In the atmospheric work, enriched with magical reality, the everyday life of the sleeping areas and the folklore of the village are intertwined. The time of the novel is not specified, it is assumed. Life here is welcomed and accompanied in the sauna of an apartment building, shepherds travel to pastures by trolleybus, animals are kept in apartments, bread is baked in the stairwell, near the mailboxes; rites are performed in the house, miracles happen.
beloved bones,
Kotryna Zylė
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Kotryna Zylė is a writer, illustrator, designer, creator of various literary projects, who won several awards for her books. A distinctive feature of the author’s work is the placement of Lithuanian folklore and mythology in today’s life.
On the occasion of the book’s release, writer Kotryna Zylė spoke with Jūrat Mackevičiūtė, an employee of the publishing house “Aukso žuvys”.
– Tell me when you were bornWe lovethe idea of ”bones”.and.
– The first idea about a woman who keeps the bones of her beloved men on the section shelf came while writing a book for a younger audience called “Soul in a Sandwich Box”. This is usually the case for me, half way through a book (and usually for a completely different age group) when the idea for a new book begins to form. It’s so uncontrollable, wild, it’s so wild. Then it is very difficult to hold back and finish the text I am working on. But I got used to it! Also, it’s a great test to see if the seed of an idea will stand the test of time before I get around to it.
– You said that the most beautiful time is when an idea is born – it’s like an infatuation that turns into love as things progress, and it needs patiences and devotion. How was this time? What was difficult and whatiugino?
– The real truth, remembering how that idea struck by lightning, falling in love with the conceived plot helps to endure all the years of writing (in the case of this book – two and a half), sitting every day and doing agonizing work. I really don’t think that writing should be a pain, I am very jealous of those for whom words flow with joy, easily, abundantly, but for me, unfortunately, texts are born with difficulty, pain. I make them easier for the second, third time by editing, correcting, and then I read it myself and wonder – did I write like that here? It seems like one breath, and only I know how much effort there was (laughing). The hardest part is to focus and write without taking on other, more brain-satisfying tasks or projects. I think this is not only my personal characteristic, but also a matter of the times – writing a novel is completely incompatible with the modern pace, the pursuit of quick results, sensational news, it is a very ancient craft. But I won’t hide it, there was also joy: reading what I wrote, discovering, getting to know the characters of my novel, falling in love with them, noticing how they themselves turn the story I planned, gasping and rushing after them. And then the finale. I did it! I did it! And the firm knowledge that books live for years and even after a decade a novel read will be the freshest news for someone, a personal discovery. That makes the book worth writing for two or ten years, if necessary.
Book cover
– In the novel, folklore and mythology live in the modern world – this is a unique feature common to many of your storiesas? Koduhl?
– It’s like my mission, my vocation, for which I can’t find a word, an answer, why I feel this way. Me the tower folklore and mythology, I can see how boring these topics sometimes seem to modern people, if we do not take the interest of those who are already sworn fans of this field. I believe that traditions, customs, mythology are our own, all of us, we just need to find how to talk about it to today’s people, how to awaken his feelings and sow the seed of admiration for our culture. And anyway, it’s a lot of fun to break the rules, as long as you know them, which is how I feel punk rock, playing, breaking the imagination that we have to conserve heritage and look at it from a respectful distance. I strip that culture of ours bare, place it in a modern city and let it run wild. Look, isn’t it wonderful? And everything here is ours, just take it, fall in love, have it! A village in a block of flats, a community located like us, but living according to the customs and beliefs of those times. Shepherds in trolleybuses, chickens in the corridor, mailboxes consecrated with beer to the gods. I had enough fun. I hope readers enjoy it too!
– Someespecially when creatingšcome out, ieask for information or evenmoneywho can provide it. And this time it was needed?
– One of the difficulties of the creative process was that I kept getting frustrated when I realized that I didn’t write a single page in a day, because I was just delving into various sources. Picking up a book dealing with Lithuanian customs to clarify a single line or thought, I only got up in the evening, when I had to get up from the table, and all I did was read several hundred pages of a foreign book. Instead of writing your own! Of course, all this was necessary, but that microscopic movement forward is a terribly depressing part of the profession. I looked through piles of visual material, sometimes very related, for example, for specialists, about preparing the body for armor, and sometimes I drowned myself in lottery statistics, maps of trolley routes, studies of the effects of flies. It seems to me that every person who writes a novel becomes an expert on the oddest set of things that were necessary for the story he or she was telling. On the other hand, it is very very interesting!
“Beloved Bones”. Illustrated by Bernardo Burba.
– How the idea came insertedof to the book Bernardo Burba’s illustrations? What do they create?
– Bernard and I have known each other for more than 10 years. I bought my first postcard from him about that long ago. Trolleybuses, multi-car
yes, pennies, a frost pattern on the trolley windows, a teat in a feeder made of a paper milk carton, an old playground from my childhood – I have a whole collection. When I conceived the novel “Beloved Bones”, I immediately knew that there would be images in it. At first I thought I would take care of them myself, because that’s what I did in most of my books. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a gift it is to find a creator whose style and themes perfectly match your text. I would never have created the illustrations the way Bernard did, and they fit the book fantastically! Probably, the designer’s thinking, the vision of the whole, of the final result also came into play here. So I decided to ask if it would be interesting. Bernard replied that the topic was completely his, he immediately agreed, and then we happily shook hands!
– You have come up with an unusual way to present the book. Where and when will you invite readers to meet?
– In July, a trip through Lithuania is waiting – Thursdays of meetings. The delivery will take place in Vilnius on July 4. 6 p.m. In the house of stories. The atmosphere of the story will be created by a tour of the ethnographic storage of the House of Stories, and after it in the courtyard of the museum, together with the artist Bernard Burba, we will tell how the story and the drawings were born. The interview will be conducted by the amazing interviewer Viktorija Urbonaitė. July 11 At 19.30 we will meet readers at the Summer Bookstore in Nida. July 18 6 p.m. I will wait for the people of Kaunas on a tour of the Anatomy Museum, and later we can continue the conversation at the “Kolibrio” bookstore.
Along with the paper book, the audio version of “Mylimų košų” is also published. She was voiced by the author of the book, Kotryna Zylė.
The writing and publication of the book “Mylimi kaulai” was partially financed by the Lithuanian Council of Culture.
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2024-07-03 07:01:57