"Wound" by Oksana Vasyakina is a breathtaking journey through grief, love, and self-discovery. Join Oksana, a young queer poet, as she grapples with the loss of her mother and embarks on a poignant pilgrimage to their Siberian hometown. Vasyakina's prose is a lyrical dance of memory and emotion, weaving together the complexities of grief with wry humor and raw honesty. Translated with precision by Elina Alter, this extraordinary debut blurs the lines between reality and creation, offering a powerful exploration of loss, love, and the quest for belonging. "Wound" is a mesmerizing tale of healing and resilience that will stay with you long after the final page.

This book felt very long, think that's because the discussion on grief and death has taken a large portion, it is not an easy topic to read, it also felt a bit repetitive. I kinda wish there were more passage on sexuality and queer.

a complex read that certainly will make readers reflect. i did find it a bit too cold at times but i will probably end up reading it again

It's truly difficult to rate one person's pain transformed into prose. The structure of "Wound" is interesting, the subject important, but the execution uncaptivating and the content - problematic, especially in terms of how the topic of sexual violation seems to be glossed over.

Wound is a powerful and thought-provoking memoir of Vasyakina's experience of her mothers illness and eventual death. This seems to be a popular theme and this novel truly measures up to similar books that I have read. The way that she explores all of the mundane but beautiful facets of her mother daughter relationship, growing up and as an adult, is beautiful and perfectly contrasted with the tragic reality of sickness when roles reverse and the daughter becomes the carer. I found this hard to read at times as it is a very emotional book but well worth picking up! This will appeal to fans of A Very Easy Death and Crying in H Mart, but in many ways very different and unique, particularly highlighting the differences in how people handle illness and death across different cultures.

This was a very interesting read, a homecoming journey centred around our main characters loss of her mother and need to bring her ashes back to Siberia. It is written in an odd style, part stream of consciousness, part poetry, part literary criticism, exploring the roles of women in Russia, lesbian relationships in a country where that is not accepted, memory and the faultiness of it and the effect of trauma on the psyche. It was beautifully written, with parts of the prose even reading like poetry, and demanded the attention of the reader. I had to reread multiple passages if my attention wandered off slightly because the text was dense, slow moving, and thoughtful. But I am glad I persevered, it is not a book that gives easily to a reader, but it does have a lot to say,

I did not have time to finish this book, made it to 22% but what l read was really interesting.

The reflections on family, mother-daughter relationships, grief and queerness were engaging and emotions clearly conveyed. I will definitley pick this up if it comes my way at the library or in the bookshop.

Wound is the memoir of of the author's mother's deathbed, her death, and the grief that followed.

It is apparent the author is a poet, as the writing is quite lyrical, but the tone of the book is very bleak (which shouldn't be surprising considering the book's theme). The explorations of grief and death were quite dense and heavy, so it definitely isn't an easy read. It envokes a lot of thought and emotion, which can be comforting to those who have experienced loss so close by, but it is also quite confronting uncomfortable emotions.

All in all, I had difficulty going back to this book. For now I have decided to not finish it at 45%, because I can't cope with it emotionally, but I would recommend what I'd read so far to people who have lost and are looking for words about grief.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

I was so hoping to love this one but unfortunately a couple of things didn’t work for me. Never something I like reporting about books, but especially one that’s both queer and translated! 😭

Wound is a highly autobiographical work of fiction which details one woman’s journey to bury her mother’s ashes in Siberia. Usually I’d love something like this, as I love books that take a deep dive into mother/daughter relationships. And indeed that part of the novel was fascinating, even though I found the prose (possibly the translation) a little uninspired at times.

I like the lingering over the logistics of death, the mundane technicalities that have to be taken care of in the throes of grief. Packing your mother’s ashes swaddled in socks so it won’t get smashed by a careless airport worker, booking in a slot to say goodbye to a parent in a funeral home, all of this while dealing with a gaping hole in your life.

