Журнал «Зинзивер» №1 (127), 2022

Журнальный Зал «Горки медиа»

https://magazines.gorky.media/zin/2022/1/vzglyad-2.html

https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30244

In January 2022, in honor of the 190^>th anniversary of the English writer Lewis Carroll (1832—1898), the head of the Open Literary Club (Moscow), Lyudmila Vyacheslavovna Koroleva, member of the Union of Writers of Russia, established the literary public award «The Looking-Glass», the first winner of which became the book «A Trap for a Thought-Form» by Alexandra Kryuchkova10.

The «Trap» is a real fairy tale for adults! Fearless scary! However, it’s known to everybody that adults need fairy tales more than children, and love them stronger. In general, people tend to strive for the unknown, mystery, secrets. Such aspiration is as archaic as stories after hunting, around the campfire in prehistoric times. The entire text of the «Trap» is riddled with mystery.

The main character Alice – a lady, but in fact still a girl, because all people are children – holds literary parties in M.A. Bulgakov’s «bad flat», recreated in the museum-theater Bulgakov House (Moscow, B. Sadovaya street, 10, 302 Bis), where a Portal to the Other Reality is located. Next door to the studio of the artist Georges Yakulov, where Sergey Yesenin and the brilliant dancer Isadora Duncan got acquainted. A well courtyard, a slice of the Moscow sky above. Loud steps. That air preserved the voices of all those who lived there, and who simply passed by, because nothing disappears without a trace!

Alice associates writers, heroes of the parties, with fairy-tale characters and various «impure souls» (let’s quote the Guardian of the Portal, «the Impurities, are they from not pure writing or not pure hearing?»): Witch, Kikimora, Flower Fairy, Syrinx Bird, Waterman, Werewolf, Arachne; and some are named in accordance with the Tarot cards: the King of Swords, the Page of Cups. No wonder the last night in the Mansion is advertised as the Ball of Impurities. Or… of Death?

Death lives in all scary fairy tales. Alice tries to talk Death off, distract it, recode herself towards Life. It’s like the Last Dance, the Last Fight of the Master. Every Master is entitled to the final triumph. If the Master is real, he can prolong his last fight. Not forever, alas. Bulgakov continued it for more than ten years, Yesenin had been tearing the «Black Man» poem from himself for two and a half.

The literary parties in the book are strung one on top of the other, like beads of bloody and frozen – in the Blizzard! – rowan berries on a thread. Does the thread really break at the end by the inevitability of Death? Do the 40 literary nights end up in a passage to the Other Reality? The souls spend the same number of days after Death on Earth. Is it a sacred number? The author constantly refers to numbers. Everything around is permeated by them. But can you play with numbers? Why does Alice have 44 dresses? It would be logical to mirror 40, however, «In numerology 4 means „Death“, but 44 is 4 plus 4, or 8, and this is already a sign of infinity, that for me personally means „Love“…»

So if the parties are like beads, should the reader be bored? No! To the monotony of the Blizzard’s songs, lulling the mind, mysterious events occur both in the Mansion and in the reader’s soul.

We get to the School of Magicians for the seminar «How to become the Magician». Forty wise and feasible tasks that Alice presents during the breaks of each chapter are a true wish-fulfillment marathon and a step-by-step guide to create your Happy Universe! The «breaking the pattern» technique seems to me very interesting! Therefore… aren’t you the Magician yet? This book is for you! In general, the whole «Trap» is Alchemy = Practicum of Secret Knowledge + Love in the mystical context of a puzzle plot on the verge of a detective story and even madness that keeps you in suspense until the last line…