Uninhabited

In the "Editorial of Elena Shubina," a new novel by Tatyana Mlynchik — "Uninhabited" — is published in the series "Saint Petersburg and its Inhabitants." It seems there is no goal that the main character — a successful PR specialist and resilient marathon runner, a beloved wife and talented writer — cannot achieve. She can only not achieve one thing: to become pregnant. This confessional, bold, and painfully honest text is about corporeality and the limits of human physical abilities, about personal choice — and the obligations-expectations imposed by society, about taboo subjects (abortion and infertility, numerous unsuccessful attempts to conceive — and doubts about the desire to become a mother); finally, this is a journey through the world of reproductive medicine and the labyrinths of IVF. The heroine must be everything — only she: an unyielding professional, a persistent athlete, a sensitive wife, a compliant daughter, and now — also an ideal future mother… Or should she — after all? Tatyana Mlynchik makes no promises of comfortable reading to anyone. This novel can conditionally be attributed to both the prose of thirty-somethings and trauma literature, — but in reality, it bears no age or psychoneurological markings. The author leads her heroine through territory that, perhaps, no one has trod as fearlessly before Mlynchik.