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Expulsion & Other Stories
Expulsion & Other Stories by Marina Sonkina (Guernica $20)
If any writer in b.c. can match the verve and intelligence of Moscow-educated Marina Sonkina, we haven't met them yet.
Should we also mention that she has a 6'6"; son named Yuri Kolokolnikov who plays Stryr in Game of Thrones to boot?
Sonkina's latest collection of stories, Expulsion & Other Stories, is nothing short of brilliant. Two-thirds of Expulsion consists of Chekhovian tales of survival set in the Soviet Union, but the longest and first story, 'Face', is a 65-page novella about Vancouver-and its apocalyptic ruin.
In 'Face' a wealthy industrialist buys his 24-year-old son an old bungalow next to the University Endowment Lands in Point Grey. The actor/narrator Matthew welcomes his freedom as a property owner and vows not to be tempted by the "madness"; of the real estate game.
Matthew's parents have already sold their home in Shaughnessy and paid seventeen million for one of the penthouses atop the 62-floor Living Shangri-La tower but he would rather sleep under a bridge than live in that sealed fish tank.
"With nouveau-riche Chinese gobbling up the city's real estate and its old Victorian-era houses regularly becoming bulldozer bait,"; Matthew dreams instead of opening a splendid new venue for local theatre.
To make ends meet as an out-of-work actor, he decides to rent out a tiny basement suite in his bungalow. The first person to respond to his ad is a young woman clothed head to foot "in a hijab or chador or whatever they call it.";
The completely mysterious new lodger, Erin, is seemingly a Moslem. She loves the garden. She wears retro sunglasses. She has a nice figure. Hoping to have a relationship between equals, Matthew pretends to be a fellow renter rather than her landlord.
They have beguiling and often loopy conversations. Maybe she likes him. Erin never has visitors. She has taken a job in a thrift store. How does a guy get to know a girl when he can never see her face? He follows her.
Bizarrely she enters a synagogue. His fascination with the lodger leads to a deeply disturbing revelation. Afterwards, Erin confesses she is a sibyl of the Erythian line in the 30th generation, someone who is an oracle who can foretell the future, "but when misfortune strikes, people blame us.";
Viewing Erin as a damsel in deep distress, Matthew dedicates himself to saving her. To do so, he needs money. Matthew hatches a scheme. He will secretly sell the house. But he will only sell it if the offshore buyer promises to let them continue to live there. She need never know. A foreign buyer is found who agrees to let them stay. But the madness of the real estate game has taken hold...
Several of Sonkina's Soviet-era stories are more impressive and even more memorable, but the audaciousness of 'Face' and its completely unpredictable ending makes for a potent artistic response to the feeding frenzy of mini-Trump speculators who have made housing costs in tucked-away, provincial Vancouver on a par with Paris, Hong Kong and London.
978-1-55071-945-1
If any writer in b.c. can match the verve and intelligence of Moscow-educated Marina Sonkina, we haven't met them yet.
Should we also mention that she has a 6'6"; son named Yuri Kolokolnikov who plays Stryr in Game of Thrones to boot?
Sonkina's latest collection of stories, Expulsion & Other Stories, is nothing short of brilliant. Two-thirds of Expulsion consists of Chekhovian tales of survival set in the Soviet Union, but the longest and first story, 'Face', is a 65-page novella about Vancouver-and its apocalyptic ruin.
In 'Face' a wealthy industrialist buys his 24-year-old son an old bungalow next to the University Endowment Lands in Point Grey. The actor/narrator Matthew welcomes his freedom as a property owner and vows not to be tempted by the "madness"; of the real estate game.
Matthew's parents have already sold their home in Shaughnessy and paid seventeen million for one of the penthouses atop the 62-floor Living Shangri-La tower but he would rather sleep under a bridge than live in that sealed fish tank.
"With nouveau-riche Chinese gobbling up the city's real estate and its old Victorian-era houses regularly becoming bulldozer bait,"; Matthew dreams instead of opening a splendid new venue for local theatre.
To make ends meet as an out-of-work actor, he decides to rent out a tiny basement suite in his bungalow. The first person to respond to his ad is a young woman clothed head to foot "in a hijab or chador or whatever they call it.";
The completely mysterious new lodger, Erin, is seemingly a Moslem. She loves the garden. She wears retro sunglasses. She has a nice figure. Hoping to have a relationship between equals, Matthew pretends to be a fellow renter rather than her landlord.
They have beguiling and often loopy conversations. Maybe she likes him. Erin never has visitors. She has taken a job in a thrift store. How does a guy get to know a girl when he can never see her face? He follows her.
Bizarrely she enters a synagogue. His fascination with the lodger leads to a deeply disturbing revelation. Afterwards, Erin confesses she is a sibyl of the Erythian line in the 30th generation, someone who is an oracle who can foretell the future, "but when misfortune strikes, people blame us.";
Viewing Erin as a damsel in deep distress, Matthew dedicates himself to saving her. To do so, he needs money. Matthew hatches a scheme. He will secretly sell the house. But he will only sell it if the offshore buyer promises to let them continue to live there. She need never know. A foreign buyer is found who agrees to let them stay. But the madness of the real estate game has taken hold...
Several of Sonkina's Soviet-era stories are more impressive and even more memorable, but the audaciousness of 'Face' and its completely unpredictable ending makes for a potent artistic response to the feeding frenzy of mini-Trump speculators who have made housing costs in tucked-away, provincial Vancouver on a par with Paris, Hong Kong and London.
978-1-55071-945-1
Submitted on March 1, 2016 in By David.
