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Book Review: Other Worlds: Peasants, Pilgrims, Spirits, Saints by Teffi, edited by Robert Chandler, translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler

cover art for Other Worlds: Peasants, Pilgrims, Spirits, Saints by Teffi

Other Worlds: Peasants, Pilgrims, Spirits, Saints by Teffi, translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler

New York Review Book Classics 2021

ISBN 978-1681375397

Available: Paperback, Kindle Bookshop.orgAmazon.com )

 

Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya (1872-1952), known as Teffi, wrote distinctively Russian short stories drawing on her culture and its folklore and legends. These intriguing stories demonstrate Teffi’s ability to show how the supernatural coexists with the commonplace in the lives of ordinary country folk struggling to deal with the deprivation, superstition, dangers, and evils of their place and time.

 

Teffi’s characters are people who have seen it all and expect the unexplainable to happen. They are deeply spiritual but not necessarily religious. They have an eerie insight into the ways that supernatural good and evil touch human life. They are also preternaturally aware of the strange and frightening signs that tell them certain human beings are not what they seem and that unusual incidents are not random and harmless but are warnings, and even evidence, of hazards that must be confronted or at least recognized. Teffi’s characters do not live in a relatively stable world that is knocked out of shape by horror; they live in the midst of it – so much so, that its existence is chillingly normalized.

 

The stories in this collection, except for the first few, are built around characters and settings that feel sinister and menacing. In “Shapeshifter,” a doctor is thought to be “some sort of were-creature” whose “big stone house” was the site where a girl had previously been confined alive in a wall, and ten banknote forgers had been suffocated in the cellar to keep them from being found by the authorities. A woman experiencing a “Wild Evening” takes shelter at an old monastery that local children’s nannies use as a threat to keep their little charges in line.

 

In “Witch,” a couple struggles to be free of a servant who is said to have secured her job indefinitely by ritually burning scraps of paper and “blowing smoke” up the chimney. A priest’s vampire child threatens people’s safety in “Vurdalak,” and the “House Spirit” is up to its traditional tricks that might have to be taken as a serious warning against evil this time. In “Leshachikha” we hear “a kind of story that simply doesn’t happen anymore” about a widowed count with a “hard, yellowish nail of extraordinary length” who has a “malevolent” daughter with very odd ways. Several other tales focus on traditional Russian characters and their familiar stories:  the house spirit, the water spirit, the bathhouse devil, the rusalka, and shapeshifters of all sorts, including those in the form of dogs, cats, and “she-wolves” (who are actually women who have been confined for far too long by controlling husbands). Even the famous Baba Yaga makes an appearance.

 

The Foreword, Afterward, and additional notes on Russian names and translation methods are helpful to readers who are unfamiliar with Russian folklore and tradition. However, some of the translation choices, such as mirroring period dialect in English, are distracting and negatively affect the mood and tone of the stories. Nevertheless, this collection is a blast from the Russian past that suggests, in an unsettling way, that perhaps these old stories are the best, because they come closer to revealing the often discounted darker truths of life we dismiss as old fashioned ways of perceiving reality. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Graphic Novel Review: Road of Bones by Rich Douek, art by Alex Cormack

cover art for Road of Bones by Rich Douek

Road of Bones by Rich Douek, art by Alex Cormack

IDW, 2020

ISBN-13: 9781684055982

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, comiXology  Bookshop.orgAmazon.com )

 

It’s 1953. Roman Ivanovich Morozov is a prisoner in the Siberian gulag of Kolyma for slandering Stalin, given 25 years of hard labor as punishment. He and his fellow prisoners are forced to work in harsh conditions. If the frozen environment doesn’t kill them, the guards certainly will. One evening, Roman is caught leaving food out for a domovik, a creature from fairy tales that protects a household.

This is survival horror at its finest. The story continually keeps the reader on their toes, wondering if the creature stalking the escaped prisoners is real or if it lives solely in Roman’s head. The isolation and paranoia the men experience both in and out of the gulag is intense. The artwork is excellent, but at times it is confusing to decipher who is communicating. I had to continually go back and reread a few sections to make sure I was keeping characters straight. It was somewhat easier to track at the beginning. The escaped prisoners have similarities in appearance. There are very subtle differences, including the color of different pieces of their clothing and even eye color. The landscapes and color choices are amazing. Even the panels when the men are sitting around the campfire are effective. The shadows are deep and definitely add to the oppressive atmosphere. Cormack is clearly a talented artist. Highly recommended.

This volume collects issues #1-4.

 

Contains: blood, cannibalism, gore

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Editor’s Note: Road of Bones is a nominee on the final ballot of this year’s Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel. 

Book Review: The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson

cover of The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson

The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson  ( Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-374-53855-2

Available: Kindle, Paperback

 

 

The old witch Iskra knows the secrets of the bayou where Miranda runs her Alumacraft under the cypress trees in the murky, humid gloom. It’s an ugly, decaying place filled with lurking dangers, brutal violence, and the tragic history of its inhabitants. Miranda is linked to Iskra through the murder of her father and a ritual involving a web-fingered baby. In order to find her father’s bones, reunite Littlefish and his clairvoyant sister, and save her own life, Miranda must read the signs that are leading her into a mortal combat against evil forces. Her challenge involves the local constable, a crazy preacher, a dwarf, and a dead wife’s mistakes. No one is safe in The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson.

 

Davidson ratchets up the tension from the very first chapter and maintains it throughout as Miranda tries to stay one step ahead of her enemies and encounters drug dealers, murderers, and even supernatural forces. These forces have their origin in Russian myths to which Davidson adds a Southern Gothic spin. This makes for a setting that is as terrifying to the younger characters as nightmarish horror stories and yet is so realistically detailed that the reader can feel the saw grass and smell the rotting bodies. It is that very combination that makes the witchcraft believable and turns the events into the stuff of imagination. To Davidson’s credit, it is often difficult to tell where the line is between the two.

 

The plot of The Boatman’s Daughter moves at breakneck speed. Davidson’s characters might spend a few seconds thinking and planning, but the action never stops. The characters are mythological or fairytale figures in terms of good and evil, but they are always truly human which makes the evildoers all the more frightening and the heroine even more amazing. The rich descriptions and Davidson’s talent for keeping the reader entertained with a multi-layered and complicated plot make this an outstanding read that will make you dream of a film version while still being certain nothing can beat the book. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley