Short Stories Book Review: Good Citizens Need Not Fear by Maria Reva

Set in Ukraine, shortly before and shortly after the end of the USSR, Good Citizens Need Not Fear by Canadian author Maria Reva is set around a tenement building. Characters and events mentioned in one story may return as an allusion or an acknowledged fact a couple of stories later, aspects which may require the reader to pay more attention in collecting details.

The location of the book is Kirovka, a small town in the Dnipropetrovska region, but although many of the inhabitants of the block of flats where the actions are taking place rarely leave their own compound, there are winds of change in the air: there is a McDonald´s inagurated in Moscow and young people are more interested in purchasing Western rock vinyls, produced in the black market by one of the residents. 

What stays, and actually survived no matter how many changes took place, are the grotesque reactions of the bureaucracy and the absurd habits of the secret police. This is the tragico-cynical part of the stories. But there is also, the humour which makes the survival mood bearable: from the patriotic bravery of sending a fake candidate to the Miss USSR beauty pageant to the surprise of finding out that the street do you live does not exist for the local authorities - enough to be considered non-existent for the rest of the Soviet Republic. 

The events described in the book do resonate with many of the stories usually set during those times, and common to a certain way of behaving as humorous Homo sovieticus, but it does have many relatives in the post-communism realm as well, sometimes preserved until our common era. 

The writing is focused sometimes more on the characters and less on the circumstances, although two or three stories are more focused on building up the story. Indeed, not all stories are equal, but the fact that they are cut together to belong to a wider context made those relative disbalances bearable and les relevant literarily. 

Sadly, Ukraine is going through a heartbreaking drama right now. There is no end to the cruelty of humans against humans and political circumstances may just facilitate it. The Ukraine of Reva´s short stories may have been long gone, physically annihilated by the absurd power of tanks. I wish I wanted to laugh more and be less distraught while reading it. But, more than half of the pleasure of reading was poisoned by the thought of the carnage of an absurd war. Like any war.

Rating: 4 stars