Part IV. “Nostalgia for the Body” and Part V. “The Land of Mists” contain stories of the inhabitants of the Subtle World: souls not yet incarnated, but preparing for incarnation; disembodied, but longing for physical, as well as stories of other creatures, for example, like the Black Raven, who serves as a Guardian in the Land of Mists, and characters of fairy tales and other thought-forms. Here the influence of H. Chr. Andersen and E. T. A. Hoffmann, O. Wilde and A. S.-Exupery is captured, and the pearl of this collection, in my opinion, is the fairy tale “Water Lily”, by the way, reprinted three times and beloved by readers. The story “A Guest” explodes one’s mind with a trivial tea-party… with Death.
The book “Tales of Ghosts” includes both new stories and previously published ones (from the books “Do You Believe in Ghosts?” and “Water Lily”), which received positive reviews from literary critics even after their first publication. The famous poet and writer Alexander Karpenko3 rightly compared Kryuchkova’s short stories to the mystical thrillers of Edgar Allan Poe (Poetograd, No. 12 (113), 2014).
The stories from the book “Tales of Ghosts” got the following literary awards: “Shadow of a Bird” after Edgar Allan Poe and “Case No…” 2021 in A. Hitchcock nomination (the Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia, NP “Literary Republic”, 20214), H. Chr. Andersen and E. T. A. Hoffman “Tales for adults” (Open Literary Club “Response”, 20225), “Literary Olympus” (League of Eurasian Writers, 2012).
A striking feature of Kryuchkova’s prose is the complete absence of a line between earthly and the Other Realities: while reading, we sometimes don’t even notice that the hero or heroine has already passed into the Other World! And all the characters – decisive and not so much ones, romantic and prudent, loving and hating, smart and naive, happy and unhappy, rich and poor – have one thing in common: they are mortal and, basically, suddenly.
The mystical spirit is masterfully matched by the author with the daily routine and real events of the era. Thus, behind the plot of the “The City of Rains” there is an ominous panorama of the crash of the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001. The story “Stuck Pluto” is about an epidemic of coronavirus. In the story “Disembodied” we hear an echo of the Great Patriotic War. The ghost of a woman, a member of an intelligence network settled in Italy during the war years, with motherly persistence for half a century, has been looking for her son, evacuated to Siberia with an orphanage.
The short novel “Good Night” recreates a picture of the frantic rhythm of life and rotation in the business circles of Moscow in the sinister 1990’s, when there was a demand for such unscrupulous people as Sackman, who robbed the owner of a furniture company, and the lovesick Oksana, ready to do anything for money, who easily sold her friend to the customer of the murder.
The image of Mr. Piggins (in the story “A Photo film”) is also quite remarkable, convex and brightly drawn by the author with obvious sarcasm. We see a state official, who has successfully moved from the Soviet era into the era of radical changes: as he received his “tips” in the form of interest, bribes and kickbacks, so he continues to receive them. And he will never die, because the Piggins are immortal…
It is surprising that many of the works gathered in this book were created by Alexandra when she was a teenager, they are so well “faceted”. Written in pastel colors, lyrical and tender, they contain a slight sadness and a non-childlike understanding of the world beauty, in which Divine Love prevails over everything. A considerable portion of it is produced by the author herself, as if she remained to live on Earth at the age of a teenage girl. However, the character of her “Farewell to Childhood” is right,
“Time doesn’t exist. It is conditional and relative. You will learn to manage Time when you realize that it doesn’t matter how old you are on Earth, the main thing is who you feel you are …”
Yes! To look at the world through children’s eyes, being an adult, is a gift from the Creator.
After reading the book, one gets the feeling that the author is constantly and intently watching her characters – and even the reader! – not from the side, but as if from Above, from different heights, now approaching them, then moving away, but never leaving them … like their guardian angel.
However, answering the question “Do you believe in ghosts?”, I will quote the wise “A Letter from the Astral Tablets”, included by the author in “Tales of Ghosts”,
“Certainly, my dear friend… in my life, there have been also other inexplicable cases related to those who passed into the Other World, but I should confess to you that most of all I have always been concerned about the relationship of living people, because it is what turns some of us into ghosts…”
Dmitry Nemelstein,
poet, writer, historian,
member of the Union of Writers of Russia,
laureate of literary awards
The magazine “CHILDREN of RA” No. №1 (194), 2022,
Magazine’s Hall “Gorky-Media”.
https://magazines.gorky.media/ra/2022/1/aleksandra-kryuchkova-skazki-prizrakov.html
https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30279
http://detira.ru/arhiv/publication.php?id=30279
A. Karpenko, “Do you believe in GHOSTS?”
The lyrical novellas of Alexandra Kryuchkova can’t leave anyone indifferent. They tell about the most vulnerable and fragile thing in human destiny – the formation and collapse of relationship between a man and a woman, about different faces of this and Other World life. Kryuchkova’s stories are quite short, no more than two pages, but how many experiences fall to the lot of their characters!
The writer uses the effect of a ‘detective’ ending: everything, as a rule, doesn’t end the way the reader expects. The aerobatics of the dramaturgy of these stories is when one emotion interrupts another and reverses the outcome. Such an inverted outcome sometimes evokes in the reader directly opposite, overwhelming emotions.
The second and third parts of the book are written in the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe’s mystical thrillers. Nowadays ghosts, of course, don’t appear in old Gothic castles, but, for example, in the fashionable offices of well-known firms (the story “A Letter”). You see, they, the ghosts, absolutely don’t care where to appear. The surroundings don’t interest them at all. As in the works of past centuries, they are spiritually bound to the premises in which they died. Although, to tell the truth, I prefer stories outside the Otherworld – “A Piano”, “A Cat’s Name”, “See you Tomorrow”.
Without exception, all the short stories of Alexandra Kryuchkova are written at a high artistic level of narration and dramaturgy.
Kryuchkova’s creative biography is full of surprises. She began writing poetry and prose at the age of 11. And not just began, because some short stories were included in the book, which is the subject in my note. This is evidenced by the dates under the works. These stories not only entered the book, they took their