Every so often, you come across a book so beautiful that you ration the pages to extend it. Nora Ikstena’s Soviet Milk is most certainly one of these ... The atmospheric narrative infused with evocative imagery reflects both the physical state of Latvia under Soviet rule and the mental states of the protagonists ... Nora Ikstena’s autofictional tale, courtesy of Magita Gailitis’s smooth and sensitive translation, allows us into the minds of two women for whom we feel an almost instant empathy and who will remain with us for a long time.
This is not a comfortable novel; its determination to make symbolic capital of every event is as relentless as the events themselves are saddening. Yet its powerful evocation of an era that seems almost unimaginable now, but which could all too easily return if Europe fails to defend the hard-won freedoms of its nations, makes it a valuable, even an important one.
The story of the three women is told in short, poignant vignettes ... Even though the milk-imagery is a bit repetitive and sometimes comes across too heavy-handed, it aptly illuminates the political message of the book. But politics aside, the novel’s emotional core revolves around the mother’s longing for a better life and the daughter’s inability to save her. And Ikstena succeeds in making their pain palpable and real.
Nora Ikstena's Soviet Milk is an important and touching portrait of motherhood, daughterhood, and mental health in Soviet Latvia, but also a timely meditation in our contemporary moment on patriarchy, the Soviet Union, and possibilities of mother-daughter/female homosocial relationships. It is also beautifully translated by Margita Gailitis, who attends well to Anglophone audiences by occasionally preserving phrases from the Latvian original (especially when songs and political slogans are quoted) and pairing them side-by-side with English translations. Galaitis and Peirene Press have brought an important work of contemporary European literature at the intersection of feminist and post-Soviet writing to a broader audience, and in doing so have introduced a powerful new voice to the English-language readers.
Although the oppression of life under Communism infuses this tender tale, Soviet Milk is principally a story about individual character, not politics. There’s no doubt that the mother is a wounded soul, who struggles and fails to be happy, but the author offers no pat answers about why. She is so delicately and warmly evoked, however, that the reader is stirred to empathy rather than impatience ... complexities are carefully portrayed ... The young girl’s narrative is delicately written ... Soviet Milk is a story of ordinary people who are actually extraordinary and that gives it a universal appeal. Despite its elegiac tone, it’s ultimately upbeat because of the sense the writer leaves us with that, despite the system they live under, which stifles what they say and do, their lives matter.
