The Sky Unwashed
 Irene Zabytko
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2000 Algonquin Books
  ISBN: 1565122461

A RebeccasReads author featured in
Authors & Books

Check out this author's book signings & workshops.

In April 1986 in a farm village in the Ukraine, the air has a strong, strange metallic flavor; the animals become listless; the priest is absent for services & Marusia Petrenko's son does not return home after his shift at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl.

It's just an ordinary day in the village of Starylis where widow Marusia Petrenko awakens in her tiny house to hear her son Yurko & his wife Zosia arguing. Soon she rises to take care of her grandchildren, her garden & her prize milk cow in the shed.

Marusia's daughter-in-law, Zosia, is a pretty woman who often returns from unknown assignations with glamorous clothes while her husband labors long hours at the nearby nuclear power plant. This grandmother keeps her peace & pours her love into her grandchildren. Just an ordinary day of poverty, petty betrayals & overtime but the air is so hard to breath.

Then it all happens so quickly - the well water tastes strange, the air is hard to see through & there's a bright aching light to the sunshine. Yurko staggers in desperately ill; the garden plants are wilting, the cow & dog begin to moan & the village is invaded by troops ordering them to evacuate to the city of Kiev far to the west.

The Sky Unwashed is an absorbing saga of the trials of country folk crammed into city hospitals & evacuation buildings. This author has written in clear & authentic detail about the bewilderment of the homeless; about death by strange illnesses no herb can remedy & about an enduring old woman who frets for her grandchildren. Zosia has changed now, with her looks gone & her health precarious, she hustles to find a way out & takes her children with her. Marusia is left alone in a strange place until she decides to walk back to her beloved Starylis.

Once home, this durable baba sets about bringing order into her life, ringing the church bell to tell people she is home & preparing for winter. Then, when other old women wander back, life takes on a semblance of the ordinary. Past resentments flare up between neighbors; memories & affection resurface. Until one of them begins to die.

There is a wonderful episode when these intrepid babysi face down officials at the power plant, demanding milk cows & other necessaries, even pestering those disbelieving men into driving them home with their booty.

There is another, startling, episode where Zosia encounters a reporter from The West & for a moment we can see ourselves through the eyes of the Ukraine. Every detail of that reporter - her hair, teeth, clothes, hands are scrutinized by the once pretty Zosia & it makes her as determined as ever was her mother-in-law. In The Sky Unwashed we are privy to a before & after story. You can taste the polluted air, you can hear the silence of the spring when the birds & animals die off & you can feel the bewilderment, fear & anger at the unseen relentless danger.

Perhaps the greatest danger really was how no one was told anything, just herded about, ordered here & there with no explanations nor support of any kind.

A profoundly moving story as seen from one old & simple woman's perspective; rich in humanity, humor & despair & so very lyrically written. A memorable first effort!

Do check out my Interview with this fascinating author!
(01/14/01)

Rebecca