Tales of Ghosts. Playing Another Reality. Edgar Allan Poe award

A striking feature of Kryuchkova’s prose is the complete absence of a line between earthly and the Other Realities: while reading, we sometimes do not even notice that the hero or heroine has already passed into the Other World! And all the characters – decisive and not so much ones, romantic and prudent, loving and hating, smart and naive, happy and unhappy, rich and poor – have one thing in common: they are mortal and, basically, “suddenly”.

The mystical spirit is masterfully matched by the author with the daily routine and real events of the era. Thus, behind the plot of the “The City of Rains” there is an ominous panorama of the crash of the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001. The story “Stuck Pluto” is about an epidemic of coronavirus. In the story “Disembodied” we hear an echo of the Great Patriotic War, the ghost of a woman, a member of an intelligence network settled in Italy during the war years, has been looking for her son, evacuated to Siberia with an orphanage, with motherly persistence for half a century.

The short novel “Good Night” recreates a picture of the frantic rhythm of life and rotation in the business circles of Moscow in the sinister 1990’s, when there was a demand for such unscrupulous people as Sackman, who robbed the owner of a furniture company, and the lovesick Oksana, ready to do anything for money, who easily sold her friend to the customer of the murder.

The image of Mr. Piggins (in the story “A Photo film”) is also quite remarkable, convex and brightly drawn by the author with obvious sarcasm. We see a state official, who has successfully moved from the Soviet era into the era of radical changes: as he received his “tips” in the form of interest, bribes and kickbacks, so he continues to receive them. And he will never die, because the Piggins are eternal…

It is surprising that many of the works gathered in this book were created by Alexandra when she was a teenager, they are so well “faceted”. Written in pastel colors, they are lyrical, tender, they contain a slight sadness and a non-childlike understanding of the beauty of the world, in which Divine Love prevails over everything. A considerable portion of it is produced by the author herself, as if she remained to live on Earth at the age of a teenage girl. However, the character of her “Farewell to Childhood” is right,

“Time doesn’t exist. It is conditional and relative. And you will learn how to manage it when you realize that it doesn’t really matter how old you are on Earth, the main thing is who you feel like…”.

Yes! To look at the world through children’s eyes, being an adult, is a gift from the Creator.

After reading the book, one gets the feeling that the author is constantly and intently watching his characters – and even the reader! – not from the side, but as if from Above, from different heights, now approaching them, then moving away, but never leaving them … like … a guardian angel.

However, in answer to the question “Do I believe in ghosts?”, I will quote the wise “A Letter from the Astral Tablets”, included by the author in “Tales of Ghosts”,

“Of course, my dear friend… in my life there have been other inexplicable cases related to those who passed into the Other world, but I confess to you that most of all I have always been worried about the relationship of living people, because it is it that turns some of us into ghosts…”

Dmitry Nemelstein,

poet, writer, historian,

member of the Union of Writers of Russia,

laureate of literary awards

The magazine “CHILDREN of RA” No. №1 (194), 2022, Magazine Hall “Gorky-Media”.

https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30279

http://detira.ru/arhiv/publication.php?id=30279

https://magazines.gorky.media/ra

https://magazines.gorky.media/ra/2022/1

https://magazines.gorky.media/ra/2022/1/aleksandra-kryuchkova-skazki-prizrakov.html

“Do you believe in GHOSTS?”

The lyrical novellas of Alexandra Kryuchkova can’t leave anyone indifferent. They tell about the most vulnerable and fragile thing in human destiny – the formation and collapse of relationship between a man and a woman, about different faces of this and Other World life. Kryuchkova’s stories are quite small, no more than two pages, but how many experiences fall to the lot of their characters!

The writer uses the effect of a ‘detective’ ending: everything, as a rule, doesn’t end the way the reader expects. And the aerobatics of the dramaturgy of these stories is when one emotion interrupts another and reverses the outcome. Such an inverted outcome sometimes evokes in the reader directly opposite, overwhelming emotions.

The second and third parts of the book are written in the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe’s mystical thrillers. Nowadays ghosts, of course, don’t appear in old Gothic castles, but, for example, in the fashionable offices of well-known firms (the story “A Letter”). You see, they, the ghosts, absolutely don’t care where they appear. The surroundings don’t interest them at all. As in the works of past centuries, they are spiritually bound to the premises in which they died. Although, to tell the truth, I prefer stories outside the Otherworld – “A Piano”, “A Cat’s Name”, “See you Tomorrow”.

Without exception, all the short stories of Alexandra Kryuchkova are written at a high artistic level of narration and dramaturgy. Kryuchkova’s creative biography is full of surprises. She began writing poetry and prose at the age of 11. And not just began, because some short stories were included in the book, which is the subject in my note. This is evidenced by the dates under the works. These stories not only entered the book, they took their rightful place in it. The old works of the child prodigy Kryuchkova, included in her collection, were written by the hand of master. And they say that there will be no more Lermontovs because of the supposedly “slow” maturation of modern youth. However, it is not so! When you read Alexandra Kryuchkova’s stories, you don’t even think that they were written by a teenage girl.

I think that such an early maturation of Kryuchkova, as in the case of Lermontov, is caused by the premature death of both her parents. The tragic orphanhood could not but affect the child’s psyche. For Alexandra Kryuchkova, this resulted in a genuine interest in the Other World. The drama of life entered her soul early. As in the case of Lermontov, everyone learned about the prodigy Kryuchkova in retrospect, when she had already grown up and became a famous poet.

Although the stories, presented in the book, were written by Alexandra at a young age, they have not lost their original value even today. And yet, it’s a pity that our country didn’t care about its brilliant children in the nineties of the last century. And that Alexandra Kryuchkova’s early stories were published only two decades after they were written.

Alexander Karpenko[4 - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Карпенко,_Александр_Николаевич],

poet and writer

The newspaper “Poetograd” No. 12 (113), 2014

https://www.reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=9499

http://www.poetograd.ru/arch.html

TALES of GHOSTS

I dedicate my book
to every reader!

As well as to:

my parents,

grandmothers, grandfather and great-grandfather,
my son Andrey and our cat Josephine

and all KIND creatures and entities!

Part I. LOVE ME NOW!

0. Bonfire

I walked for a long time somewhere far away, in an endless thick fog, until I suddenly came upon a Man.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, trying to move on, but realized there was someone there, too.

“Follow me,” the Man said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The queue…”

“What are you queuing for?”

“Everyone will get his own.”

“And how long do we have to wait?”

The Man shrugged. The queue moved a little further. I began to distinguish some voices.