In this month’s Online Reading Group we will discuss Soviet Milk by Latvian author Nora Ikstena. A bestseller which took the Baltics by storm, it explores the effects of Soviet rule on individual lives, told through the dual narratives of a mother and daughter in 1970s and 1980s Latvia.
The Online Reading Group will help to improve inclusivity and accessibility, giving the opportunity for those who cannot attend in person to join us for discussion. We encourage you to join us in person if you can, and leave the online places to those who would benefit from them. The meeting will be facilitated by our bookshop co-curator Sasha Padziarei and engagement curator Alisa Oleva.
The novel’s two protagonists are the mother, a lauded fertility specialist and intellectual who is banished to the countryside after standing up for her abused neighbour, and her daughter, a strong-willed girl who questions the absurdities of Soviet life and lives a parallel life at school and at home. Told alternately from the mother and daughter’s perspectives, the dual narrative carries a hope for change and independence as well as the weight of decades of tragedy. We see symbolic episodes and characters – the dissident literature teacher, the mother’s discovery of Orwell’s 1984, even a hamster who is trapped in his cage and eats his babies – but these are not overdone and fit smoothly into the narrative. Overall this is a powerful polemic against the Soviet state and patriarchal society, and a sensitive account of mental health and motherhood.
2021 saw the opening of Pushkin House’s very own physical bookshop in addition to our online store. While it is still being honed and developed, we are keen to highlight literature that inspires, encourages, moves and validates our readers. We also want to amplify the voices, writers and readers that historically didn’t get and, perhaps, still don’t get the visibility, power and appreciation they deserve. Most of all, we want to create a physical (and an online) place for connection where people can come and share their views.