The Island of Charon. Playing Another Reality. Antoine de Saint-Exupery Award. Alexandra Kryuchkova

Island with no electricity, Internet, air conditioning, where “our consciousness does not care if something happens only in thoughts or in reality, because the reaction of the body is always the same.”

      The Island, where the water from the Lake of Lovers is not usual, not mineral, but dead and not sparkling, because there is simply no other water there, however, you cannot drown in such water, because you can breathe in it!

      The Island, where a Philippine fisherman with Athos rosary hacks and glitches my time as if it could have any meaning on the Island of Magicians, because it is always the Full Moon on the clock, and this Time is the best (!), although only for catching Fish with a long nose and shamanic treats, such as blood with milk (!), the potion with a limited shelf life; the main thing is not to fall for the bait of black magicians, who put the spirit of a dead person into a bewitched one…

      To sail away!

      To sail away from the world where it’s possible to destroy an ancient Gothic church for the sake of a coal mining, to suicide due to unpaid bank interest on a business loan, and it is not considered shameful to steal ideas – if it were someone else’s bag, then – yes… otherwise…

      To sail away to the Island, where one’s dreams are memories, from which I would finally find out why “we were ly so afraid of losing each other even before meeting in a new quality, that we put off all conversations for later…”

      To the Island, where you’ll hardly be able to answer immediately the question of the Stargazer, “Do you really believe that you ended up here by accident?” But you’ll have an opportunity to think about the meaning of your life, although only until the high tide, creeping as quiet (!) water, like a loving monster, because “The Ocean comes here silently”.

      To the Island, from which it is so difficult to disappear, because “everybody has their own ferry”, but it has the right never to come for you, because it does not have any schedule, or rather, it depends solely on you.

      To the Island, where you can kill only your own selfish Self, and no theft is possible, because there is nothing to steal there, the most valuable thing is the light… of a lantern, and it is exclusively YOURS…

      Of course, both the Island itself and its main characters, existing in reality, have their own beautiful names, but, as for me personally, they are no longer so important, because they would be displaced from memory by an amazing feeling of freedom (!) from the present, the past and the future, which I got while sitting, wrapped my legs in a plaid… or rather, in captivity – yes, in the magic captivity of Alexandra Kryuchkova’s prose.

      Elena Tallenika,

      member of the Union of Writers of Russia,

      laureate of international literary awards

      The newspaper “Literary News” (“Literaturnye Izvestia”) No. 11—12 (197—198), 2021.

      http://litiz.ru/arch.html

      https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30039

      S. Bersenev, “Another Reality”

      (“Alexandra Kryuchkova revealed the secret of Charon”)

      I am familiar with the work of the famous Moscow writer Alexandra Kryuchkova not by hearsay. Back in 2012, I was lucky enough to be present at her personal literary evening at the House of the Near Abroad by A. Solzhenitsyn at Taganka, where she looked great in two capacities at once: as a poet and as a songwriter. Her performance inspired me so much that I wrote one of my most significant poems “I say you ‘hello’! ”, quoted in the epigraph Alexandra’s words. Later, in January 2017, at the same House took place a presentation of the grandiose film “Holy Russia” by A. Kulyamin (based on the book “Holy Russia. Voices of Russian poets”), which features the heartfelt poems of A. Kryuchkova as well.

      And now, a few years later, when, being the chairman of the jury and head of the Creative Center “Clouds of Inspiration”, I got acquainted with her mystical thriller “The Island of Charon”, submitted to the literary competition “Another Reality” organized in honor of mystical writers Leonid and Daniil Andreev, Alexandra Kryuchkova revealed herself to me in yet another capacity – as a deep and thoughtful prose writer.

      The very title of the book makes it clear that we are not going to have a trivial turning over of mundane platitudes, but a journey into painstaking philosophical reflections. From the first pages, we are immersed in that very “Another Reality”, where the earthly life and death of the main character are closely interconnected with invisible otherworldly Forces of Darkness and Light, and the plot unfolds on a mysterious island, where “everything is wrong”, since it is located in the Astral World. But does an afterlife exist in principle? And if so, how is that World organized? What is it “the judgment” of a soul? What price does each of us have to pay for our deeds?

      Unresolved tasks and unfinished works, mistakes made during life and affection for earthly things, and even unfulfilled dreams lead the soul to the island, whose lighthouse is the Wish Tree, but “The Wish Tree is a trap…”

      And it is no coincidence that the owner of the Island lives in a house in the Cemetery of Memories – the reminiscences of dear to the heart people are haunting the main character.

      Can the described by Alexandra Kryuchkova in “The Island…” be exactly like this in reality? We don’t know, but surely, each of us, approaching the last line, asks the same questions, to which the main character is looking for and finds answers. The author openly expresses her opinion on the possibility of cognition the Truth in a dialogue with Charon.

      “…everything that surrounds you is an illusion. Only those who can refuse it will discover the Truth.”

      “But the only way to understand completely what’s going on here is to go beyond what’s going on. So, theoretically, everyone who is here now needs to leave the Astral World?”

      “Correct. The character of the movie will not see the whole movie until he moves himself in the auditorium.”

      Unlike most incoherent and far-fetched fantasy, “The Island”, emerged at the intersection of genres (love story, detective, mysticism and philosophy), keeps the reader in suspense from the first to the last page. The search for mutual love leads to the investigation of one’s murder in the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers and ends with unraveling of Charon’s secret to realize the transition of the soul to the next step of the endless staircase to the Sky.

      In my opinion, one of the main goals of the book is to convey to the reader the importance of taking responsibility for his own deeds, since each person almost always has the freedom of choice,

      “But… pay attention to the fact that the Creator doesn’t act against your will and never deprives anyone of the right to choose.”

      …as well as the importance of forgiveness, because the main character accepts the Creator’s plan for her own death and eventually forgives her murderer.

      “I don’t wish you any harm… You are right. It was necessary for some reason. Goodbye…”

      There is nothing superfluous in the book. All the events and dialogues of the characters are carefully verified and thought out. There is no artificially built-in abstruse, “The Island of Charon” is easy to read, but at the same time it is a serious work that deserves attention no less than similar philosophical works in the field of so-called “Another Reality”, from “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery to “The Rose of the World” by Daniil Andreev.

      According to the decision of the jury of the Creative Center “Clouds of Inspiration”,