The Island of Charon. Playing Another Reality. Antoine de Saint-Exupery Award

“Why?” you ask. I’m interested in looking at everything here from the Outside, from the Sky, not vice versa. It has been interesting since childhood (we all come from our childhood, and mine one is associated with many deaths), so my novels in the series “Playing Another Reality” are an attempt to understand earthly life, going beyond its framework and looking at it from the “Outside”, and at the same time to explore the “Outside”.

Thus, in ordinary detectives everyone is looking for a murderer and sooner or later finds him, and the reason of the murder is usually explained by the author in terms of logic of the human (!) mind, feelings, and emotions (desire for inheritance, revenge, envy, hatred, etc.).

However, in “The Island” the identity of the murderer does not matter much after all (although, of course, it will be revealed to the reader), and the real reason of the murder is unlikely to be correctly established even by the most experienced detective, it is known only to the Creator.

“Why?” you ask me again. Because this story is about something else… It is about the Eternal and the Transient, the Dual Soul and the Divine Spirit, the thirst for Love and its likeness. It is about the search for the Real among phantoms and illusions. About the right of choice and predestination. About the fact that life is a constant movement forward, and about Hope that cannot be lost, even if everything is already behind… because it only seems so!

Alexandra Kryuchkova,
Honored Writer of the Moscow Сity Organization
of the Union of Writers of Russia,
laureate of international literary awards
http://cyclowiki.org/wiki/Крючкова_Александра_Андреевна

The magazine “Literary Moscow”/ “Moskva literaturnaya” No. 1, 2022.

ISBN 978-5-7949-0970-8, the Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia, NP “Literary Republic”, 2022 – 100 pages.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XBB2GXM

https://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/543235267/

V. Shiltzyn, “The Little Prince’s Rose of the Universe”

If it were possible to classify literature, then “The Island of Charon” by Alexandra Kryuchkova would be quite logical to put on the same shelf with “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The reverent attitude to the miracle of being and the models of interconnections, built from internal causes and stretched throughout the entire Universe, look similar in these authors, despite the difference in their initial circumstances and diametrically opposite endings.

Those critics who compare the prose of Alexandra Kryuchkova with Daniil Andreev are also right. The multitude of the worlds and parallel universes reflected in his “Rose of the World” could as well include the constructions found in her novel “Confessions of a Ghost” and in the story “The Island of Charon”. The power of logical dependencies, filigreed by Kryuchkova, makes these works no less plausible than the philosophical bestseller of the famous mystic.

Alexandra Kryuchkova’s prose built an invisible bridge between two previously unconnected authors of the past. “The Little Prince” of Exupery took care of the rose, and the universal phenomenon of Daniil Andreev also turned out to be a rose, but for him it was already the “Rose of the World”. Taking up the relay race of generations, Alexandra Kryuchkova invisibly and delicately takes care of the very same rose.

Vadim Shiltzyn,

member of the Union of Writers of Russia,

laureate of literary awards

The newspaper “Poetograd” No. 4 (400), 2022.

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

https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30662

B. Mikhin, “A detective fairy tale for adults”

You shouldn’t be sure of anything, because “everyone has his own island here”, although not always it is an island, and not everywhere…

Then, what is “The Island” by Alexandra Kryuchkova?

Is it a fairy tale for adults? – Yes, sure. It is full of romance and sadness of Antoine de Saint-Exupery and of “standing on the edge” from Max Fry.

Is it a mystery detective? – Undoubtedly. We see the classic dramaturgical “slide”, a three-act scheme, and it keeps you in suspense till the end.

Is it a love story? – It’s also true. The emotions hidden beneath the outward calmness of the main character are going wild! Until the last breath and even after it, she is looking for earthly love and cognizes reality (well, or non-reality, as you like) in a not rational, not linear way.

“The Island of Charon” by Alexandra Kryuchkova is variegated and multifaceted, but that’s what makes it so remarkable! Besides, the brightest creative successes usually happen somewhere at the junction, and the genius manifests itself in something non-standard, going beyond the statistical average.

However, you shouldn’t be sure of anything, because…

…“everyone has his own island here!”

Boris Mikhin,

member of the Union of Writers of Russia,

laureate of literary awards

The newspaper “Poetograd” No. 4 (400), 2022.

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

https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30662

E. Tallenika, “Magic captivity”

(“The Magic Captivity of Alexandra Kryuchkova’s Prose”)

I am holding in my hands a philosophical and mystical thriller “The Island of Charon”, which received several literary awards in 2021: “Ocean, Wind, Sand and Stars” after A. de Saint-Exupery (Open Literary Club “Response”), “Another Reality” after Leonid and Daniil Andreev (Creative Center “Clouds of Inspiration”), “Running on the Waves” after A. S. Grin (Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia together with the Museums of A.S. Grin in Feodosia and Stary Krym), “Case No.” 2021 after Alfred Hitchcock and “The Book of the XXI century” in the nomination “Wings” after A. de Saint-Exupery (Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia together with Non-commercial Partnership “Literary Republic”)[1 - The newspaper “Literary News” / (“Literaturnye Izvestia”) No. 11—12 (197—198), 2021, “The results of the literary awards 2021” by the press-secretary of the Moscow State Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia, https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30044]. However, I’ve studied some reviews to decide whether to read it or not.

And I begin reading the book to the music from Christopher Nolan’s film “Interstellar”, which appears almost out of nowhere and sounds like a refrain on that very Island. I recreate the reality of events, because it’s to this music that the reader is about to learn how tender the embrace of even the most horrible death can be.

“Everyone has his own island here…”

The music of the stars and planets places me to the space-time tunnel “Island” – “Island”, one of them is in the Sun Book, and the other one is in the Moon Book. Christopher Nolan with his film crew beneath my windows of the hotel on Tatari Street in Tallinn, 2019, immediately came up to my mind. I was watching the process of making his new film “Tenet” from the inside.

Nolan was focused and serious. He gave the command to start.

And I see Alexandra writing her “Island”:

…The Creator, the Ocean, the Sky, the Wish Tree, the Moon Book and the Sun Book…

Yes, that’s right, like that – with a capital letter and nothing else.

And this is not an artistic technique, but the essence of the author’s values – the system of coordinates of her Universe, in which the main word “Love” turns out to be so impossibly huge and holy that it becomes unpronounceable!

However, it is Love that permeates everything and all around: a randomly met person without anatomical signs, and the Girl looking for her mother in the Ocean, and the Boy, her “little prince”, asking for a lantern not for himself, but for the Girl, because on this Island every wish can be fulfilled by the Wish Tree, and even the barefoot Old Man, who has nothing left but black birds and other people’s memories, the fact that touches me to the core…

This fragile, not too sociable girl-woman with Tsvetaeva’s haircut, who frankly informs that all those, who has sunk into her soul, lie without moving a muscle, and they are YOU yourself (!), manages to achieve by an apparently simple but obviously magical narration a hail of my tears!

It is incomprehensible, but Alexandra Kryuchkova, who has already grown in her literary work to the level of philosophical Thought, penetrating into the depths of the Universe and leading us, readers, step by step along the Stairway to the Sky with each of her books, remains in her soul a naive child, still discovering Love and Peace, Good and Evil, and surprising us with the purity and sincerity of the pronounced, “I WANT!”