night in the Mansion is advertised as the Ball of Impurities. Or… of Death?
Death lives in all scary fairy tales. Alice tries to talk Death off, distract it, recode herself towards Life. It’s like the Last Dance, the Last Fight of the Master. Every Master is entitled to the final triumph. If the Master is real, he can prolong his last fight. Not forever, alas. Bulgakov continued it for more than ten years, Yesenin had been tearing the «Black Man» poem from himself for two and a half.
The literary parties in the book are strung one on top of the other, like beads of bloody and frozen – in the Blizzard! – rowan berries on a thread. Does the thread really break at the end by the inevitability of Death? Do the 40 literary nights end up in a passage to the Other Reality? The souls spend the same number of days after Death on Earth. Is it a sacred number? The author constantly refers to numbers. Everything around is permeated by them. But can you play with numbers? Why does Alice have 44 dresses? It would be logical to mirror 40, however, «In numerology 4 means „Death“, but 44 is 4 plus 4, or 8, and this is already a sign of infinity, that for me personally means „Love“…»
So if the parties are like beads, should the reader be bored? No! To the monotony of the Blizzard’s songs, lulling the mind, mysterious events occur both in the Mansion and in the reader’s soul.
We get to the School of Magicians for the seminar «How to become the Magician». Forty wise and feasible tasks that Alice presents during the breaks of each chapter are a true wish-fulfillment marathon and a step-by-step guide to create your Happy Universe! The «breaking the pattern» technique seems to me very interesting! Therefore… aren’t you the Magician yet? This book is for you! In general, the whole «Trap» is Alchemy = Practicum of Secret Knowledge + Love in the mystical context of a puzzle plot on the verge of a detective story and even madness that keeps you in suspense until the last line…
Alice is reflecting, trying to understand: why does she seem not to live indeed? Isn’t she already dead? It is an interesting trick of the author to turn reality over, presenting the illusory one neither like a dream, nor like death, but vice versa…
Does any creation of the Creator have freedom of choice, or is the scenario rigidly fixed? Where do the glitches in the Matrix come from and how to surprise it? Does Love always defeat Death? And an almost rhetorical question with a reference to the World of Ideas of the philosopher Plato… Can a thought-form die? Can it be the Co-Creator of all things? Isn’t the independent life of a thought-form a heresy, a rebellion against the Creator?
In the mysterious interweaving of realities, Alexandra Kryuchkova, as usual, in an accessible and concise way talks about the complex, but each reader will find in the book exactly what he is ready to discover…
Any fairy tale pays tribute to reality. In the «Trap» there is a mysterious, quite thinking, huge talkative Cat, a kind of Bulgakov’s one. I saw him in the Bulgakov House, and I confirm, the Honorable Mister the Puss is really huge! And the Portal to the Other World, which is the fireplace, awakened in me the image of a Russian stove! Maybe the Guardian of the Portal is the Baba Yaga?
The final scene on the bridge of Eternity with the possibility of choosing the future is associated with a fork in the road, «If you go to the left, you will lose your horse; if you go to the right, you will lose your life; if you go straight, you will be alive and forget yourself.»
However, the scary fairy tale is actually non-scary – no matter how much I tried to get frightened in the course of the story, I couldn’t! And not just because the book is in the «Playing (!) Another Reality» series. The very flow of the narrative screamed with every letter in every line: everything is going to be okay!
There is also a smell of Cinderella: dresses, the anticipation of a miracle at the Ball, etc. However, Alice is in search not so much of a prince as of answers to everybody’s basic questions.
And yet, «A Trap for a Thought-Form» is closer to «Alice in Wonderland» by L. Carroll. Alice and the Cheshire Cat, also speaking and fabulous, like Bulgakov’s Cat, wise in his madness and uttering, «Life is serious. But not much…»
If to be very serious, the «Trap», the winner of the competitions «Master» after M. Bulgakov (the Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia, 2020) and «The Looking Glass» after L. Carroll (Open Literary Club, 2022), is hunting for those who lack magic in their lives. It is light, kind, fabulous. Written by the Master of the Word. It’s so nice to spend time with this book over a cup of tea, wrapped in a cozy blanket and smiling at the Cat, that always smiles you back!
Tatyana Trubnikova,
member of the Union of Writers of Russia,
laureate of literary awards
The magazine «ZINZIVER» No.1 (127), 2022
Magazines’ Hall «Gorky media»
https://magazines.gorky.media/zin/2022/1/vzglyad-2.html
https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30244
Благодарности / Thanks!
Автор выражает сердечную благодарность
всем персонажам и прототипам романа,
в том числе:
The author expresses her great gratitude
to all the characters and prototypes of the novel,
including:
Александру Лонсу / Alexander Lons,
Константину Белому / Konstantin Bely,
Сергею Аршинову / Sergey Arshinov,
Борису Михину / Boris Mikhin,
Ивану Борисову / Ivan Borisov,
Григорию Самойлику / Grigory Samoilik,
Виталию Волкову / Vitaly Volkov,
Борису Красильникову / Boris Krasilnikov,
Екатерине Кордюковой / Ekaterina Kordyukova,
Ирине Антоновой / Irina Antonova,
Наталье Скляровой / Natalya Sklyarova,
Алексею Беклемышеву / Alexey Beklemishev,
