This harrowing story is divided into three chapters. We start at the heart of the story, we continue with the origins of Lelia’s ordeal in the hands of a monster and the end comes in the final chapter. You will drive yourselves mad trying to comprehend Lelia’s docility, you will find yourselves murdering her husband in your mind in approximately 200 different ways but I promise you, the closure will satisfy you 200%!

Among Friends: A troubled mother resorts to extreme actions to ensure that her son will have a better life. But even that is highly doubtful.

‘’Recently my memory grew hazy and I began losing my eyesight. How many years passed in our Friday gatherings? Ten? Fifteen? We heard of the political unrest in Czechoslovakia, then in China, then in Romania, then in Yugoslavia; after that came the news about the trials of the culprits, followed by the trials of those who had protested against the original trials, then the trials of those who had collected money to support the families of the incarcerated dissidents, but all these events rolled past our nest on Stulin Street.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less

Petrushevskaya has been on my list of authors to read for a while, since it first occurred to me that ALL of the Russian authors I knew were men. The titles on her books are AMAZING. I finally stumbled on a few of her books this spring at Left Bank Books, so I had to grab two of them.

These three stories all feature women trying desperately to care for their families and create some sense of stability, in worlds were money and food is never enough, and everyone is always scheming for apartment registrations. In "The Time is Night," a grandmother tries to provide for herself and her grandson, on a tiny pension and whatever she can get doing poetry readings and writing letters. Meanwhile, her daughter takes the grandson's money and spends show more it on her new boyfriend, while her sone regularly comes around to demand money. In 'Chocolates with Liqueur," Leila is married to an abuser in the process of leaving her, who may have just attempted to poison her and her two kids (this one has a heavy Edgar Allan Poe flavor). Finally, in "Among Friends," a mother is going blind from the same disease that killed two of her relatives, and she tries to figure out who will care for her child after she is gone.

These stories are DARK, I am saying. Content warning for lots of abuse, both physical and sexual. For descriptions of mental illness. But there is pathos and wry wit here as well. Whether that is enough to balance out the matter-of-fact tragedy of it all will vary, I am sure, reader to reader. show less

"Forgive my tears", 23 June 2015

This review is from: There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In: Three Novellas About Family (Paperback)
My favourite of these three tales of the awfulness of Russian family life was the first (the longest at 110 p) - 'The Time is Night'. Narrated by a harried 50 year old single mother, she tells of her problematic son, newly released from jail and demanding money for drink; her daughter, three times pregnant by different men, and who has dumped her eldest son, Tima, on her mother - an added expense and worry, yet a joy too:

"My love. It's a physical pleasure for me to hold his weightless little arm, to gaze into his round blue eyes, with eyelashes so long that even when he show more sleeps they cast shadows like enormous fans. All parents, and especially grandparents, love little children with a physical, sinful love."

Her difficult life, scraping by, barely able to feed them, is exacerbated when her aged mother, senile and in hospital, is ordered to be sent to an insane asylum, thus curtailing the pension they rely on to live...
Very movingly written in a style all her own, showing human feeling in a very harsh world. show less

Astonishingly good. I have not read this kind of hard-driving, breathlessly honest, humorous-and-terrible-all-at-once prose since Celine (Death on the Installment Plan). The title story is the star, but I enjoyed the whole book. About people making do with what they have, hurting each other, loving each other as best they can, sometimes failing to love each other...and surviving. Keep writing, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, and I will keep reading.

Incredibly harsh to read--the author clearly conveys the madness of Soviet-era Russia but the reader needs a strong constitution to get past the ugliness.

Could not get into it. Not that it wasn't well-written, but spending time with these women in their awful lives was more than I could do