The Natashas by Yelena Moskovich

Author : Yelena Moskovich
Title : The Natashas
Published : 2016

Publisher : Serpent's Tail

Pages : 224
Genre : Contemporary Fiction

     Beatrice, a solitary young jazz singer from a genteel Parisian suburb, meets a mysterious woman named Polina. Polina visits her at night and whispers in her ear: 'There are people who leave their bodies and their bodies go on living without them. These people are named Natasha.' Cesar, a lonely Mexican actor working in a call center, receives the opportunity of a lifetime: a role as a serial killer on a French TV series. But as he prepares for the audition, he starts falling in love with the psychopath he is to play. Beatrice and Cesar are drawn deeper into a city populated with visions and warnings, taunted by the chorusing of a group of young women, trapped in a windowless room, who all share the same name ... Natasha.

     I have to start out by saying this Is a stranger book, it flows to the beat of its own drum. And quite frankly is not really like anything else I have had the privilege to read in quite some time. I really enjoy these kinds of books the deal with people we would not give a second look to should we pass them on the street. It takes you into a world the is so very different from our own. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of another book I read called Daughters of Air by Anca L. Szilagyi They both deal with people trying to make there lives right, with any real way of doing so. They also both slip from this world into something else, another place that the gods of old and the spirits of those gone still hold a little sway on the lives of mortals. With the Natashas it takes a little while just to work out which of our characters is playing the tune and which is dancing to it.  The Natashas themselves float into the story from time to time to check up on our leads. Never really having much effect on the paths these heroes walk. More there to pass judgment or add a sarcastic comment along the way. Trapped in a windowless room never leaving it is hard to place them. Much like others have commented at first I too thought they were the victims of sex trafficking but they are something else I'm still trying to work out. Just maybe they were in another life and this is what happened to them when they passed over for ever trapped in the hell the knew in life.

    Beatrice's life has not been an easy one, she is holding on by her fingernails as she ekes out a living singing Jazz. Only made worse by Polina who introduces her to a world beyond her own. Much like the others, she is hard one to in down. We capture her in fleeting movements as she passes through scenes almost within a dream of her own never quite coming into focus. she is the idea of a women someone who is seen in the background of other pictures. You could spend a lifetime with her and never really get to know who she is. In part, I think because she doesn't really know her self. But also someone desperate to escape the place she finds her self. And in this way maybe she is just a little too willing to believe in what Polina will tell her. For me, Cesar felt the more ground, in reality, just maybe this is down to my own perceived notions of the jobs they hold. I realize this is down to my own sense of the world. Those who play in smoke old jazz clubs belong to another world. Even if they do hold a very special place in my heart. For me, Cesar acts a kind of pin stopping the story from completely floating away into someone else dream. But this is still only just, he is a man broken by circumstance, Born into the wrong country and wrong life he too is desperate to rip off the shackles that have bound him to an inevitable fate. 

     Moskovich has clearly spent a great deal of time to working out how to tell this story her own and unique way. to say it felt like a dream would not be giving it enough credit for the complexity of layers it brings forward. This is by no means a conventional novel, while it has a start middle and ends it felt to me like I was only getting snapshots of these lives. With each one asking a lot from its readers. This book was never going to had you all the answers on a plate and say look here this is what it all means. In fact, I'm fairly sure I didn't really get any at all. But the author never promised this to me. What she does is offer up this world and allowed me to make my own way through its labyrinth looking for that allusive Minotaur. It asked of my a great deal and brought up so many questions. What does it truly mean to be who we are and if given the chance would you jump bodies in the hope of a better life. I suppose for these people this is not such an easy thing when your demons are so intertwined with your soul it is something that you can never run away from. 

     This book will I know not to appeal to everyone, for some this will hold no interest and they will probably put it down not long after they pick it up. On the other hand, if you are like me it will grow to hold a special place for you. Its a book that is filled with a melancholy state, those trapped in a never-ending series of back alleys never quite managing to get to where the bright lights fill the streets and the crowd's bustle along the sidewalk, there faces forever obscured. But for the briefest of moments Moskovich lets us peek into there world and get lost in there dreams or nightmares depending on how you view them.  All of this is not to say this book dose not hold a sense of humour to it, Just that it play much like the whole book to it's own tune. Giving little musical accents to the main body of the book. I would point say that it is one of the few books I have read recently that has made it's way on to my forever shelf and I'm sure latter on in the year I will read it again.