THE LADY OF THE MINE, bitter take-down of imperialism's Silent Majority

THE LADY OF THE MINE
SERGEI LEBEDEV (tr. Antonina W. Bouis)
New Vessel Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$17.95 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The mystical laundress at the center of this novel is obsessed with purity. Her task is formidable as she stands guard over a sealed shaft at a Ukrainian coal mine that hides terrible truths.

The bodies of dead Jews lying in its depths seem to attract still more present-day crimes. Acclaimed Russian author Sergei Lebedev portrays a ghostly realm riven by lust and fear just as the Kremlin invades the same part of Ukraine occupied by the Wehrmacht in World War Two.

Then corpses rain from the sky when a jet liner is shot down overhead, scattering luxury goods along with the mortal remains. Eerie coincidences and gruesome discoveries fill this riveting exploration of an uncanny place where the geography exudes violence, and where the sins of the past are never all that in the past.

Lebedev, who has won international praise for his soul-searching prose and unflinching examination of history’s evils, shines light on the fault line where Nazism met Soviet communism, evolving into the new fascism of today’s Russia.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: When someone sets out to write about hos truly vilely humans treat, and think about, each other, they get...pushback. Unsurprisingly a man from Moscow known to support anti-Russian causes gets review-bombed for this bitterly anti-imperialist examination and take-down of the memory hole people put their dark collusions into on Goodreads. 82% of all the reviews are one-star Cyrillic alphabet ones. I don't speak or read Russian so I can't comment on what those reviewers say. The few among the one-starrers who wrote in English don't seem to me like real people based on their profiles, which fits.

I wish nothing but the best for Ukraine. This book is set there because it's the place most in the news; because it's clear the Russian Army is there to forcibly reintegrate Ukraine into whatever Little Vladdy Pu-Pu plans to call the new Soviet Union. The entire thrust in the guts of this book is aimed at imperialism and conquest, using the silently collusive's various ways of justifying their collusion against them, in service of the downtrodden. Simply not doing something active in support of evil is not enough to remain a decent human being. The mine in this story has no bottom, has no end, it never closes or runs out of its resource: Victims who were not saved by those who could have.

If you, cishet white person reading this, are feeling a wee bit uncomfortable about now, you should pay attention to that feeling. It's as fresh as the headlines: we're reading everywhere about disasters, and doing the "easy" to do; about how our nature as humans is to go along to get along, to survive, to be small targets. That will only gain force in the coming years as duck-and-cover feels safe, feels good.

There is no safe.

Stand up whatever way you can. Not doing so will not keep you safe. Ask those people in this novel's crashed airplane...they weren't safe.

I assume I don't need to explain the metaphors used by Levedev, they're not very subtle. I hope I don't need to say "not getting this book and reading it isn't anything but denial of your humane duty." Listen to the people who know what they're talking about, like exiled writers; plan your resistance with their examples. Help them keep the message going, keep the help spreading.

Or sit and wait for it to happen to you. It will.

Not quite five stars for me, because as mentioned above the metaphors aren't terribly subtle. The story deserves your time and treasure.