The Los Angeles Times said of Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The Funeral Party , “In America we have friends, family, lovers, and parents–four kinds of love. Could it really be that in Russia they have more? Ludmila Ulitskaya makes it seem so.” In Sonechka: A Novella and Stories , Ulitskaya brings us tales of these other loves in her richly lyrical prose, populated with captivating and unusual characters.

In “Queen of Spades,” Anna, a successful ophthalmologic surgeon in her sixties; her daughter, Katya; and Katya’s teenage daughter and young son live in constant terror of Anna’s mother, a domineering, autocratic, aging former beauty queen. In “Angel,” a closeted middle-aged professor marries an uneducated charwoman for love of her young son, raising the child in his image. In “The Orlov-Sokolovs,” perfectly matched young lovers are pulled apart by the Soviet academic bureaucracy. And in the stunning novella “Sonechka,” the heroine, a bookworm turned muse turned mother, reveals a love and loyalty at once astounding in its generosity and grotesque in its pathos.

In these stories, love and life are lived under the radar of oppression, in want of material comfort, in obeisance to or matter-of-fact rejection of the pervasive restrictions of Soviet rule. If living well is the best revenge, then Ludmila Ulitskaya’s characters, in choosing to embrace the unique gifts that their lives bring them, are small heroes of the quotidian, their stories as funny and tender as they are brilliantly told.

俄國當代最受歡迎的女性小說作家，《索涅奇卡》是讓她一炮而紅的頭一部小說。她的主要作品皆獲得俄羅斯布克入圍殊榮，其中《庫科茨基醫生的病案》更一舉拿下2001年布克獎。這是俄羅斯布克獎1991年設立以來，頭一回由女性掄元。烏利茨卡婭在現代俄國文壇堪稱異數，一方面儘管她敏感地覺察到過去一個世紀以來世界文壇的變化，並將之紀錄在小說之中，另一方面她還是堅持用古老的方式說故事，這使得她的小說在同儕之中更為容易閱讀。她善於掌控讀者的心理，任何鐵石心腸的人看了她的書也會忍不住落淚。