Rating: 
Summary: An original tale
Review: "The Sky Unwashed" opens with the portrayal of life in a small Ukrainian village on the outskirts of Chernobyl. There is an obvious cultural divide between the old-timers who continue to till the communal land, and the younger generation who toil at the plant. However, none of them seem to fully comprehend the ticking time bomb which looms in the distance.The horror of the Chernobyl accident, and the mishandling of the situation by the Soviet government, are disturbing. When one of the elder women of the town finds herself alone in Kiev after a governmental evacuation, she determines that she has no real alternative other than to return to the poisoned village, where others soon join her. I couldn't put this book down. The characters are fascinating -- especially the tenacious old women who have seen so much hardship their whole lives. Their strength shines through, as they treat the radiation poisoning as just another hurdle in their lives which must be overcome. Coincidentally, I finished reading "The Sky Unwashed" on the day that the Ukranian government finally agreed to close down the remaining reactor... Hopefully, the rest of the harm can be repaired.
Rating:
Summary: An original tale
Review: "The Sky Unwashed" opens with the portrayal of life in a small Ukrainian village on the outskirts of Chernobyl. There is an obvious cultural divide between the old-timers who continue to till the communal land, and the younger generation who toil at the plant. However, none of them seem to fully comprehend the ticking time bomb which looms in the distance. The horror of the Chernobyl accident, and the mishandling of the situation by the Soviet government, are disturbing. When one of the elder women of the town finds herself alone in Kiev after a governmental evacuation, she determines that she has no real alternative other than to return to the poisoned village, where others soon join her. I couldn't put this book down. The characters are fascinating -- especially the tenacious old women who have seen so much hardship their whole lives. Their strength shines through, as they treat the radiation poisoning as just another hurdle in their lives which must be overcome. Coincidentally, I finished reading "The Sky Unwashed" on the day that the Ukranian government finally agreed to close down the remaining reactor... Hopefully, the rest of the harm can be repaired.
Rating:
Summary: A small and brave masterpiece
Review: A short book, that can be read in one day, The Sky Unwashed is a highly important book in two respects. Foremost, this is one of the first full pictures we got about what really happened to the residents in the Chernobyl region and Kiev in April, 1986, albeit in fiction, but borne out now in articles and TV documentaries. Secondly, the lyrical beauty and masterful storytelling should elevate this novel to the stature of high literature. It is almost a year since this book came out and I read it, but it still haunts me. There are several themes interwoven and coalescing in the overriding struggle for life versus death's inevitability, the largeness of the nuclear accident, its cataclysmic proportions versus the helplessness of mankind or of the individual, of course another metaphor for the big Soviet Union and the communist ideal versus the individual. Although ironically the political and scientific disasters are of mankind's creation. The novel plays out in snapshots: We see people working at the factory before the nuclear accident because it looks like a better life or the best alternative; the aftermath of the accident, the government putting people on buses in a hurry, telling them they can go home in a few days, but to leave everything behind; a skin rash or a burn or a breathing problem, just that, a denial of radiation sickness; Marusia and her friends planting a garden. What can a person do when faced with a moral dilemma over which they seem to have no control and from which there is no escape, where it doesn't matter whether you are a hero or a coward, because you will die anyway? The novel asks this in several ways and on several levels, and the answers are as different as the personalities involved. The grandmother Marusia, her daughter-in-law Zosia, and two grandchildren crowd the hospital in Kiev, where her son, Zosia's husband, lays dying, people crammed into hallways for weeks fight over blankets and food and toys, the train station is stampeded. Zosia escapes the hospital for awhile to watch a parade, to look at clean streets and flowers, and to try pretend that it's all a bad dream, even while plotting to get her children out of Kiev. Marusia takes a different route. She and other elderly women friends go back to their village and live life on their own terms with the time they have left. This is where the novel really takes its philosophical wing and its song. It is the heart and soul of the book. As the sky becomes dirty and unnaturally clouded over Chernobyl, a society's vision gradually becomes clear and unclouded. One makes the inevitable connection to the collapse of the Soviet Union a few years later. We will never really know for sure, but the issue of handling nuclear energy safely is one that is relevant to everyone on the planet.