But it was impossible to forget the throwaway mention of the protagonist’s ex-girlfriend who accused her of r*pe. The narrator dismisses these claims on some ridiculous grounds around blurred consent. Whether or not this is fiction or not made it extremely difficult to spend the rest of the book with her, and it made me feel very uncomfortable.

This was my first pick for #WomenInTranslation month and thankfully my next two are looking better.

Lesbian poet and activist Oksana Vasyakina’s debut novel is not so much narrative as writing as a form of exorcism. The first in a trilogy drawing directly on her own experiences, Vasyakina’s prize-winning book’s well-known in Russia, it’s inspired feminist performance art and recently fell foul of new laws concerning so-called “gay propaganda” - included on a list of titles earmarked for destruction by Moscow’s network of libraries alongside works by writers like Sarah Waters and Michael Cunningham. It’s an unflinching piece, fragmented and intense, inspired by the death of the author’s mother, who died from breast cancer, a woman forced to be tough by circumstance, supporting herself by working in factories and warehouses.

The narrator here’s a version of Oksana who’s reflecting on her mother’s life, their fraught relationship and the messy aftermath of profound loss; grappling with the absurdities of the bureaucracy of death and dying in contemporary Russia and searching for rituals to help her lay their past to rest. The gulf between Oksana’s life and her mother’s were intensified by her mother’s reliance on a succession of abusive, difficult men, whose demands overshadowed Oksana’s position as her mother’s only child. Her mother’s death acts like a pebble thrown into water, setting off ripples of memory, from remembrance of childhood scenes to Oksana’s growing awareness of her queer identity. Sometimes richly detailed and matter-of-fact mimicking the numbness of grief, sometimes digressive and analytical interspersed with essay-like fragments and snippets of poetry that enable a deeper consideration of the relations between writing and self, mothers and daughters, bringing in discussions of art and theory from Louise Bourgeois to Hélène Cixous.

It’s a sometimes disconcerting mix of frank and deliberately distancing: moving from personal revelations and accounts of her struggles with anxiety and depression to musings on the nature of poetry and the ethics of writing . Oksana is an intriguing figure, her fictional self can be relentlessly frank, often presenting herself in ways that make her less than likeable – her possible assault of one former girlfriend; her merciless manipulation of another. There were sections I found deeply compelling and others – the middle sections on poetry for example – that didn’t work for me at all. But it’s also an arresting meditation on place, time and generational trauma. Translated by Elina Alter.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Maclehose Press for an ARC

3.75 stars.

A poignant and gripping novel that follows a woman as she navigates the death of her mother and her place as a lesbian in Russia.

I found this to be quite a strange reading experience; there were times where I was completely hooked and couldn't put it down, and times where I found it to be quite a slog to get through. I imagine that this is probably down to it being a translated work, and once again wish that I could speak every single language so that I could read books in their original state.

Still, there were some beautiful passages - particularly ones about grief - that have stuck with me: 'Nothing can turn her to nothingness. Se lies and lies inside me in her shining coffn. As though she were an integral and vital organ of mine. She's my integral wound. The wound is there not because she didn't survive, but because she existed at all.'

Wound
The wounds are deep as Oksana navigates having to say goodbye to her mother, after losing her to breast cancer, on three separate occasions. Oksana Vasyakina reflects on grief, her sexuality, and her career in her Literary Novel “Wound”. When I say three separate occasions is because you have the first parting the one before cremation. The second is in Oksana’s small apartment surrounded by some of her friends, and the third is the burial in their hometown in Siberia.

Reflection
The reflections of Wound are very real. If you have ever lost someone or a parent, this novel is one that speaks very true to the process one goes through with grief. The process can be similar but the experiences are Oksana’s own. Allowing myself to be vulnerable with this book review, I found myself having a hard time moving forward in this book. As someone who has lost a parent, I sat with Oksana’s grief and even revisited my own.

