A strong presence for the juxtaposition of reality and surreality with a Ukrainian view. These short stories will stick to you like a bowl of pelmeyni.

Kirkus calls the collection "Evocative stories about the way national issues impact even the most personal aspects of life.” ⁣And I think that is definitely true for this collections by Oksana Zabuzhko. Zabuzhko's stories are clever—they often reflect a deep internality, running a monologue of thoughts and tangents. Some turns of phrase would have me chuckling aloud, while others drive home a poignant picture of the long shadow of Soviet/Russian occupation in Ukraine., I have had the opportunity to work in Ukraine and with Ukrainian people—I was in Odessa in 2013 in October right before the Russian occupation. I felt a deep sense of connection and emotional impact in reading these stories and recalling that time.

The stories in this collection take on a range of sociopolitical issues that all felt very topical and relevant, and it was interesting to read about these things through the lens of a Ukrainian woman. I found it to be powerful and enlightening. 4.5 stars.

Thank you Amazon Crossing and NetGalley for providing me with this e-arc.

I've been reading this one since April of 2020. Yes, you read that right. Since April.

So far I figured one thing: this whole collection of focuses on capturing the complexities of relationships and of mind by focussing on their response to the society around them. I dig this book, not gonna lie there but here are a few reasons why I haven't been able to finish this one:
• the stories are heavy, translated from Ukrainian (longer sentences when translated to English);
• the evocative oratory style of writing just plain stabs you in the heart and then takes your heart and caresses it with its emotional richness, and
• lost in translation- it is so obvious at few instances in a story made the longer sentences and heavier content hard to take in.

I loved the stories as a whole which were intensely informative and full of character depth and richness. I am sure it is such a pleasure to read the original but, for now, I'm making my way through this translated slowly and not being hard on myself for it. Maybe, one day, I'll be able to complete this one. Not exactly a DNF, but a kind of pause I'll resume, hopefully soon.

Rating: 2.9/5

Disclaimer: The review is entitled to change along with the rating when I finish reading this collection.

These stories from acclaimed Ukrainian author Oksana Zabuzhko aren’t an easy read. I found them quite challenging, not least because she writes in very long sentences and I sometimes found myself getting lost and consequently somewhat impatient. Most likely a second reading is required and I’m pretty sure I will be revisiting this collection at some point. The stories have women at their centre, and explore gender, sexuality, motherhood and women’s position in Ukrainian society today. Most of the stories are quite hard-hitting and Zabuzhko doesn’t mince her words. It’s worth knowing a bit about Ukrainian politics and history before embarking on the collection, especially with regard to national identity. I enjoyed some of the stories some of the time but didn’t really identify with the characters. However I was glad to discover the writer and look forward to reading more from her.

This is the first time that I read Oksana Zabuzhko. Short stories are beautifully written. I like the author's writing style very much. Maybe not the lightest read, but still worth reading.

This one was like a little jewel for me. Like when you get expensive and very good chocolate, and you do not want to eat it all at once. Because it is so good and precious, you are afraid that you will run out too quickly. So I read these stories, slowly with pauses. But I really enjoyed them.

It was a beautiful literary experience. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this! All opinions are my own.

Your Ad Could Go Here is the first book I've read by a Ukrainian author and it was interesting to say the least. This book is a series of short stories that all appear to have moral messages, critiques of society and many of them appear to have almost magical realism elements to them as the line between reality and make-believe becomes very thin. My biggest problem with some of these stories was that I found them a little bit difficult to follow at times, and events in them were unclear. It wasn't until I got further into the stories that things became clearer.

The second short story examined a female friendship which crossed boundaries as the two young girls seemingly had a deeper relationship. However, this changed when one of the girls was found in an unseemly situation. This altered their behaviour towards each other and seemingly changed the trajectory of their lives. It tackled issues of stigmas around gender, sexuality and mental health. I thought this was an interesting short story that I could connect with and was one of the better ones.

The third short story was particularly disturbing as it examined sibling rivalry in a village. It paralleled the story of Cain and Abel with two sisters (although I'm not entirely familiar with the Bible story). This one definitely ventured into magical realism territory as one of the daughters made a wish with a creature that visited her in the night after her sister ruined her life. It was all very twisted and fairly unsettling.

The final short story was probably the one I highlighted the most as this looked at ideas of motherhood, the menopause, rape, stardom, and family relationships. I think the most powerful aspects were when the mother Olah spoke about how mothers have many scars on their body: stretch marks, veins, cuts etc, but they were willing to take that toll in order to have a child and provide for them a better future. This was quite a powerful message and there were lots of other rather quotable sections that stuck out to me.

