THE DREAMTIME

Chernov’s impassioned novel poses existential questions against the backdrop of the Ukrainian war.

The book focuses on four characters: There is Eva, who lives with her deranged father (who uses the walls of their flat to plot an immensely complicated and unfinished novel in magic-marker). Next is K, a doctor who volunteers his services without political fear or favor. Maria Alexandrovna is a forensic investigator trying to solve a murder while holding things together with her young son, Tykhon, and her patriotic soldier husband, Andrei. Finally, and known only through his letters, there is the mysterious (and perhaps insane) Fryderyk, who was once Maria’s lover and now toys with her, making arch pronouncements such as “insulting someone during their suicide attempt is in poor taste.” Throughout there is war, omnipresent and ghastly. This is a massive and complicated book, one in which the reader is sometimes lost. Is it the author who sometimes addresses the reader directly (“Is this boring you yet”)? If not, what character is speaking? On the other hand, if this is indeed the “dreamtime” (the author’s term for “the generalized discord of our times"), anything goes, chaos becomes not a bug but a feature, and the narrator can be a trickster. Translated by Leonard and Helbing from the Russian version, the writing is forceful and vivid. The characters banter with gallows humor, and the urgency of K’s attempts (rendered in impressive medical and technical detail) to save lives that are slipping away hits home with great impact. Gradually, some connections are revealed, such as the fact that K is a psychiatrist who once had Fryderyk as a patient, and through that relationship a glancing connection to Maria. Toward the end of the book, he and Maria have a long, philosophical discussion about the meaning of life, fate, dreams, and the war. “War is so appalling,” says K, “it simply cannot be real.” And yet, it is.

Unfortunately, a book for our times—vivid enough to grab us and not let go.