Rating:
Summary: Requiem for Starylis
Review: Every once in awhile you come upon a book that gets into the marrow of your psyche and won't let you go. "The Sky Unwashed" is such a book. I finished it more than a week ago and I have yet to stop thinking about Marusia and the rest of the villagers in Starylis. For these people, who lived within close proximity to the Chernobyl nuclear plant at the time of the accident there in April 1986, life was irrevocably altered. The way of life that they had known through famine, revolution and war was destroyed with one badly managed stroke of 20th century technology. To enter these people's world is to get a glimpse into the tragedy there that news stories and detailed reports failed to capture. "The Sky Unwashed" awakens anew a poignant awareness that all of the day's headlines have at their core the real-life pathos of individual experience. Irene Zabytko has indeed written a remarkable story. Do yourself a favor and get a copy of this book in your hands as soon as possible.
Rating:
Summary: A great book lost in the mass market mediocrity of books.
Review: I am only the sixth reader to have reviewed this book, however the five who precede me are unanimous in their Judgement, 5 stars. This is the first work by Irene Zabytko and judged by any literary measure, it is ranked about 18,000 places lower than it deserves. This book is about a small piece of that former Empire that one of our Presidents called evil. It chronicles the suffering surrounding an event, which probably all are familiar with. What the work also does is to show how cruel, how wretched, how evil, a typical day in that former Forced union of Republics was. The truth is visible, the truth can literally be tasted, but people conditioned for so long to the distorted reality of their leaders is still given pause. They are comforted when a "Pioneer", a young girl in the Soviet School System in her uniform of white with a red tie, hands them an envelope, the contents of which will keep them healthy. This book then centers on women, mostly "babysi" and the choices they make when faced with alternatives that differ only in the misery they will endure. Their decisions seen from a distance are illogical, placed in the context of this story and the system they live under, their decisions become noble. Despite lifetimes mislead by deceit they know what they want even as they know the outcome with certainty. This is a novel, but the story, the insanity that was and is Chornobyl/Chernobyl is more poignant in this book than any report you have watched or listened to. It is more frightening and more abominable when experienced through the "fictional" eyes of these characters. Ms. Zabytko takes a recent historical event, and renders a tale that reads as if written with other great 19th century works. Novels that are famous for there detail, for the reality they create. The true time frame intrudes only when a word like television is mentioned. Much more important and so well done is the description of the baking of a wedding bread in a communal clay stove. This Authoress has a talent for turning characters into people you see clearly in your mind's eye, and would look twice if you saw a similar face amidst your day. A Cat that becomes a timepiece for death, a woman who climbs the stairs of her Church to ring bells that she has no right to hope anyone will hear. A beautiful story, if a Requiem for a small town named Starylis and it's people can be so called. Extremely well done.
Rating: 
Summary: Can't keep a good baba down!
Review: I must admit, I was initially drawn to this book because I myself derive from 100% Ukrainian lineage. As such, Zabytko's subject matter interested me. I thumbed through the book and thought "Hey, I've gotta read this."
The story centers around the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of April 26th, 1986. The fallout from this tragedy is said to have been the equivalent of eight Hiroshimas! Yet, as though the tragedy in itself were not bad enough, the government at that time chose to suppress information to the residents of villages surrounding Chernobyl, and to the nation at large. Folks were kept in the dark concerning the actual extent (and far-reaching effects) of the radioactive contamination. As a result, much PREVENTABLE damage was done to people at the time, and even to the children that would be born to those who survived.
The Unwashed Sky focuses on the situation facing the widow Marusia Petrenko, her son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. By the time they flee their village of Starylis, it is too late. Their lives will never be the same.
Marusia decides to return to Starylis. She is not even aware that it has been declared a "forbidden zone"... all that she knows is that this is her village, the only home she's ever known, and since everything dear has been torn from her, this feeling of "home" may be the only thing she can yet embrace as her own.
