As part of a series on award-winning women authors of Eastern European descent, I picked up Tiptree Award-winner Dubravka Ugrešić's Baba Yaga Laid an Egg. Based on the cover blurbs I almost put it down again: "A mirthlessly witty divertimento on female old age." "A whirligig of outrageous invention." "Dolefully humorous." "A grown-up novel with grown-up prepositions." I hadn't even realized that prepositions had a life cycle. Fortunately for everyone concerned, I ignored the reviewers, pressed on, and thoroughly enjoyed reading everything between the covers.
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is a meditation in three parts (plus introduction) on being an old lady. The first part ('Go There -- I Know Not Where -- and Bring Me Back a Thing I Lack') is an autobiographical account of the author and her aging mother (if you like that kind of thing, you should go ahead and assume scare quotes around just about everything in this review, because the book does have a recursive, postmodern slant that questions everything, but I'm not up to that much punctuation myself), and a trip to Varna, Bulgaria to reconnect with the past. The second, and longest, section ('Ask Me No Questions and I'll Tell You No Lies') is a fairy tale about three old women (with connections to the mother in the first part of the book) who take a trip to a spa, and complications ensue. The book ends ('If You Know Too Much, You Grow Old Too Soon') with a commentary on the first two sections of the book, with respect to Baba Yaga folklore, written by Dr. Aba Bagay, a character from the first section of the book, and obvious anagram for Baba Yaga.
I'm kind of torn, because I want to talk about the implications of that last section (and whether the proper verb would be 'pale-firing' or 'kinboting') and how it relates to the first section (which I had to go back straightaway and reread), but I really want you to go and read the whole thing first. So, I'm only going to say that I loved almost every bit of this book (I admit, the rhyming couplets were a little annoying), even (maybe especially) the last section (which apparently a lot of reviewers found boring) and I want you to love it, too. And then comment so we can discuss it!
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