Fiction February 6, 2024

WHILE READING KATYA APEKINA’S spellbinding sophomore novel, Mother Doll, I kept wondering who its protagonist, Irina Petrova, the feisty, over-the-top spirit of a deceased Russian revolutionary, reminded me of. I searched for a literary precursor before it occurred to me that she had evoked the disruptive ghost Fruma-Sarah from the film Fiddler on the Roof. The movie’s jealous spirit doesn’t manifest through a visitation but rather a dream the protagonist conjures up in order to withdraw his daughter from an arranged marriage. In the book, the threat of the unsettled dead works toward positive ends. But not always: Irina Petrova,