«Tales of Ghosts» harmoniously complement the series. The idea of «assembling» these stories into a book is admirable: all the main characters are already ghosts. Having moved to the Other World, they, together with the author, find themselves in a long and slow queue to the Heaven Chancellery, located in the City of the Sun, where everyone will be informed about his further destiny. To pass the time and warm the soul, the ghosts light up the fire, throwing into it their earthly lifetime stories. By the will of Lord, the author, in fact a listener of the stories, eventually returns from the City of the Sun to Earth in order to write down «Tales of Ghosts» by heart and pass them on to people.
It is no coincidence that the book consists of several parts. Arranged according to the principle from Earth to Heaven, it slowly leads the reader further and further into the Subtle World, to the place where the planet Earth is seen as a barely distinguishable point in the Abyss of the Cosmic Mind.
Part I. «Love me now!» is a collection of philosophical love stories, united by the regret and remorse of the main characters that they could not live for real the opportunity of given to them Love. The reasons are different, but the result cannot be changed: unexpressed love gnaws the souls, pulls them into the past, where they can never return. Is it possible to make dreams come true in a posthumous reality? The story «A Cats’ Name» from this collection deserves the highest praise: it is not just touching – the reader won’t doubt a bit that it is being told by… a dog devoted to its owner!
Part II. «The Master of Fates» are shocking stories about those who imagine themselves to be God: perverted maniacs and quite on their minds – cold-blooded and prudent killers commit crimes without a twinge of conscience. The author’s incredible ability to penetrate the mind of maniacs culminates in the chilling, purely Hitchcock-like story «Cranberries» and strikes the reader on the spot, causing him to fear not only the swamps, but also the cranberries!
Part III. «Restless Souls» contains mystical stories in the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe about ghost apparitions, each one strikingly unpredictable in its plot. The geography of phenomena is vast: London, Paris, Rome, Prague, Moscow, New York… Wherever the ghosts appear – in modern offices or in condemned houses, whether they are walking in the park near the Louvre or unwinding in a seaside resort in Italy – they are looking for an opportunity to complete some unfinished situation during their earthly lives, which haunts them after death, or they come to the aid of still alive relatives and beloved ones. The stories are so touching that they will not leave the reader without empathy: he involuntarily seeks a way of salvation for the main characters, finding it together with them and for himself. And here is another masterpiece – a heart-warming story «The House by the Station» about an abandoned wooden house, in which more than one generation of ghosts gather to drink tea, play chess and relive happy moments of the past. It is the third (central) part of the book that is the doorway to Another Reality.
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 Karpenko19 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 the nomination in honor of A. Hitchcock (the Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia, NP «Literary Republic», 202120), H. Chr. Andersen and E. T. A. Hoffman «Tales for adults» (Open Literary Club «Response», 202221), «Literary Olympus» (League of Eurasian Writers, 201222).
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, they are lyrical, 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