«You dive headfirst into emotions». Hanna Yankuta — about the new Belarusian coming-of-age novel

I had planned to write about this book a long time ago, as I read it as soon as it came out. But it just didn't work out. And recently I saw from the author that the book is turning six months old — a good reason to finally return to it and write, because the book is unusual in many ways.

«Linea lateralis» is Yana Hultsiaeva's debut novel, and what is quite unusual for debuts in recent years (only one other exception comes to mind — Makar Valynkin) — it is voluminous. The book is tastefully decorated with photographs of Narach lake, which can be viewed for an eternity, and links to music, which can be listened to for about as long. All this sets a certain framework for perceiving the novel, making it wider than itself.

The novel itself can be classified as young adult (which we desperately lack) or even a Bildungsroman. At its center is the story of a teenage girl from a dysfunctional family, where none of the adults are capable of taking responsibility for the child. The novel slowly leads through Mira's school years to her enrollment in university, the studies in which, perhaps, will be dedicated to the sequel.

My childhood and teenage years passed in completely different circumstances (place, time, family situation, school relationships), but many of the archetypes, situations, and feelings are absolutely recognizable. Which, by the way, I cannot say about Eva Voitovskaya's «Naughty Kiss» — in some sense, this book is little different for me from J.K. Rowling's «Harry Potter».

Perhaps the difference between childhood in Minsk and non-Minsk really was (and maybe still is) very significant. Yana Hultsiaeva says in an interview: «I'm not sure that teenagers are the target audience of the book». But I would really have liked both of these books to exist in my teenage years, they would have been my windows to such different lives. It seems that at that time I didn't come across anything that told about my peers in Belarus (although something surely existed).

In «Linea lateralis», I really like the description of "ordinary" life: events at school, relationships with parents and relatives, friends, teachers and classmates, new acquaintances, not always good ones.

My favorite moment (I've seen the same in other reviews) is the story about the lighthouse. In a complex, psychological, realistic novel, such a mysterious and vivid episode, which remained unexplained, became a separate gem that highlighted the main action.

What was difficult for me was the very short distance between the narration and the feelings. For me, distance, how writers work with it, is one of the most important things in prose. Here, the author's approach to distance radically differs from mine.

Reading this book, you dive headfirst into emotions and feelings, you live in them fully, and one should be prepared for this. There is something of autofiction in this description of emotions (although one review precisely contrasts «Linea lateralis» with the «modern economical feverishness of autofiction»). But I also suspect that the concentration on emotions is completely natural for young adult books. To explain emotions, to guide the reader through them and show that it's normal to feel that way — is one of the possible functions of such a book.

What seemed not very successful was the compositional framework: where the story came from, who, how, and to whom it was told. It turns out that there are several heroines-narrators in the book ("narrator" and "commentator"), which complicates the structure.

But this does not affect the main story — it draws you in, despite its psychological complexity, and doesn't let go.

• 1
• 0
• 0
• 0
• 0
• 0
• 0
• 0