Остров Харона. The Island of Charon. Премия им. А. де Сент-Экзюпери / A. de Saint-Exupery Award (Билингва: Rus / Eng). Александра Крючкова

      E. Tallenika, «Magic captivity»

      I am holding in my hands a philosophical and mystical thriller «The Island of Charon», which received several literary awards in 2021: «Ocean, Wind, Sand and Stars» after A. de Saint-Exupery (Open Literary Club «Response»)4, «Another Reality» after Leonid and Daniil Andreev (Creative Center «Clouds of Inspiration»)5, «Running on the Waves» after A. S. Grin (Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia together with the Museums of A.S. Grin in Feodosia and Stary Krym), «Case No.» 2021 after Alfred Hitchcock and «The Book of the XXI century» in the nomination «Wings» after A. de Saint-Exupery (Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia together with Non-commercial Partnership «Literary Republic»)6. However, I’ve studied some reviews to decide whether to read it or not.

      And I begin reading the book to the music from Christopher Nolan’s film «Interstellar», which appears almost out of nowhere and sounds like a refrain on that very Island. I recreate the reality of events, because it’s to this music that the reader is about to learn how tender the embrace of even the most horrible death can be.

      «Everyone has their own island here…»

      The music of the stars and planets places me to the space-time tunnel «Island» – «Island», one of them is in the Sun Book, and the other one is in the Moon Book. Christopher Nolan with his film crew beneath my windows of the hotel on Tatari Street in Tallinn, 2019, immediately came up to my mind. I was watching the process of making his new film «Tenet» from the inside.

      Nolan was focused and serious. He gave the command to start.

      And I see Alexandra writing her «Island»:

      …The Creator, the Ocean, the Sky, the Wish Tree, the Moon Book and the Sun Book…

      Yes, that’s right, like that – with a capital letter and nothing else.

      And this is not an artistic technique, but the essence of the author’s values – the system of coordinates of her Universe, in which the main word «Love» turns out to be so impossibly huge and holy that it becomes unpronounceable!

      However, it is Love that permeates everything and all around: a randomly met person without anatomical signs, and the Girl looking for her mother in the Ocean, and the Boy, her «little prince», asking for a lantern not for himself, but for the Girl, because on this Island every wish can be fulfilled by the Wish Tree, and even the barefoot Old Man, who has nothing left but black birds and other people’s memories, the fact that touches me to the core…

      This fragile, not too sociable girl-woman with Tsvetaeva’s haircut, who frankly informs that all those, who has sunk into her soul, lie without moving a muscle, and they are YOU yourself (!), manages to achieve by an apparently simple but obviously magical narration a hail of my tears!

      It is incomprehensible, but Alexandra Kryuchkova, who has already grown in her literary work to the level of philosophical Thought, penetrating into the depths of the Universe and leading us, readers, step by step along the Stairway to the Sky with each of her books, remains in her soul a naive child, still discovering Love and Peace, Good and Evil, and surprising us with the purity and sincerity of the pronounced, «I WANT!»

      And ME TOO!

      I want to visit this Island, too!

      The Island with no electricity, Internet, air conditioning, where «our consciousness does not care if something happens only in thoughts or in reality, because the reaction of the body is always the same.»

      The Island, where the water from the Lake of Lovers is not usual, not mineral, but dead and not sparkling, because there is simply no other water there, however, you cannot drown in such water, because you can breathe in it!

      The Island, where a Philippine fisherman with Athos rosary hacks and glitches my time as if it could have any meaning on the Island of Magicians, because it is always the Full Moon on the clock, and this Time is the best (!), although only for catching Fish with a long nose and shamanic treats, such as blood with milk (!), the potion with a limited shelf life; the main thing is not to fall for the bait of black magicians, who put the spirit of a dead person into a bewitched one…

      To sail away!

      To sail away from the world where it’s possible to destroy an ancient Gothic church for the sake of a coal mining, to suicide due to unpaid bank interest on a business loan, and it is not considered shameful to steal ideas – if it were someone else’s bag, then – yes… otherwise…

      To sail away to the Island, where one’s dreams are memories, from which I would finally find out why «we were subconsciously so afraid of losing each other even before meeting in a new quality, that we put off all conversations for later…»

      To the Island, where you’ll hardly be able to answer immediately the question of the Stargazer, «Do you really believe that you ended up here by accident?» But you’ll have an opportunity to think about the meaning of your life, although only until the high tide, creeping as quiet (!) water, like a loving monster, because «The Ocean comes here silently».

      To the Island, from which it is so difficult to disappear, because «everybody has their own ferry», but it has the right never to come for you, because it does not have any schedule, or rather, it depends solely on you.

      To the Island, where you can kill only your own selfish Self, and no theft is possible, because there is nothing to steal there, the most valuable thing is the light… of a lantern, and it is exclusively YOURS…

      Of course, both the Island itself and its main characters, existing in reality, have their own beautiful names, but, as for me personally, they are no longer so important, because they would be displaced from memory by an amazing feeling of freedom (!) from the present, the past and the future, which I got while sitting, wrapped my legs in a plaid… or rather, in captivity – yes, in the magic captivity of Alexandra Kryuchkova’s prose.

      Elena TALLENIKA,

      member of the Union of Writers of Russia,

      laureate of international literary awards

      The newspaper «Literary News» («Literaturnye Izvestia»)

      No. 11—12 (197—198), 2021.

      http://litiz.ru/arch.html

      https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30039

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