"Beat Can't retreat": Why a new novel about our war is doomed to become a bestseller
In June, it was published, but Russian missiles were destroyed in Kharkiv by a printing press, the first circulation was burned. In September, Vivat published a new one. The novel makes a strong impression: Belyansky grew up from a good writer - a great prose writer. Interestingly, there are many characters in volunteers in the work, but the central image is a female. Focus will present his review of a novel, which is doomed to become a bestseller.
We will remind that Pavel Belyansky was born in 1977 in the village of Mine # 9 of Lugansk region in the family of a serviceman. Initially, he became a popular blogger. On the collection of stories "I work in the cemetery" (2016), which became popular, wrote a script, which made the film of the same name. The picture came on the screens in September 2022 - Belyansky came from the front in Kiev.
It can be said that this is the first national picture with an ideal script structure that combines the features of the author's and commercial cinema. Belyansky released several books, from which you can distinguish - "Grandma did not love to die" (2021). The American classic Cormak McCarthy (1933 - 2023), who wrote a masterpiece "Older here is not a place", believed that if the book does not refer to death, it is a serious reading.
The pate with this "excellent" - the ghost of death is present in many of his works. Earlier, Paul positioned himself as a Russian -speaking Ukrainian writer. Now, of course, it produces books only in Ukrainian. On February 25, 2022, Belyanski went to a volunteer. He became the infantryman, fighting in the Kherson direction and in the Kharkiv region. Married, there is a teenage daughter.
He published his accurate front -line observations in the form of posts in his Facebook account (34 thousand subscribers today). And here is a front novel. I note that at a personal meeting in February this year - Pasha and I argued - he objected to my theory that the formula of Ukraine: beauty - benefit - union.
But the paradox is that although he led a half dozen portraits of volunteers from the third assault company on his pages, which he immortalized, the central, cross -cutting image of the book is female. This is Tanya with the call sign. From it the book begins with it, in general it ends. And this is symptomatic. This paramedic, like a symbol of today's Ukraine. Prior to a full -scale war, it was a unsuccessful cafe owner on the shore of the Kakhovka reservoir.
She studied at school, and her husband sold air conditioners. The husband constantly underestimated her, jokes herself and, by and large. Such a simple subordination can kill a person's belief in a person. And Tanya existed faster than inertia, without much taste to life. But it was blown on February 24, 2022. The cafe burned. The woman decided and burn all the bridges with the past, going to the Armed Forces volunteer.
Belyansky describes in detail the reaction to this decision of both the husband and the officer in the military enlistment office: from the fear of irony - to frank irritation. The descriptions of the reaction to the appearance of Tanya in the Armed Forces - the fighters themselves are also amazing. As the pate writes that Tanya looked at eight men and chose for herself in the cavaliers-the safest-a cricket-machine gun. So that they do not choose it.
Then comes the impressive transformation: from an uncertain woman - a cool fighter with a call sign (at the beginning she took the name Bagir as in "Mowgli", but Bagir was already registered). The book depicts 15-16 male volunteers, including pate itself, but the second most important after the tigers, apparently, the commander Alexander Chern: the only hero of the book who speaks Russian. Just a wonderful battle scene in the section "Pavel Pavet. The Day of Luck".
The whistle of bullets, explosions, a sharp change in the situation, the complete feeling of hopelessness and unexpected help - you see all this, you feel - with full immersion in the situation. Belyansky describes everything - up to concrete dust on the lips that rise from explosions, or changes in perception after contusion. Shocking part. When our assault detachment broke into the village, for some reason it was incredibly quiet: not to hear dogs, cats are not visible.
And then Ukrainian soldiers found them - shot and dumped in one pile in the back yard of one of the houses. " - why? - I asked. " Because they can, "said someone. " Because we allowed them, "Mars responded. " The book describes a lot of human tragedies, but for some reason this bunch of unhappy killed animals - especially crashes into memory. About my movie "I work in the cemetery" Belyansky once said, "Despite the fact that he was about death, a very vital movie.
" This book can be said the same thing: it is honest, scary, uncompromising, there is absolutely no pathos, but for some reason there is a stable feeling that the victory will be behind us - the heroes of everyday life in the performance of heavy frontal tasks, but the enemy to stop our fighters unable to. The Belyansky is attentive to dozens of real details that cannot be invented.
The maximum that the writer-writer does is a dotted line of different fates, which consists of characters in their choice, actions and consequences of this. During the book, we see how volunteers who came from the citizen become experienced fighters, having passed difficult military trials. The author does not hide what it is victims. From the popular blogger and the exciting narrator, Belyansky turned into a great Ukrainian prose writer.