To The Lake by Yana Vagner

 

Review

Thanks to Netgalley for the book.  Thanks for this great book, which made me forget the bitterness of the world for a few days, by highlighting its horrors, yet leaving a little hope. Because hope is in us and in our loved ones, we can trust in ourselves and in them to find the meaning of life, the purpose of struggle, love, even in plagues and wars.

The story of the book bears many similarities to my own life.  An escape from the many horrors that make our lives difficult and bitter.  We can call this an epidemic, a plague, or even a war.  But today, the people, the state, the bureaucracy, the woke, the BLM and the gender movement, neoliberalism, the destruction of nature, the false greens, the communists, the Brussels bureaucrats, the liberals and socialists of the European Parliament, the repressive machinery of the United States  we have to run away.  These are the plagues of today, embodied in the covid, and thus, appear in this form in the book.  Which is an apocalyptic vision in the form of an epidemic that shatters the current order of human society, causing chaos and collapse where we can’t trust anyone, we always have to keep our arms ready, because although love is our main guiding principle, we still have to assume the worst  about our fellow human beings so that we can protect ourselves and our loved ones.  Because we can have any kind of disputes with our wives, children, parents, friends, neighbors, yet we know them, we can trust them, we can love them and we can fight for them.  Because even though we lose our faith in people, in the meantime we still believe in the love that binds those around us.

I fled to a tropical island where it was overtaken by state arbitrariness that expropriated my property, the destruction of nature, the influx of black migrants.  From there I fled to a resort village near a big city, in the mountains.  But there, too, the horrors of civilization, the barking of dogs, bad neighbors, ineffective administration, construction, human evil, have caught up.

So a week ago, like the characters in the book, I packed up in the car and set off with my wife on the way to the mountains and forests.  And at the end of the road, on the border, on the bank of the small stream, I found the house where I now think I can find refuge from the plague that people, human evil represents.

Because of the above, it was a pleasure to read this book because it was as if the events of my own life had appeared in the pages of this book.  I was reading a Russian story, yet it was as if the writer had written about me.  To whom I thank this experience for actually writing about me, my life, my feelings, even with other characters, in other locations.

I don’t know how this book was received by readers, reviewers.  But it means nothing.  The bottom line is that it has given me a lot, the hope that the purpose of my life can still be found away from people and the depravity of society, intertwined with nature.

Today I ran 50 miles in the mountains, roasting beef and chestnuts.  And I finished this exciting, unputdownable book.