Zhenia is content with her life as Katya Apekina’s emotionally stunning novel, Mother Doll, opens. She has a happy marriage to an actor and, even if her own acting career didn’t pan out, her work as a Russian translator is satisfying. She and her husband gleefully comment on their carefree childlessness only to discover, a few days later, that Zhenia is pregnant. Her pregnancy sparks a roller coaster of revelation about what truly brings happiness and a struggle over what it means to be a mother.
Zhenia was always closest to her grandmother, Vera. Sadly, Vera is in serious decline and everyone anticipates that she won’t have long to live. Vera’s dementia means that Zhenia can’t even share the news of her pregnancy. Zhenia’s husband and mother aren’t too thrilled when they find out. Zhenia’s husband starts spending more and more time away. Zhenia’s mother is blunt when she wonders about Zhenia’s ability to take care of a child. So far, a very normal if not very joyful story. Things get strange when, out of the blue, Zhenia gets a call from a medium claiming to be in touch with Zhenia’s missing great-grandmother, who vanished after leaving a young Vera at a Soviet orphanage. The ghostly great-grandmother, Irina, wants to finally tell her story.
There is a price to be paid for learning what happened to Irina and how she came to abandon Vera. Part of that price is witnessing Irina’s many faults. She is vindictive, easily swayed by people she admires or is attractive to, and never thinks about the consequences of her actions. The heavier price is the physical toll the medium, Paul, and later Zhenia, have to bear being in close contact with the dead. If they’re not careful, Irina could pull them both over into death. For once, a Ouija board would have been safer.
As Irina tells her story and Zhenia’s pregnancy develops, Mother Doll introduces some very interesting ideas. Paul muses about how our selves are fractured into what we show others and how we change over time. It’s an open question whether there is such a thing as a true self. Glimpses of the afterlife reveal a clamor of voices all longing to tell their tales while touching the world of the living once more. Zhenia’s mother shares a few memories that make Zhenia question her own recollections of Vera and her grandmother’s love. All of these themes and plots build into a deeply satisfying conclusion when Zhenia gives birth and her son, Vladimir, comes into the world. (I particularly love how Zhenia dismisses her now ex-husband’s milquetoast suggestions for a name and insists on a Russian one, to the ex’s annoyance.)
None of the characters in Mother Doll is heroic. (Zhenia’s mother comes close because she sweeps in when needed to make sure that Zhenia and Vladimir have the help they need, without being asked.) Everyone in this book is profoundly human. They follow their inclinations without much thought for what could go wrong—and several of them get burned for it. Sure we need stories about heroes to inspire us. I would argue, though, that we need stories about the fuck-ups just as much. It might be frustrating to watch Zhenia et al. blunder but so very redeeming when they pick themselves up after disaster and learn from their mistakes.