Žmonės po ledu

• Main Author: Jakonytė-Kvedarienė, Loreta
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Lithuanian; English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Lithuanian prose literature; Baltic literature; info:eu-repo/classification/udc/82; ice core
• Online Access: http://llti.oai.elaba.lt/documents/6215380.pdf; http://llti.lvb.lt/LLTI:ELABAPDB6215380&prefLang=en_US

Renata Šerelytė’s prose contains a set of literary characters that move from one book to another, independently of the genre, topic or chronology. It is constructed as a circle with the main heroine (a girl/teenager/young woman) in the centre, the family members around her, and the community of village/town/city further. By using different characterization techniques (realistic, surrealistic, intertextual, ironic, stylized depictions, first/third-person narrators, free indirect speech, stream of consciousness, etc.), the writer creates diverse images of the people that live in the “frozen” world of the 1980–90’s. Their existence is marked by identity confusion, broken relations, loneliness, alcoholism, violence, inertia, and longing for a different life. Though quite a few features of Šerelytė’s characters might be linked with the preceding models of individuals in Lithuanian literature, the level of intensity and concentration of the pictures of this comfortless world, gloomy (post)Soviet society, permanently drunk father, abandoned childhood, submissive wives, women’s uncertainty, and problematic efforts to reach their new “selves” distinguishes the author in the context of contemporary Lithuanian prose.