Parting
Oksana navigates the rituals of parting. She reflects on her upbringing, and her complex relationship with her mom, it is bittersweet. Within these moments you delve into Oksana’s sexual awakening. I appreciated the addition of poetry within the novel to express these emotions that somehow cannot be defined. Realizing that death this close, and that of a woman, leaves a wound that is very present.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Wound
by Oksana Vasyakina
Translated from the Russian by Elina Alter
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Oof, this has been a difficult 1 for me.

The narrator Oksana Vasyakina, a queer Russian poet takes a literal and metaphorical journey through Siberia to bury her mother's ashes alongside her female relatives.

In this non linear and structurally difficult novel Oksana works through her feelings about her often fraught relationship with her mother. It is a stream of consciousness voyage through loss and grief, remorse and confusion as she describes her inability to create attachments due to emotional neglect and an unstable upbringing.

There is little to enjoy about this story, the tone is bleak and depressing, rather like the Siberian landscape. The writing is a blend of memoir-style prose interspersed with poetry and poetic passages. There is a spiraling quality to the narrative arc, and the author makes much of her inability to create a recognisable structure to the work. I have to admit that I don't understand myself, other than that I recognise the ripple effect she alludes to. There is pain in her creativity.

What I will say is that her state of mind very closely resembles my own, 39 years ago when my own mother died. She authentically captures the utterly ungrounding experience that premature disconnection throws you into, the physical wrench that has little to do with mere grief. The feeling of raking over old bones has caused a long buried anxiety to rise, which leaves me in a dilemma about how to rate this novel.

Is this autobiographical fiction?

I would be hesitant to recommend this to anyone who is still in pain through grief, or like me, in a chronic state of motherloss. If however you have an interest in post Soviet life in Russia or literary creativity, or gender confusion and sexual identity, there is so much to unpack in this densely woven and highly unusual story.

Publication date: 3rd August 2023
Thanks to #netgalley and #quercus for the eARC

'Wound' is a beautiful and poignant autobiographical novel - published in Russia in 2021, due to be published in English on 3 August 2023. Oksana Vasyakina has written several collections of poetry - this is her first novel, understood to be largely autobiographical, about her mother and her mother's death. In itself, the book covers a road trip - from Moscow, where Oksana has settled, to where her mother lived and died, and then to Siberia where her mother was from and where she wants to return her ashes.

There's a lot covered in the novel - being queer in Russia, being bipolar in Russia, being a woman in Russia - her mother's life is a long list of boyfriends and husbands, mostly abusive, mostly addicted - her mother herself addicted to alcohol -, and Oksana writes beautifully about her mother's illness (breast cancer, and its impact on her body) and anticipating with anxiety her mother's death: "When a small metastatic tumour was found in Mama's liver after chemo and radiation treatments, I began to wait".

She remembers her mother through everything: the clothes she wore, her sense of economy and thrift, the food she made and loved, her friends, her relationships - carrying around the urn containing her mother's ashes. "When I look at the world, I feel that she is looking at the world through me. I feel her inside me all the time". It is incredibly moving to read and made me feel quite emotional at times.

"I wanted to forget many things - violence, the feeling of alienation, poverty - and I wrote a whole book about them, after which I was condemned for writing it by those who remembered and who knew me. And then I was forgiven". At times, her descriptions of her parents, their lives and how she came to be a writer - as well as her queer identity - reminded me of French writer Edouard Louis, who is about the same age, a few years younger but another millennial, who did not grow up under an oppressive regime but has written about similar experiences of growing up in poverty, where addiction and homophobia are the norm, and forging a new life in writing and becoming what philosopher Chantal Jaquet has called a "class defector".

