They tell about the most vulnerable and fragile thing in human destiny – the formation and collapse of relationship between a man and a woman, about different faces of this and Other World life. Kryuchkova’s stories are quite small, no more than two pages, but how many experiences fall to the lot of their characters!
The writer uses the effect of a detective ending: everything, as a rule, doesn’t end the way the reader expects. The aerobatics of the dramaturgy of these stories is when one emotion interrupts another and reverses the outcome. Such an inverted outcome sometimes evokes in the reader directly opposite, overwhelming emotions.
The second and third parts of the book are written in the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe’s mystical thrillers. Nowadays ghosts, of course, don’t appear in old Gothic castles, but, for example, in the fashionable offices of well-known firms (the story «A Letter»). You see, they, the ghosts, absolutely don’t care where to appear. The surroundings don’t interest them at all. As in the works of past centuries, they are spiritually bound to the premises in which they died. Although, to tell the truth, I prefer stories outside the Otherworld – «A Piano», «A Cat’s Name», «See you Tomorrow».
Without exception, all the short stories of Alexandra Kryuchkova are written at a high artistic level of narration and dramaturgy.
Kryuchkova’s creative biography is full of surprises. She began writing poetry and prose at the age of 11. And not just began, because some short stories were included in the book, which is the subject in my note. This is evidenced by the dates under the works. These stories not only entered the book, they took their rightful place in it. The old works of the child prodigy Kryuchkova, included in her collection, were written by the hand of master. And they say that there will be no more Lermontovs because of the supposedly slow maturation of modern youth. However, it is not so! When you read Alexandra Kryuchkova’s stories, you don’t even think that they were written by a teenage girl.
I think that such an early maturation of Kryuchkova, as in the case of Lermontov, is caused by the premature death of both her parents. The tragic orphanhood could not but affect the child’s psyche. For Alexandra Kryuchkova, this resulted in a genuine interest in the Other World. The drama of life entered her soul early. As in the case of Lermontov, everyone learned about the prodigy Kryuchkova in retrospect, when she had already grown up and became a famous poet.
Although the stories, presented in the book, were written by Alexandra at a young age, they have not lost their original value even today. And yet, it’s a pity that our country didn’t care about its brilliant children in the nineties of the last century. And that Alexandra Kryuchkova’s early stories were published only two decades after they were written.
Alexander Karpenko24,
poet and writer
The newspaper «POETOGRAD» No. (113), 2014
https://www.reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=9499
http://www.poetograd.ru/arch.html
СКАЗКИ ПРИЗРАКОВ / TALES of GHOSTS
Автор выражает сердечную благодарность
всем персонажам и прототипам рассказов,
в том числе многочисленным призракам
и всем-всем-всем остальным!
The author expresses her great gratitude
to all the characters and prototypes of these stories,
including numerous ghosts and everybody else!
Эта книга посвящается каждому её читателю!
а также: моим родителям, бабушкам, дедушке и прадедушке,
сыну Андрею, нашей кошке Жозефине
и всем-всем-всем ДОБРЫМ существам и сущностям!
I. ЛЮБИ МЕНЯ СЕЙЧАС! / LOVE ME NOW!
The book is dedicated to every reader!
As well as to: my parents, grandmothers, grandfather and great-grandfather, my son Andrey and our cat Josephine, and all KIND creatures and entities!
0. Костёр
Я долго шла куда-то вдаль, в бесконечном густом тумане, пока внезапно не наткнулась на Мужчину.
– Простите, – извинилась я, пытаясь пройти дальше, но поняла, что там тоже кто-то есть.
– За мной будешь, – произнёс Мужчина.
– За Вами… в каком смысле? – уточнила я.
– В очереди…
– А за чем здесь стоят в очереди?
– Каждый – за своим…
– И долго в ней стоять?
Мужчина пожал плечами. Очередь чуть-чуть продвинулась. Я стала различать звуки голосов.
– А Вы не знаете, что там, дальше? – поинтересовалась я.
– Не знаю, – безразлично ответил Мужчина. – Но говорят, что за туманом – Город Солнца. Только не все смогут до него дойти.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Карпенко,_Александр_Николаевич
