Book Review: The Good Life Elsewhere by Vladimir Lorchenkov

´Finally, they´d made it to Italy. Finally, life had become clear and simple. Just like it used to be, like it was in their childhoods´. 

I have no idea when was the last time when left on my own reading, I kept laughing loudly for a couple of good hours. Genuine loud laugh - partially in sync with the bergsonian philosophy of it ! Given that in the last days my reading time is either between 5am and 7 am and past midnight, my neighbours may assume that something is wrong with me. 

But, seriously, anyone with a middle to advanced knowledge in Eastern Europe should read The Good Life Elsewhere by the Republic of Moldova-born Vladimir Lorchenkov, translated from Russian by Ross Ufberg. Why? Because after unwrapping the many layers of irony, sarcasm and hilarious absurd situations, there is a reality that people living at the Eastern extremities of Europe do live with every day: poverty, impossible future, corruption, inaccountability of politicians, religious fanatics and kidneys on sale. 

In the village of Larga, the vast majority of the 523 citizens want to go to Italy, dreaming about fat paychecks waiting for them. Those who don´t want to go is because they don´t believe this Italy exists. But before going there, they need to get the 4,000 euro to be smuggled. Many are left without money, took on a tour around the country and left close to the capital-city of Kishinev. Serafim Botezatu, the most resilient in accomplishing his Italian dream, was defeated one, maybe three times, but he will keep trying again and again. He waited already 20 years, time in which he learned the language from an Italian book he got from the library. Or he thought so. In fact, the book was missing the cover and a couple of introduction pages where it was written that, in fact, the language thought was...Norwegian. 

There is a tragi-comical feature of The Good Life Elsewhere that I´ve mostly encountered by modern Russian writers which I find irresisible, because it looks like a perfect weapon against the everyday nonsense. It transfigurates the historical abysses and the political trauma into a chronical laugh, as when you are tickled and you laugh, although you have no reason to. But, you feel good in the end, because laughing is good for the broken soul. 

Take, for instance, this sentence: ´And when the sun come up, Eremei strangled his daughter and burned her body in his mightiest stove, where he usually forged tools for the machinists. He burned not only her body, but her ashes, too´. All the histories about kidneys trading are tragical in their essence and disturbing, but contextualized and storified they can be enjoyed as literary fictions written in a mythical-comical vein.

Although the book has universal references which make the story of Moldavian migration to Italy - where even the then president, Voronin, wants to go; one plan to leave the hotel in Rome at night while on an official visit and get lost, for returning later as an assistant cook working in an obscure restaurant - only an episode of a human saga of uprooting - Mexico could be a good comparison there is a very local pattern that Lorchenkov features. And it is nothing wrong with it because, indeed, stories are made by people, born in places that do have histories. The authentic universalism is created while respecting the very individual accounts. 

I am looking forward to read soon more authors from Republic of Moldova (I do have another one in waiting on my library shelves), which is also a reminder of one trip I made there a couple of years ago and the fantastic warm welcome of the people on the streets who helped me more than once, despite the visible linguistic barriers. I feel intellectually at home in Central and Eastern Europe too, no matter how far I go - as a reader or as a traveller.

Rating: 3.5 stars