We carried flags in the May and November parades in honour of the Red Army, the Revolution and Communism, while at home we crossed ourselves and waited for the English army to come and free Latvia from the Russian boot.”

Yet within me blossomed a hatred for the duplicity and hypocrisy of this existence.

“My mother continued to raise me as an honourable and faithful young Soviet citizen. Her life isn’t laid out explicitly – we never know who the father of her child is – but she certainly struggles with life under communist rule. I remember her in bed with blue lips from the first time she overdosed, possibly as part of some medical experiment.”īut only possibly…her mother definitely self-medicates with various substances, and tries to overdose more than once. “I don’t remember Mother ever hugging me much, but I remember her needle-pricked thigh, where she practised injections. She is aware of her mother’s troubles though: She is cared for by her grandmother and step-grandfather, and is a happy child, taking joy in simple pleasures. The daughter grows up a very different character. Sometimes I hated him because I suspected that his self-destructive gene was deeply implanted in me and that with time it would grow and strengthen, no matter how hard I fought it.” “Having witnessed my father’s physical suffering, I decided to become a doctor. The mother is hard-working, committed to her gynaecology practice, but also distant and depressed. The narrative alternates between the mother and daughter. How else to explain her disappearance from home immediately after giving birth? She was missing for five days. Perhaps she knew that her milk would have caused more harm than good to her child. The imagery of milk is woven throughout the narrative and begins with a young single mother refusing to breastfeed her child: It’s an excellently-written novella though, and compelling portrait of a mother/daughter relationship and the impact of the state on people’s lives. Unfortunately, Soviet Milk does not buck this trend. Marina Sofia posted at the start of the month on how stories that tend to be translated from the former Eastern bloc tend to be grim and hard-going, not reflective of the scope of literature of those countries at all.

Set in Latvia, it’s another stop on my Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge, hosted by Hard Book Habit.

Soviet Milk is published by the wonderful Peirene Press, as part of their Home in Exile series.

Soviet milk book