Wound

DEBUT This autobiographical novel describes a pilgrimage the narrator takes to bury her mother’s ashes. Starting in Volzhsky, a city in the Russian Steppe, and ending in Ust-Ilimsk in Siberia, Vasyakina intersects her mother’s life, illness, and death with her own quest for knowledge and understanding. Moving back and forth through time, the book includes poetry and ruminations on philosophy, art, literature, and music. Descriptions of cities, towns, the taiga, the steppe, Lake Baikal, and the Angara River, as well as individual rooms, government departments, and apartments, provide context to significant events in the characters’ lives. As a poet who is a lesbian, Vasyakina’s narrator is aware of how unorthodox she appears to others. The novel paints a grim picture of life in Russia with its bureaucracy and daily difficulties. Yet people are resilient and resolute. The book could have used tighter editing as it occasionally meanders. Despite the emphasis on family, there is only one mention of the narrator’s sister, who appears near the end.