The novel is not particularly linear - there are many flashbacks to when the author was a child, many characters who appear suddenly and briefly (toward the end, a sister appears, never mentioned when the author remembers her childhood), but also commentaries about different authors and myths, and poetry - Oksana's, about her mother mostly. These passages were weaker for me, I preferred reading the author about her childhood and her complicated relationship with her mother, and I found the inclusion of literary criticism, or thoughts about writing felt forced, as if Oksana Vasyakina was trying to justify her writing and to gain credibility by crediting other thinkers. Finally, and it has been mentioned before by other reviewers, there is a passage at the beginning where, after going through the list of her ex-girlfriends, she mentions one who has accused her of rape. Although Oksana Vasyakina does not reflect much on the event, the alleged victim seems sure a rape has taken place and I found it disturbing that there isn't more said about it - several times, the author even seems to think that in the past things were perceived differently: "No-one had even heard of the culture of consent, which of course doesn't absolve me of any responsibility" - it does not indeed but the author never brings up the incident again and the woman who accused her is quickly dismissed, a relationship that the author was not invested in anyway. She makes that comment about things being different back then several times, another time when she recalls a colleague of hers she later became involved in; or toxic relationships she had - "Today we'd call this a co-dependent relationship" - as if rape and abuse not being widely discussed several years ago justifies it happening and the author being oblivious to the seriousness of what she is writing in 2021.

Overall I enjoyed reading it - the passages on her mother were poignant and touching, her descriptions of life in Russia really interesting, but there was some "clutter" with the poetry clumsily inserted and the literary comments coming in the middle, and although I can get on board with an unlikable narrator, it did not feel necessarily intentional. The writing was beautiful though - the translation by Elina Alter reads really well.

I couldn’t connect with this one at all, unfortunately. The writing style felt detached instead of emotional as I’d been anticipating - perhaps it was a translation issue, or perhaps it was just a me problem, but either way, I found this story hard to keep reading.

3.5 rounded up to 4? Or 4? Or in the middle? I'm not sure.

This book had wonderful writing; there was a great sense of personal style and lovely way of phrasing. The structure of the text is unique and effective, and the translation is fantastic. I can feel Vasyakina's voice in a way that i can't often in translated works, which usually feel clunky and mechanical rather than creative and flowing like literature should.

In terms of the rape scene: it is not up to the reader to decide whether what happened is rape or not, as the text is (purposefully?) ambiguous and we did not experience it ourselves. I believe that we should definitely proceed cautiously when discussing it and acknowledge Vasyakina's lacking knowledge about consent and sexual assault.

[Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!]

This was definitely an interesting read. I'm not a huge fan of auto-fiction but I'm always interested in translated works and I love queer awakening novels.
The story itself was clear but to begin with the writing was anything but. The translation seems to have been done well, but I found the prose tricky to get into at first, I assumed that was just due to the writing style and translationbso stuck it out. I got used to it a few chapters in.
Vasyakina's account of mothers and daughters was raw and relatable, capturing wide felt emotions despite the cultural differences.
Personally I would have enjoyed it more had it been shorter. At first, the length felt like it represented the grim and mildly unsettling story well as we followed the protagonist and her mother's ashes, but the last quarter or so just felt too long.

Thanks to Netgalley and Quercus for the ARC

This was an interesting read. The story itself was stark but the writing was anything but.

The authors account of mothers and daughters was easy to connect to. She captured things that felt universal despite them occuring in an entirely different culture and place. I felt I came away understanding a little more about Russian culture.

I found the prose tricky at first but put that down to writing style and translation. A few chapters in I got used to the rhythm. I felt it could have been shorter - the length reflected the long and grim journey the protagonist and her mother's ashes made, but felt drawn out in the last 25% of the book.

Thanks to Netgalley and Quercus for the ARC.

First things first: auto-fictional books are not my cup of tea, and neither is Russian literature.

But.
The way past and present, the mother and the women, remembering, emancipation and grief are intervowen is excellent.

A strong voice, a good book.

I liked the book because of the eastern Europe/slavic influences (the vinyl bag, the petty thiefs, the smelly car freshener, the alcoholism and the beatings). I was more attracted be these common things than the writing itself. The description passages where beautiful but I found the introspections quite tiring.
All in all, it was a good auto-novel and I'll look forward to the author's next books.