She returns, and finds that her only companion is an old mangy cat. She keeps a perpetual fire, hoping that the smoke from her chimney will tell others of her presence. And slowly, some of her old friends do begin to trickle back. One by one, these old women (and one man), drawn by the same sense of a need to belong to their beginnings, return to rebuild their lives.
These tenacious Starylis "babysi" band together and draft a letter of demands that causes the Chernobyl officials to cede to their requests, and admit to certain wrongdoings, however late in the day! (Even then, they grant the women's wishes only because of how good this will look in the newspapers).
Zabytko paints a sensitive, touching picture of this time of loneliness and desolation, of undeserved and unwarranted hardship... a time when even the dirt rejected seed and the water tasted of metal.
I loved the authentic Ukrainian vernacular running through the book... I could hear my own grandmother clearly.
A wonderful testimony of the enduring power of the human spirit and its will to survive... a point made all the more sobering when one considers the non-fictional source of the author's inspiration.
In an interview with Rebecca Brown, Irene Zabytko said: "I hope that anyone who reads it comes away with the feeling that despite the cultural exoticisms, we're still part of one planet, and the endurance of the human spirit persists in all."
I think she succeeds in this.
Rating:
Summary: terrible disaster-easy to read
Review: Irene Zabytko in this book presented the consequences of the worst civilian nuclear disaster in the world in a "humanely-digestible" way.The reader is initially reluctant to start reading this book, but later on , the author makes it more plausible and presents the deeply human feelings of the victims. Excellent work, Ms Zabytko!!
Rating:
Summary: terrible disaster-easy to read
Review: Irene Zabytko in this book presented the consequences of the worst civilian nuclear disaster in the world in a "humanely-digestible" way.The reader is initially reluctant to start reading this book, but later on , the author makes it more plausible and presents the deeply human feelings of the victims. Excellent work, Ms Zabytko!!
Rating:
Summary: The Sky Unwashed is tale of epic danger!
Review: It's just an ordinary day in the village of Starylis on the outskirts of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine, where widow Marusia Petrenko awakens in her tiny house to hear her son Yurko & his wife Zosia arguing. Soon she rises to take care of her grandchildren, her garden & her prize milk cow in the shed. Yurko labors long hours at the nuclear plant & when he does not come home for days; when the priest does not turn up for services; when the storks do not return & the air takes on a bitter metallic taste, hard to breath, hard to see - it all happens so quickly. A profoundly moving story about forces beyond control; of having to leave all you have ever known; of being taken to strange places & surviving under the careless wing of a remote government; of witnessing death by strange diseases & an anonymity that shrivels the soul. Until the day Marusia decides to walk home to her beloved village. Here a new story begins in the deserted farmland & houses. When other intrepid babysi wander back, life takes on a semblance of normalcy until these gentle souls begin to die. A memorable first effort, rich in humanity & so very lyrical! Do check out my site for my full review & eInterview with this author
Rating:
Summary: The Sky Unwashed is tale of epic danger!
Review: It's just an ordinary day in the village of Starylis on the outskirts of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine, where widow Marusia Petrenko awakens in her tiny house to hear her son Yurko & his wife Zosia arguing. Soon she rises to take care of her grandchildren, her garden & her prize milk cow in the shed. Yurko labors long hours at the nuclear plant & when he does not come home for days; when the priest does not turn up for services; when the storks do not return & the air takes on a bitter metallic taste, hard to breath, hard to see - it all happens so quickly. A profoundly moving story about forces beyond control; of having to leave all you have ever known; of being taken to strange places & surviving under the careless wing of a remote government; of witnessing death by strange diseases & an anonymity that shrivels the soul. Until the day Marusia decides to walk home to her beloved village. Here a new story begins in the deserted farmland & houses. When other intrepid babysi wander back, life takes on a semblance of normalcy until these gentle souls begin to die. A memorable first effort, rich in humanity & so very lyrical! Do check out my site for my full review & eInterview with this author
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