[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”1623650461″ locale=”us” height=”160″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51B%2Baq6nfvL._SL160_.jpg” width=”100″] Page 2: Mikhail Shishkin – The Light and the Dark
The book moves slowly in part because it lacks a clear plot; it is driven less by narrative than by overarching themes. Other characters weave in and out of Vovka and Sashka’s letters to one another, but ultimately the story is told in their own voices, to each other, a conversation that feels stunted in that the letters never read as if they respond to a previous note. Chronology is unclear, and perhaps purposefully so — one could find herself wondering whether, perhaps, Vovka’s letters will be delivered to Sashka in a stack after his death, and if as she writes to him she ever fears that none of her words will reach him. And does he fear that he will return to find her wed to someone else, if he survives? All of that is mere conjecture though, as Shishkin keeps such details at bay. We get the letters, and they will tell their own story.
In this, then, the book envelopes the reader in the pain of separation the two must feel, watching the world change around them, as people age and die, as babies are born, as a war is fought and young men are forever changed, or their lives cut off forever, and for what? This for what lingers on many pages, especially as the book draws to a close. Vovka has said again and again that he wants to understand why he is here, what this is for. He asks Sashka if his words makes sense, asks himself why he continues to describe the gruesome events of his daily life at war, and yet ultimately knows he must. Words are all he has to communicate his reality to her, to stave off this sense of estrangement from her.
In the final letters the reader can feel the gap closing, can imagine Vovka and Sashka finally reunited; yet the book resists such a wrap up, or even any sense of an “ending” at all. As I turned the last page, I expected more, and found instead a blank page. In the closing passages there is an eagerness, though, a sense of anticipation, even joy despite the sadness that fills these pages at many points. “Bodies can touch,” says another voice that now enters Vovka’s internal narrative, “and there isn’t any gap between souls either. And people become what they always were – warmth and light.” And so, in a book that often feels cold, at the end one may see the flickering light of eternity, of souls united, having passed safely “over the depths of the sea.”
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Meghan Florian is a writer, scholar, and nonprofit communications guru. She blogs at http://www.femmonite.com/
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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