From Father

Nadezhda Antonova's novel is a journey of memory about the death of a father, paintings of life, real and imaginary, that are somehow connected with parents, their image. The book is about a great loss, turning into a search for... light and tranquility. Antonova's poetic writing style creates a feeling of poetry in prose. The reading is meditative, calm, and immerses you in the world of childhood, growing up, and accepting life. Poet Dmitry Vodennikov on the novel From Father by Nadezhda Antonova: Every text has its beginning. The text by Nadezhda Antonova, where essays and fiction rhyme with the diary entries of her father, begins at three points: the past, the present, and the unreal, which Antonova creates to make herself and the reader feel shame and surprise, to chuckle and be sardonic, sometimes to yearn. The novel From Father starts with a children's counting rhyme, written, by the way, for one of my seminars:   Father came out of the fog, took a secret from his pocket. Drink the dead water, cross the death bridge. There, behind the phantom mountain, the secret will meet you.   At first, we do not understand what this secret is, why such an awkward rhyme in the second line, why cross the death bridge and what is behind the mountain. And it is precisely then that this game pulls us in. A game that the author calls a mourning novel. Have you seen how mourners wail at funerals? They tell what will happen next, they address the departed, and sometimes to someone who has come to see him off. And there is one condition: you must cry honestly, as if for yourself. Lie, and the cry will break, it won’t shoot off. In this dialogue with the dead father, there is everything, including lies. We didn't finish talking, we didn't finish arguing, we didn't finish deceiving, we didn't finish laughing. But don't worry, Dad, I'll write it down now, I'll live on. And I will lie, of course: artistic reality has its own truth. Do you remember that day when we buried you? I almost forgot what you really look like. But we, the readers, remember. This is the main honest secret of a living text.   Denis Osokin, writer, screenwriter: The novel by Nadezhda