Diario Siglo XXI
11.10.2006
Mr. Jaume Vallcorba, editor-in-chief of the Quaderns Crema publishing house, exclaims that "Ludmila already is a classic”.
The most important part of this masterpiece is "the internal metaphor that makes it multidimensional, excluding the straightforward interpretation”.
Mrs. Ulitskaya confessed that she had a “strong temptation” to kill Shurik, the protagonist of her book.
europapress.es
11.10.2006
"WOMEN ARE GETTING MORE AND MORE AGGRESSIVE".
Author explains that she wrote the book because she was moved by "strong feeling that something has happened in the women’s real world" and claims that in Russia, where the female population outnumbers males, “women are getting more and more aggressive".
That’s why, according to Ulitskaya, her hero turns into an “easy prey for women” in the world where “females fight to get their men”. Ulitskaya also stated that we all live in “quite an interesting moment in history” when “women in power are converting themselves into the bearers of the masculine mentality”. "The next generation should not repudiate being women”, claims Ulitskaya.
...Personages of her fiction exist in atmosphere of desperation, but do not give up.
hispanidad.com
11.10.2006
“Sincerely yours, Shurik” is a story of the modern Casanova, brought up by his energetic grandmother and weak-willed mother. Two women who had inculcated into Shurik a strong feeling of self-abnegation that has transformed itself into a deviation: the man feels attraction to defenceless women and this prompts him to offer them a consolation in the form of sexual ecstasy.
La estrella digital
12.10.2006
The protagonist of “Sincerely yours, Shurik” (“The best fiction book of 2004” award in Russia), as the author explains, is a person “that provoked in me two quite opposite attitudes toward him: there were moments when I loved him profoundly, and there were other moments while I was writing this book, when I hated him or was infuriated by his behaviour”.
During the presentation of the book in Spain both editors, Mr. Herralde (editor of Spanish edition) and Mr. Vallcorba (editor of Catalan edition), agreed that Mrs. Ulitskaya is a “live classic” of modern Russian literature, and her prose is fascinating in just the same way as that of other authors belonging to a great Russian literary tradition.
Terra.es
11.10.2006
According to Russian writer Ulitskaya, at the beginning of XXI century "we are entering into a new époque, when feminine logic should not be rejected, after living a long time in a world created and ruled by the masculine laws ".
Mrs. Ulitskaya states the man and woman "must not start the war of the sexes" and adds that "the subliminal message of all my books is as follows: both our genders should learn from each other how to achieve a better, more fruitful collaboration ".
"The novel presented here today is not about the great philosophical questions of existence, it’s about small things of everyday life ".
COLPISA
Agencia Prensa Independiente
13.10.2006
Ludmila Ulitskaya is clearly one of the greatest contemporary Russian fiction writers.
Leaving politics aside, Ulitskaya explains the nature of her last novel: "I’ve taken 17 years to write this book, - she says, - I’ve devoted much effort into it and it was a long creative school for me". "The hero" of the book, Shurik Korn, is a breed of modern Casanova, or maybe a "Tail-end First Don Juan".
"Each reader should make his own choice and draw his own conclusions", suggests Ulitskaya. She summons "men and women to get to know each other better and to continue to explore the field of life where hope still exists".
ABC
14.10.2006
The protagonist of “Sincerely yours, Shurik”, a novel that employs the narrative saga writing style of the great Russian classics, is an atypical Don Juan, used by author as a metaphor for explaining the drastic changes that have recently occurred to modern man.
Ulitskaya, a professional biologist, makes no secret of the fact that her vision of literature depends strongly on her scientific experience. «Genetics is a principal science that deals with the human being, and actually something occurs with men and women: men are effeminising, and women are acquiring features more masculine-like features such as aggressiveness for example».
El Periódico
24.10.2006
“Money is not the force that should rule the world; the idea of survival is. When the very existence of individual is jeopardized, the situation turns critical. As a professional geneticist, I think that the biological part of human being must not be underestimated. We are all going to disappear, just like the dinosaurs... And the gap between genetics and literature is not that big, you know, since both are dealing with the human being.”
El Mundo
12.10.2006
Shurik Korn is the man who just can’t say no. His appearance is so appealing, that he has transformed himself into a peculiar Don Juan. So peculiar that he acts not for himself, but to offset the possible guilt should he have remorse for not having acted upon an opportunity. The protagonist of “Sincerely yours, Shurik”, the new masterpiece by Ludmila Ulitskaya, is a topsy-turvy Casanova, according to author.
The progressive loss of the protagonist’s personality as his relationships with women develops is one of the key elements in this book, reflecting the infinity of incomplete lives Shurik has left by thee wayside during his journey. From this point of view the novel is clearly a metaphorical depiction of man.
El Faro de Murcia
20.10.06
‘Sincerely yours, Shurik” is, frankly, a great novel.
An authentic literary masterpiece
The storyline runs gently and vividly, simply depicting a succession of events, and there is no intellectual masturbation that interests no one in particular, nor unnecessary descriptions, and unintelligible, artificial aesthetics are put aside.
Ludmila Ulitskaya avoids gratuitous contemplations to get straight to the point with a plain narration that makes the reader feel a pleasant complicity with its perfectly outlined heroes and become involved into this marvellous love story.
…provokes in reader a strange, warm and peaceful sensation that only genuine narrative could produce.
LA VANGUARDIA
14.10.2006
Mr. Jaume Vallcorba, editor of Catalan translation of “Sincerely yours, Shurik” by Ludmila Ulitskaya, pinpoints the fiction as “a novel for reading in line with the time-honoured tradition of great Russian literature”. While to the malignant Mr. Herralde, editor of Spanish translation, the book reminded “Belle du Seigneur” by Albert Cohen, “taking into consideration”, he defined, “that here we see the lord of beauties and less beauties”.
Shurik Korn confuses compassion with desire.
To make a study of co-existence of the two sexes (but not of the war between them) is the main subject of Ludmila Ulitskaya’s literary art. That’s why in all her books we could find this subliminal message: “ let’s get to know each other better”.
AVUI, Barcelona
12.10.2006
The Casanova-victim...
For the protagonist of the novel Shurik, women have surrounded him all his life.
The circumstances are all the same in high school, in the University, in his social life. His environment converted him into a “victim of women”, because his “life is a continuous sacrifice” to satisfy women’s demands, “since {we} women struggle harder and harder to conquer our men”. Shurik becomes an easy prey to this temptation and destroys his own personality in the process.
Russian author Ludmila Ulitskaya published a book creating a metaphor through the switching of male and female sexual roles.
LA RAZON, Barcelona
12.10.2006
Ulitskaya gives a new twist to the myth of Don Juan in her “Sincerely yours, Shurik”
Russian literature gave us a multitude of names, from Pushkin to Gogol, from Tolstoy to Dostoevsky, from Turgeniev to Chekhov. According to some, there is a new name we should add to this list, and that name is of woman, Ludmila Ulitskaya.
This is a story of a Dostoevskian Idiot, an inverted Anna Karenina, a small-time Don Juan, an easy victim of womankind, for whom he always satisfied in the same way that a Good Samaritan donates to charity.
