New Yorker Fiction Review #295: "Alisa" by Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Review of the short story from the April 3, 2023 issue of The New Yorker...

I never actually received my physical copy of this issue, which is a strange occurrence but it happens sometimes. Started and did not finish this story at least three times before making it all the way through. That's less to do with the quality of the story (although I was not particularly moved) and more to do with the fact I hate reading for long periods on my phone. Anyway, as to the actual story...

Only once before have I read a short story by Russian novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya, back in May 2014, a short story called "The Fugitive," and I apparently did not really care for that one either. 

"Alisa" is a short story about a Russian woman who, in the shadow of her own mother's reckless pursuit of romance and male attention, lives her life as independently as possible, never really falling in love or allowing herself to depend too much on another person. Until, however, she -- now in her mid-60s -- inexplicably collapses. This causes her to realize that her own death may be closer around the corner than she thinks. In search of a doctor who can prescribe her enough sleeping pills to end her life on her own terms, she meets an elderly doctor and begins a genuinely romantic courtship with him. Although now she is dependent on him for the sleeping pills which will enable her to avoid a long, slow death dependent on others for her care. So, it would seem, there is almost no way for her to avoid being dependent on someone. 

If there's anything I've learned from reading short stories is that the authors very often give you the keys to understanding the short story, in one or two lines. In the case of "Alisa," Lyudmila Ulitskaya provides us with the following, which I think kind of sums up this short story:

"And Alisa entrusted more to him than women entrust when young—not her life, but her death."

The story takes a fairly unexpected turn when the Doctor -- now her fiancee -- gets hit by a car and dies leaving his daughter Marina in a state of shock and unable to care for her newborn baby, the care of which falls to Alisa. Now, after a lifetime of seeking to be independent, Alisa begins a new chapter in her life, by having someone become dependent on her for the first time.

In my opinion, the message (there are some political undertones, too, but they are so thin as to be almost not noticeable) is that a person cannot extricate themselves from the cycle of inter-dependence in human life. To reject this is to live in conflict with oneself and the world and -- fortunately or not -- isn't really even possible anyway. And that maybe having someone to care for is a blessing rather than a burden. 

Who can argue with this? I think the story's material and main character were intriguing enough, and the setup a good one, but Lyudmila Ulitskaya's prose -- with dialogue used only as an afterthought -- feels too much like she is telling a fable. You get the strong sense of the author pushing the story toward an end point that was predetermined, instead of creating a character and being open to where that character might end up in any given situation. 

Is there some underlying political meaning to this short story that I would have to be much better versed in Russian history and politics to grasp? Undoubtedly. Russian writers cannot not write about politics, it seems like. But in that regard, I think this story fails to make a clear statement, which might have bolstered its plot and made it that much more interesting.