Irina Denezhkina’s starkly cinematic pen explores the daily reality of a Russian volcano that erupts literature whenever their society quakes with change. Give Me (Songs for Lovers) joins a distinctive selection of novels that have made it out of Russia bearing a mirror on youth from Moscow to St. Petersburg. With the Cold War in the history books, a naive concept if there ever was one, I came away from Give Me with a perception of just how much they are becoming us and we are becoming them. Maybe, our shared realities weren’t so different after all. In the decades following the Russian Revolution novels such as Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago, Ayn Rand’s We, The Living, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master And Margarita and Mikhail Sholokhov’s The Silent Don have richly illustrated life under Lenin and Stalin. The memorable characters created by each of these renowned authors are colorfully drawn against a historical background drenched with armies, dictators and world war. Ms. Denezhkina’s task is much more difficult because she’s describing a society whose levels are still filling with color. Her prose is film stock black and white imagery, harsh in soft focus, shadowing a barely functioning society seeking survival on any level. Her youthful characters, mostly teenagers drinking, drugging, loving and looking for reason and meaning, stumble forward with surges of passion and strength. Give Me is pure Russian noir because characters are cut from gray with splash of heat that burns fast, almost racing each story to the end.

Give Me’s teenagers, young girls looking for love, boys wanting to mount a stage and sing, all hoping to grab a brass ring, speak a language very similar to their counter parts in London, Paris or Manhattan. Irina Denezhkina’s stories posses an ironic subtext that dishes secrets in a gossipy manner that’s lined with black crepe. The first three stories anchor the book. “Give Me!” “Valerochka” and “A Song For Lovers” not only describe love and hate, relationships and revenge among the young but they provoke wonder at what these teenagers will be like when they are running the country someday. One trait they all possess in common is a sharp sense of power. “Vasya And The Green Men” is very much an allegory on the effects of capitalism in Russia, similar in vein to how Jack Finney’s “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers” quietly reminds one of McCarthyism. “Death in the Chat Room” is simply-- well, you just never know who you’re chatting with. “You And Me” is a very brief collision of words that simply must be read. I’ll say no more on it. Just take a peek for yourself.

Irina Denezhkina opens the door so the West can see Stalin’s great-grandchildren as they adapt to rock and roll, drugs, computer chat rooms, love, sex and power. Her writing is razor edge but she never, ever sacrifices her compassion. Irina Denezhkina will be read for years to come and, as an aside, if any book truly cries out to be made into a movie, it is Give Me.