"June" consists of three parts - the stories of three heroes who live their normal lives on the eve of June 1941. Student Misha Gvirtsman was expelled from the institute because of the denunciation of a classmate and, hatching a plan of revenge, works as an orderly in a hospital, is it necessary to say that life in a couple of months brings him together with the same informer Valya?
The second hero of the novel, journalist Boris Gordon, tired of his eccentric wife, falls in love with a young "returnee" Alya, but this story cannot end with anything good. The third link of the novel is a small sketch about the writer Ignatiy Korostylev, who believes that he invented a way to program a person through text, through the influence of letters, phonemes and accents.
The story of Misha Gvirtsman, which takes up most of the novel, seemed to me the most interesting: Misha's personality is controversial, he is one of those who does not climb into his pocket for the truth, but listening to how he sometimes puts someone in their place, you inadvertently remember that truth-tellers sometimes stand not far from boors.
Of course, I couldn't help but have fun reading how the hero visits the literary and theatrical studio of that time and communicates with pretentious scribblers who are proud of their calloused hands and the experience of a factory worker, writing poems over and over again about steel smelting or overfulfilling the plan: for some reason, everything still goes according to the plot in all creative circles "the cuckoo praises the rooster for praising the cuckoo" and the logic "let it be better tears-mimosas and birches- frosts, than it will chip in the entrance."
Everything else is pretty formulaic - a description of love-hate, youthful flirtations and two types of girls: one red-haired, shameless, not brilliant, but always accessible, the second - "either a girl, or a vision", but will dynamite to the last, telling about her premonitions and secret signs given to her from above.
The second part, dedicated to Boris Gordon, opens with information a la "The Mysterious Story of Billy Milligan": it was, they say, our hero had six personalities, but then somehow a little bit of these personalities gets hammered. The point here, of course, is not about multiple personality disorder, but about the fact that it is easier for all of us to live when we attribute certain actions to some separate component or mask: during the day, a modest student Lesya writes notes on literary theory, and in the evening turns into a sultry Roxalana, who can afford everything that Lesya is shy to think about.
Boris also gets two types of girls described in the previous paragraph, but both gradually become shackles and handcuffs for him. Probably, the whole highlight of this story is that the savvy reader, looking at Muretta, the journalist, the young returnee Ariadne, chirping in French, and her strange maman, recognized in them Alexandra Levinson-Shuretta, Gurevich, Ariadna Efron and Marina Tsvetaeva.
But it didn't add anything to me personally, except perhaps the realization that further, behind the plot, it was only worse and that behind the description of the book Ali, which almost turned into a cast in reality, there were tortures and years of Ariadne Efron's camps. I think you can find real prototypes for other heroes, if you really try.
The final part of "June" is practically devoid of a plot, in it we are simply invited to look at a crazy writer who encrypts secret messages in his texts day and night: Big Brother is watching us, censorship works perfectly, which means that any text will be read by cogs in the state machine, and if through assonances and alliteration, mobile stress and ringing, for example, it will be possible to convey to them the necessary thought - success.
At some point, you correlate the thoughts about the ideal book described by Korostylev with the book you are reading, you see that it seems to be her, but personally such a discovery did not push me to a more thorough study of what I had already read.
Actually, all three texts are somehow connected with war: if in the case of Misha, she just hovers in the air at the level of "something seems to be going to happen", in Boris's story it develops into "it will definitely be!", then the final chord of all this is "it must be, no other way".
For one hero, war is a punishment, an inevitable reckoning for luck and the ability to get rid of everything easily, for the second - a cleansing fire that will smooth out everything that was "before", erase his sins from the face of the earth, because everyone, including him, will simply not be up to it, for the mad Korostylev - this is the only way out of this situation.
Another facet of the war in "June" is something that we perceive as having happened, and this sharpens our perception of pre-war trifles, while for the heroes it is still something ghostly, and this allows us to live a familiar life, to exist in a mouse fuss: the sword of Damocles is already suspended over everyone, only the heroes from the autumn of 1940 and the spring of 1941 have not yet raised their heads.
It is interesting how the second layer of all these stories was the line of world events, within which the government manipulated the consciousness of its citizens. First of all, Germany is our best friend and comrade, because there is also socialism there, even with a Nazi face, who will understand us better than them, obviously not England or France.
Then the signing of the non-aggression pact, the division of Poland, the Soviet-Finnish war - the tension is growing, there are more and more events and they are developing faster and faster... The more it all ended, no one needs to say, and the more the parallels of the days of the past with the days of today frighten Bykov, because he does not write historical prose, but modern. It is possible to drive away bad thoughts except by the fact that we have only the author's view in front of us, and our author is not Nostradamus after all.
Some thoughts from the pages of "June" are very controversial, some statements can cut your eyes straight, especially if the reader is distinguished by increased patriotism in the blood, but the heroes here are people, though thinking, but not ideal, and there is still no equal sign between the hero and the author: Bykov is not a madman Korostylev, and it is important to realize that this literature is not devoid of at least a bit of postmodern play.
Julien Sorel at Stendhal also thought a lot of things, for example, but it does not occur to us to put it on banners. In general, turn on your head, picking up a book, and may you be happy!)
382.722 SRY