Disparate and Distressed Dames: A Review of Ivana Dobrakovová’s Mothers and Truckers (2022, Jantar Publishing)
Ivana Dobrakovová’s Mothers and Truckers (Matki a kamionisti, 2018), recently translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood, features five short stories from the perspective of five disparate women: Svetlana, Ivana, Olivia, Lara, and Veronika. While the stories are not connected, the women’s experiences are linked thematically. Each of the five narrators embody different states of mental despair. Where Svetlana’s psychological condition is revealed as a surprise at the end of the first story, as if a punchline to a dark joke – “It took exactly six months for me to have a breakdown” – Ivana is in the depths of despair over her troubled past and obsession with horses. Meanwhile, Olivia has divorced her “dork” of a husband but wrestles with keeping certain notions under control, and Lara grapples with her unhappy marriage and descent into masochism. In the final story, Veronika is in complete denial about her unhealthy relationships with men online.
Mothers and Truckers, which was awarded the 2019 EU Prize for Literature, is not Dobrakovová’s first work exploring mental health. The Slovak author’s 2010 novel Bellevue depicts the psychological decline of Blanka, a Slovak 19-year-old university student, who starts a summer internship at a home for the physically disabled in Marseille in order to improve her French. Both works of fiction represent a more recent global recognition of contemporary Slovak literature, in large part due to the translating duo Julia and Peter Sherwood and the publishing house Jantar Publishing, which have helped make previously inaccessible works of Central European fiction available in English. Dobrakovová is also an influential translator in her own right. She’s perhaps best known for her translations of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels into Slovak. Both authors’ works feature female protagonists with rich inner dialogues. However, they differ in regards to how these dialogues take shape. In Ferrante’s saga, Elena and Lila’s perspectives are constantly shaped by each other, a powerful depiction of the complexity of female friendship. Conversely, in Dobrakovová’s stories, the women are in dialogue with themselves, fighting a solitary battle with their own restless minds.
It is this essence of a wandering mind that Dobrakovová captures so aptly. The stories read like confessionals and are told in long train-of-thought clauses separated by commas, with some sentences taking up half the page or more. The stylistic choice helps to pull the reader into the obsessive thoughts of our narrators. Indeed, some of the characters rarely leave their bedrooms, such that the narratives take place almost entirely within the confines of their minds. This is the case with Ivana, whose precarious mental stability is shaken when she meets and develops a crush on “R.” The encounter causes her to question her current reality, namely that she still lives in an apartment with her mother, in a bedroom filled with potted plants.
I have green fingers. I have palm trees, the enormous date palm I inherited from my dad most prominent among them, but there’s also an areca, a rubber plant whose leaves I wipe down every night, a rhododendron, some asparagus plants, an aloe vera, a kalanchoe that has yellow blossoms just now, I love watching as they close up at night, the windows sills are mainly reserved for cacti, will I get married? won’t I get married? Do I believe in superstitions? Does it bother me? – and orchids, of course, they bloom all year round…
Here, Dobrakovová illustrates how easily intrusive thoughts spring into the mind. As Ivana tries to stay on the topic of her plants, her mind jumps to her fear about ending up unmarried and alone. The inability to control thoughts is a symptom of Ivana’s psychological issues, yet their fleeting and intrusive nature is relatable to anyone.
If you thought that the stories of our quintet would be a depressing read, or a distressing one, you would be wrong. As in real life, the women’s views range from absurd and crass, to obscene, but there are also moments of levity and self-awareness. In the third story, Olivia’s inner dialogue focuses on her disapproval of the types of people she perceives as beneath her intellectually, including her ex-husband, her students, and the fellow teachers at the school where she works. However, as the story progresses, it becomes clear that the behaviors and ideas she judges others for are ones she tries to suppress within herself. She secretly derides the teachers for gossiping about students, yet she can’t avoid snooping on them during a bus ride home after school. Another contradiction arises when Olivia describes life as a recent divorcée.
But I’m definitely not lonely. I don’t spend my time pondering the pathetic life of a divorcée, I can’t abide self-pity, I don’t give in to it, I keep busy, I’m interested in a thousand and one things, I go to a different event every night and generally not on my own. I go with a girlfriend, or a male acquaintance, though that happens less often, men are too predictable, they always want to walk you home after a concert and I don’t care for that, don’t want that. It’s just that tonight it hasn’t worked out, I couldn’t find anyone prepared to go and see PPP. The seriousness of the subject must have scared them off. Although this will be some kind of theater production, if I understood the leaflet right, who knows, I may be in for a pleasant surprise. And maybe I’ll meet someone there.
As she thinks about the evening ahead, Olivia explains herself to herself. She attempts to convince herself that she is not lonely, only to arrive at the idea that the event might serve as an opportunity to meet someone. There is perhaps some humor to be found in Olivia’s situation; even our most ardent endeavors to persuade ourselves of certain self-truths can be futile.
The women in Dobrakovová’s stories do not reach any epiphanies, nor do the narratives suggest that they are on the road to recovery. In the case of Olivia, her night out ends with an impromptu run as she loses control not only of her mind, but of her body too.
Enough of this kind of thinking, riches, my foot, I tear my eyes away from the river and look towards the Gran Madre and suddenly my legs start running, as if they wanted to escape from me, even my legs can no longer stand the company of my head…
Dobrakovová seems to suggest, quite literally, that some people’s destiny is to continue to run away from their problems.
Reviewed by Anna West