3.5 Stars
This novel, written in Russian and first published 30 years ago, is now available in English.
I had never heard of the Nenets, Indigenous people living in Siberia in the Russian Arctic. This book focuses on these reindeer-herding nomads.
Alyoshka is 26 years old when he reluctantly agrees to be married, though he pines for Ilne who left the community years earlier for life in the city. He struggles between tradition and duty and his personal desires. Alyoshka’s mother worries about her son’s unwillingness to follow age-old customs which emphasize the importance of marriage and family. Petko, Ilne’s father, is grieving the loss of his wife and suffers loneliness since his daughter has abandoned him. An old man, he contemplates his role in the community during his remaining years and his death.
The time period is unclear but there are references to the Soviet Union so obviously it is set pre-1991. What is clear is that it is a period of transition in the lives of the Nenets. Their traditional lifestyle is facing opposition. For instance, the government removes children from their families and takes them to boarding schools where Indigenous languages and native culture are banned. Other Soviet-era interference is also mentioned in terms of the corrupting influences of money and alcohol. The Soviet administrators who are to assist the Nenets know nothing about them: “These strangers resembled heads sewn on foreign bodies with rotten threads, and sewn on the wrong way besides, back of the head pointing forward, eyes backward.”
This is a slow-paced, quiet, reflective novel. There is little action; the focus is on characters’ internal struggles. I appreciated that Alyoshka, Petko, and Alyoshka’s mother all achieve some insight and peace.
I enjoyed learning about the culture of the Nenets. Their lives are very much shaped by reindeer herding: “the reindeer was the root of the life of the Nenets, its soul” and “reindeer were not money but brothers in this life – untiring, sacred brothers in destiny and in grief.” They have a great respect for the land and its resources since “all living things share the same fate.” The men hunt for food but do not take more than necessary: “hunting is not murder and not a game of hide-and-seek with the beast and with one’s own conscience, but a struggle. An honest struggle of equals.”
The Nenets have a strong sense of community obligations. Alyoshka’s mother believes that the meaning of life is to live and to work honestly. Vanu, Petko’s friend, speaks of the laws of work and of kindness. The men bemoan the fact that children have forgotten “the law of their land: children feed fathers and mothers once they stand on their own feet” and have adopted “the foreign law: to take from the parent while he can still give.”
As so many societies, Nenets society is very patriarchal: “Only a man could be the master of the Great Life. For that, he was given strength and intelligence. And the woman was the mistress of the hearth . . . she had a duty to be near [the man].” I found it interesting that, other than Ilne who has abandoned life on the tundra, women are not named. Petko’s wife is only referred to as the Lamdo woman. Women hesitate to speak at gatherings; for instance, Alyoshka’s mother makes a request only “after the period of silence that befits a woman.” Women wait for the man to eat: “they would not touch the food, however hungry they were, until he ate the first bite.” On her wedding day, a bride sits “in the place where a Nenets woman sat only once in a lifetime. Beside the groom: not on the floor planks, where she would have her eternal place for all the days of her life.” To keep the tent warm, to look after her husband, is “the first commandment that a woman, a wife, a mother had to follow. This was her main job on earth.” There is an attempt to emphasize the importance of women, but, for me, it doesn’t lessen her secondary status and “the endless work of a woman.” Petko’s wife died so “Now there was no one to set the family tea table in the morning, no one to mend the boots, to start the fire. When a woman dies, she takes half of life with her . . . [and] takes away a part of your soul.” Unfortunately, what remains with me is a horrific scene where a woman is beaten with “a sturdy trace made of walrus hide,” described as “the age-old instrument of punishment.”
As befits the Nenets’ animistic worldview, the author uses lyrical prose replete with nature imagery. Metaphors and similes using trees, animals and birds abound: “His short, troubled sleep resembled the oblivion of a bird who had nested on an impregnable rock covered in a cold, murky fog” and “Khasawa looked like a ptarmigan plucked by a hawk” and “Their words, sharp like the calls of ravens who had spied a carcass, seemed like a violent argument” and “he felt that an empty space had formed near his heart or inside it, like in a bird’s nest when the last fledgling flies away, leaving only the down from its feathers.”
The author, born in the Polar Ural tundra, belongs to the Indigenous Nenets community. She was separated from her parents by the Soviet authorities and sent to a boarding school, but as a young woman she returned to the nomadic way of life. Obviously she is uniquely able to describe the lives and customs of her people and the challenges they face. White Moss reminds me of Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2023/02/review-of-stolen-by-ann-helen.html) which is about the Sámi living in northern Sweden. I recommend both books to readers who enjoy learning about Indigenous cultures.
Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
No comments:
Post a Comment