Day Equals Night

This first translation of Russian author Narbikova's debut novel, originally published in the Moscow journal Youth, is composed in the author's notoriously difficult and provocative style. Between digressions ranging from poetic asides to scholarly allusions, a three-way relationship unfolds among Sana, Otmatfeian and Chiashchiazhyshyn. Sana, made ""of breakfast and sadness, and five hundred times of kisses from the wrong men,"" seeks escape from a dead-end relationship with her husband, Avvakum. Otmatfeian, a sexy Armenian, provides Sana with a diversion; however, Otmatfeian has diversions of his own, mainly a young male lover, Chiashchiazhyshyn. Eventually, the three make a home for themselves in an unfinished palace in which every piece of trash is a museum piece. Sana and Chiashchiazhyshyn find one another, but for Chiashchiazhyshyn, Sana is another means to get closer to Otmatfeian. None of this is meant to be tragic, however. ""People engage in idiocies from morning to night. What else can they do, having only one organ for catching a high?"" Gaining a reputation for her sexual frankness and subversive style, Narbikova (nominated for the Russian Booker and recipient of the Nabokov Prize, awarded in St. Petersburg) constructs sticky, dense sentences, the plot slipping into a jumble of aphorisms, euphemisms and jaded references to Russian literature at every turn. Still, the overall theme is clear: people aren't well adapted for anything, including ""love."" (Oct.)