Review of Love in Defiance of Pain: Ukrainian Stories

*Love in Defiance of Pain* (2022). Published by Deep Vellum Publishing.

I consider myself an adventurous reader, but I also know what’s typically in the realm of my taste when it comes to literature. I often can look at a synopsis and have an idea of whether I’ll like the book, then I read the first page or two. So whenever I go to the library, I end up wandering the halls in search of something new or interesting.

I found Love in Defiance of Pain one lonely, rainy summer Tuesday in the new fiction section, and as I picked the copy of the book up and held it in my hands, I realized that I actually had never read any sort of Ukrainian literature before.

And that’s why I ended up checking this book out at the end of the day. Because it is a collection of short stories, I ultimately decided to take my time with this one because of the fact I had never experienced Ukrainian literature before, especially in a contemporary context.

Over the course of several weeks I read one story a night, which is what I was glad to do in the end because it allowed me the chance to savor each piece and its writing.

Onward with the review!

A collection of diverse short stories by contemporary Ukrainian writers.

There are sixteen writers represented in the texts of Love in Defiance of Pain, and each of the stories takes on a drastically different setting and tone at times. Some of them were fantasy stories, and of those groupings, the one that stood out to me was the girl trapped on the island with the disease killing everyone off slowly—except for her.

There are other stories set within Ukraine, but others take place abroad, such as in New York City. There’s a broad range of what’s being depicted across the collection, which I thought was a good idea as a primer for those unfamiliar with the region’s literary traditions—like me.

I wanted to really like this collection, but I found it difficult to read more than one story at a time. I couldn’t just sit down and plough through the collection even if I wanted to, which means that I wasn’t completely sucked into the material as a whole.

Some of them were really fascinating about life in contemporary Ukraine, but as a whole I wanted more from the collection. It’s a more general one versus a specific, and the umbrella connecting all of these together are the fact these are Ukrainian writer.

And that’s not to say that the writing is bad at all—I think the translations were done well and the writing is crisp. This is more of a matter of expectations on my end because of how I’m more used to author-specific collections, such as the entire book of stories being done by one author.

That said, it boils down into how you approach books like these. If you have no expectations you’re going to probably like the content in this a lot, but if you were expecting something different from past experiences, you’re not going to get that in this collection.

Regardless, there are quite a few intelligent writers contained within the book. I definitely came away from this one wanting to read more from individual writers outside of a context like this.

I hope more Ukrainian literature comes into my life because of it—diversify your reading lists whenever possible! Lots to think about after reading this one though.

Overall Thoughts

No collection of stories is perfect, but I think this one does a good job at introducing Ukrainian literature to a broader audience who are becoming more familiar with the culture of the region and its people.

It was released not too long after the war with Russia began, so this is very fresh trauma for many Ukrainian writers. Not all the topics in the collection deal with such themes, but I think that this was compiled when the war began to get people more into Ukrainian literature and content, considering before I’d say we never really heard much in the US, especially in mainstream media, from the region.

Suddenly everyone is an expert now, and books like these, from actual Ukrainians, are needed now more than ever.

You can follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.