BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Accounts of Chernobyl eloquent and haunting

By John Freeman

The Grand Rapids Press

On April 26, 1986, an explosion in Chernobyl caused the worst nuclear accident in history. Only 31 people were reported to have died, but thanks to the Soviet Union's policy of secrecy, we may never know the true toll.

Unknown thousands were born with birth defects, and many more from the tiny country of Belarus are haunted by memories of that day. Svetlana Alexievich's "Voices from Chernobyl" is the first book to chronicle their stories. The book is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

As Haruki Murakami did in "Underground," his book about the gas attack on Tokyo's subway, Alexievich puts full faith in the power of people's testimony, constructing a narrative from it alone.

"I don't know what I should talk about," says the first voice, belonging to Lyudmilla Ignatenko. Her husband was a first-responder, as they are called today.

He rushed to the scene with other firefighters and stomped on the burning graphite with his feet. He died painfully 14 days later.

The title of this book suggests a mosaic of gruesome description. It's not. One of the fascinating things about "Voices from Chernobyl" is the awful beauty in testimonies of pain and suffering. It's worth recalling that these are not writers or singers, but ordinary people who have forged language into a crutch, a sword, a shield, a shelter. There is nothing extraneous in their stories, as in this devastating passage:

"I go to the cemetery. My mom's there. My little daughter. Right after we took her to the cemetery, buried her, the sun came out of the clouds. And shone and shone. Like: you should go and dig her up. My husband is there. Fedya. I sit with them all. I sigh a little. You can talk to the dead just like you can talk to the living. Makes no difference to me. I can hear the one and the other. When you're alone. And when you're sad. When you're very sad."

With comments like these, one would be a fool to ask why Alexievich chose to present this book as an oral history, rather than a conventional narrative.

These voices are essential, powerful and brave. One can only hope the half-life of their suffering is not so long.

Source:

http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/features-0/113853446599750.xml&coll=6

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