—Kirsty Logan, The Guardian
“Brave, original… written in a Cubist jumble of voices, languages, and textures, The Natashas reads as if one were spinning a radio dial of the world… Moskovich’s prose radiates with heat as she describes the life animating the city from within, a breath that unites us in our humanity, even the most marginalized—those whose identities are subsumed into the categories of their catastrophes: hostages, refugees, slaves. In The Natashas, Moskovich locates that delicate point of equilibrium between aesthetics and outrage.”
—Lauren Elkin, Financial Times
“Conceptually challenging and aesthetically inventive…Moskovich’s narrative voice has the quality of floating slightly above its characters, evoking the disconnect, not only between mind and body, but between individuals, between action and intent, thought and speech..”
—Eleanore Widger, Dundee University Review of the Arts
“A haunting, unknowable novel, and no less beguiling for that.”
—Elena Seymenliyska, The Telegraph
“As mysterious as a David Lynch film, The Natashas paints a dark, post-modern picture of loss of identity, invisibility and disconnection.”
—The Times Literary Supplement
“A hallucinatory torrent of imagery and ideas that moves entirely according to its own rules… Moskovich explores the relationship between our identities and our physical selves in an experimental, fragmented narrative, obstinately refusing to reach an orthodox resolution but nevertheless casting a beguiling spell that beckons deeper into its strangeness.”
—Alastair Mabbott, The Herald Scotland
“A dark literary novel… an intense Lynchian atmosphere.”
—Diva
“Explorations of sexual power, force and identity underpin this beautifully written dreamscape debut by Yelena Moskovitch… a novel that slips and slides through space and time, unmoored by linear convention.”
—Eclectic
“A sulphurous and enigmatic novel, fascinating and astounding… We await the sequel with impatience.”
—François Busnel, La Grande Librairie (France 5)
“The Natashas is a novel of tact and image, obsessively moving between dry and wet, powder and brilliant. Cosmetics return to its literal meaning: it organizes the world, the cosmos—here according to the masculine desire, both totalitarian and violent.”
—Eric Loret, Le Monde
“With the eccentricity that her characters assume and the freedom her fiction seizes, Yelena Moskovich, born in Ukraine, who lives in France and writes in English, lands on the literary scene like a Sputnik with extraordinary talent.”
—Héléna Villovitch, ELLE France
“The text is worthy for its carnal and atmospheric writing, which captivates like poetry in prose.”
—David Caviglioli, L’Obs
“We open this book like opening a bottle of perfume. It is intoxicating, then hypnotic, and finally completely destabilizing… We emerge from this story a bit shaken, as if after a bad dream. And yet curiously, we want to go back…”
—Rémi Bonnet, Le Populaire du centre
“A brilliant, whirling text, raw and full of imagery, written in a breath both realistic and magical—magnificient!”
—Axelle Magazine
“A sulphurous novel with a disturbing and dreamlike intrigue, a lynchian atmosphere.”
—Sean J. Rose, Livres Hebdo
a door behind a door
a novel by
Yelena Moskovich
WHO WE ARE
TwoDollarRadio.com
Two Dollar Radio is a family-run outfit dedicated to reaffirming the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry. We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.
Proudly based in Columbus, Ohio
COPYRIGHT © 2021 by Yelena Moskovich
Print ISBN: 9781953387028 / EBOOK ISBN: 9781937512035
Cover art: Yelena Moskovich, Facing myself, autoportrait, 2015; Author photo: Courtesy of the author.
Library of Congress Control Number available upon request.
All Rights Reserved. Do not copy this book—with the exception of quotes used in critical essays and reviews—without the prior written permission from the copyright holder and publisher. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means. We must also point out that this is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to names, places, incidents, or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental or are used fictitiously.
Book Club & Reader Guide of questions and topics for discussion is available at twodollarradio.com
Printed in Canada
Some recommended locations for reading A Door Behind A Door:
In a doorway. On your way out. Out of your body. In someone else’s body. In full honesty. While petting a dog. While losing faith. While finding your keys. As you are, where you are, how you are, finally. Or pretty much anywhere because books are portable and the perfect technology!
Contents
MY ANGEL
NICKY NICKY NIKOLAI
TANYA, ALONE IN HER CELL
CRAZY MAMA
SALLY
BROTHERS
THE BATHTUB
TEUTONIA AVENUE
I AM VASKA
PRIVET
“Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar.”
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“Yes, my angel,” she says, without looking at me.
Guillermo Rosales, The Halfway House
a door behind a door
The Boathouse 1983
MY ANGEL
NICKY
Nicky, Nicky, Nikolai.
FLOOR SIX
I was a fat baby. I was lying in my crib like an egg yolk. The old lady was upstairs on floor six. Her dining room, above our bedroom. She dropped to the floor and made our ceiling lamp sway, Oh no, Oh no.
OH NO
There was a punctured scream. It wheezed. It lacked its high notes. It fell out of her mouth like a dog’s tongue.
THE BOY
His footsteps were as soft as rain—and scared, and stupored—down the stairs.
GOODBYE
She was left to lie there. Three wounds. Her head flopped against her forearm, leaking.
FLOOR FIVE
Nikolai Neschastlivyi lived on floor five, like us. He was much older than me, but also far from adulthood. Mulling, teenaged. He must have had a groin filling with pubic hair. A mother with eyes that could mourn raspberries. No father. And the street dog that he was supposed to leave alone. Vaska. He snuck him in and gave him meat-bones and let him sleep under his bed every now and then.
LISTEN
Like us, they were nothing special.
EVERYONE KNEW
But the old lady, she was different. She was good.
I’M SORRY
I can’t
