Arrival by Nataliya Deleva
Review by Claire Carroll
Weaving its way between scattered places, timelines and memories, Nataliya Deleva’s new novel Arrival defies traditional linear form, challenging the convention of the trauma novel and indeed the novel itself. The narrator, nameless, yet vividly real slips between thoughts, identities, cultures, circling around her past and her future. Revealed through an array of styles and literary devices—stories, folktales, conversations, fragments, and even recipes—Deleva’s narrator is deeply compelling. Defiant, confident and sometimes flawed, but intriguing and compelling throughout, she sits at the centre of the swirling pieces of her life, trying to make sense of it all: ‘[…] we gravitate around ideas, place and people; at times getting closer, at others moving apart’.
Arrival’s form feels as though it shouldn’t lend itself to an engaging reading experience. We are invited to leaf through a what feels like an overflowing scrap book of present-day action, memories, and conversations past and present. Far from being an obstruction, this often anarchically composite form is somehow deeply engaging. Perhaps this is down to the candour with which the narrator dissects her own memories, or perhaps it’s the emotional honesty, especially regarding her feelings for her family, or towards becoming a mother. This emotional honesty is often conveyed through the conversation fragments. The latter echo throughout the book as sets of questions and answers. The questions are neutral, dispassionate, as if from a therapist:
‘—Tell me something. What did you decide to leave your country and come here?
—I don’t know; there wasn’t a specific moment. Some decisions take longer to emerge, but suddenly they unfurl and surprise us.’
This sense of unfurling can be felt throughout the novel. The characters, presented to us piecemeal throughout, become more tangible with each revisiting. Some of them fleeting, some constant, others who disappear in a way that feels deeply final, only to reappear. This collaging of pieces to form a nonlinear narrative feels very close to the way in which memory rearranges itself; to the way in which past experience can replay itself in the present, often feeling more lurid in the remembering. This is the case for the sinister narrative thread which runs through the novel; that of a childhood dominated by a violent and manipulative parent. Trauma prowls the spaces in between the fragments of this novel, casting long shadows. However, the narrator is far from devoid of joy; there are moments of indulgent pleasure, conveyed through Deleva’s attention to the sensory; this is a book of pain and suffering, but there is also laughter, art, love and pleasure.
Perhaps this is the most commensurate way of writing through such complex conditions as a violent childhood. This constant circling back— a state of continual arrival—feels as though the narrator’s search for her sense of self, and for healing, may never draw to a conclusion. But the novel presents this quest for healing as only one facet of a life; shards of pain poke out of the story, bright and sharp, but in amongst them are other fragments too; beauty, love and tenderness.
Arrival is published by The Indigo Press, 24th February 2022