| Schaste vozmozhno |
Happiness is Possible
AST Publishers. Moscow 2009. 189 pages
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Awards:
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Short list for the Big Book Award 2010
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Foreign rights:
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Arabic/ Al Arabi, Bulgaria/ Aviana, Italy/ atmosphere libri, Spain/ meettok, UK/ Andotherstories
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A
writer, living in Moscow with a small dacha on the outskirts of the
city, is hard up and so hires himself out to a large publishing
company. He is required to deliver a positive novel on time but he has
been unable to come up with anything positive since his wife Tamara ran
off. She continues to visit the dacha, however, complete with new
lover, to whom he is also required to show the best fishing spots. All
that the writer is able to produce is notes about the happiness of
others. The country boy (a caricature of himself) who comes to Moscow
to land a rich woman, for instance. Yet the writer not only observes
happiness, he initiates it, too, by bringing two lonely neighbours
together, by giving a new chance to a teacher and her former pupil,
whose love was once mercilessly suppressed. Or is he inventing all of
this just to console himself? But then happiness does seem to catch up
with him, too. Instead of punching the neighbour disturbing his work
with the noise of his building work in the nose, in the end he lends
him a helping hand with the renovations. And Tamara suddenly starts
spending the night in the Moscow flat now and again, ultimately with
the news of what had not happened during all the years of marriage: she
is pregnant – by him.
"Happiness is Possible" is not only an enjoyable and precisely detailed
book about the new type of human beings to be found in the city of
Moscow, it is also a mini philosophical guide to happiness. Deadened by
the density of the residential tower blocks, the anonymous masses,
Zaionchkovski nevertheless teaches his characters to also smell the
roses growing through the city asphalt. He teaches them and us about
everyday happiness.