Overall, this felt like a very mixed bag of short stories. I was hoping to learn more about Ukraine when reading them, but that wasn't really the vibe I got. Ultimately I would say I'm a little disappointed, but glad I took the chance to read these.

This collection of stories provided an insightful portrait of what it was to be a girl and woman in the Ukraine. The writing is brilliant and the translation is perfect. As with almost any short story collection, some are better than others.

The author doesn't mince words or situations which could make some readers a bit uncomfortable. However, the discomfort is worth it as you read through this unique collection of stories.

Oksana Zabuzhko is one of the most famous contemporary Ukrainian writers, and although I don't ususally read short stories, I couldn't pass this collection.
I started with the story which gave the book its title ' Your Ad Could Go Here' and was immediately carried away by the author's unique writing style, breathless in its hurry to see, experience, absorb, process, and immortalize the moment. Oksana Zabuzhko asks her reader: isn't it the writer's job? To perceive and feel, to understand everything and everybody. A pair of gloves, a beautifully-crafted object bought in a tiny Viennese shop run by a glovemaker, who is as old as the hills, becomes something more. It defines the narrator's other choices by imposing standards of quality, elegance, and joyous, unapologetic style. When one glove gets lost, the author is desperate to replace it, but the little shop is gone, replaced by a department- store full of mass-produced merchandise that doesn't make anyone happier.

Oksana Zabuzhko's stories are deep and sometimes genuinely shocking. They are not for the faint-hearted, because they are intense and full of raw emotion and haunting imagery.

Your history, your reality might be different, but you are bound to relate and recognize the universal human condition in these painfully honest and memorable tales.

I haven't enjoyed a short story collection in a long time and this might be the collection that breaks my losing streak. I loved Zabuzhko's style which is straight forward without being too simplistic. The themes are also fascinating; the dark side of women's thoughts and the Orange Revolution stand out as unique.

“Every fear has its volume and weight…”

The women and girls in this collection of stories face hardships that are common to all women the world over and other tragedies that tests their courage beyond boundaries some of us will never know. War is brutal, and sometimes women are a debt to be paid. Women choosing between actualized children and the unborn, suffer through interrogations by the KGB, how a mother’s phantoms can be visited upon the daughter. Reach further back still into the family history of ‘the camps’, the misery still chasing them.

In Girls, a grand and severe passion for another, “Like a dormant gene of an inherited disease”. Darka divulges of her first love, sexual awakening with another student named Effie, a desire that gets swept away in dishonor and maybe something more dangerous, an informer in their midst? A lesson in betrayal, out of jealousy, desire to possess. The scandal that unfolded Darka only finds out much later, and how girls are so easily ‘dishonored by the obscene’. For Darka, Effie always remains a longing for another life, another self, even long after who we were so long ago is no longer remembered clearly. Could the worst sort of ruin be conquered in the future?

One of my favorites is The Tale of the Guelder Rose Flute, about a girl Olenka, born to good fortune. The firstborn is destined to become a princess, a queen, never could she be a common peasant. The second born intent on torturing the first, and so the rivalry begins, and intensifies when little Hannusia blooms herself. Gifted with skills of her own, jealousy to rival Cain and Abel consume the sisters. Is it the parents, the all seeing eyes of the village, the man come to court, or the matchmakers that birth such disharmony? Liberation in sin, ignorance in not heeding advice, women damned.

In I, Milena the surface hides everything, and all is not fine. Milena is a journalist of the finest sort, and she is in competition with herself for her husband’s affections. He is hungry for the Milena that is broadcast on TV, but there is a huge division between the onscreen and offscreen woman. Is she losing her mind?

Grannies who are made of sterner stuff, young men losing limbs, pasts mothers would rather bury, daughters who don’t speak the same language as their experienced, hardened mothers, Russian bullets, barriers, national patriotism, and the rest of the world watching from the sidelines. Despite what happens in a country, the home and family is still it’s own battleground and sanctuary. War presses each of these characters between the pages of a photo-album, even war within themselves.

Publication Date: April 28, 2020

AmazonCrossing

Oksana Zabuzhko may actually be here to make friends. I'd like to be her friend. This collection of short stories, most featuring the lives of Ukrainian women, is both tender and firm-handed. Tender in its emotive delivery; firm-handed in its language, its block paragraphs of perfectly rendered compound sentences that feel so much more readable and compact than they actually are. I say they feel more readable because I actually found myself doubling back again and again; I'd lost the thread, but I was almost always right - the imprint was clear and just as I'd left it. Fantastic, muddle-headed, immersive stories.

Zabuzhko's short story collection is painfully sincere and exceptionally contemporary; the thematical spectrum is broad, the author explores womanhood, pain, politics, sex whilst being acutely aware of the fragility of the human condition.