Alexandra Kryuchkova - A Trap for a Thought-Form. Playing Another Reality. M.A. Bulgakov award

However, the scary fairy tale is actually non-scary – no matter how much I tried to get frightened in the course of the story, I couldn’t! And not just because the book is in the “Playing (!) Another Reality” series. The very flow of the narrative screamed with every letter in every line: everything is going to be okay!

There is also a smell of Cinderella: dresses, the anticipation of a miracle at the Ball, etc. However, Alice is in search not so much of a prince as of answers to everybody’s basic questions.

And yet, “A Trap for a Thought-Form” is closer to “Alice in Wonderland” by L. Carroll. Alice and the Cheshire Cat, also speaking and fabulous, like Bulgakov’s Cat, wise in his madness and uttering, “Life is serious. But not much…”

If to be very serious, the “Trap”, the winner of the competitions “Master” after M. Bulgakov (the Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia, 2020) 9 9 The newspaper “Literary News” (“Literaturnye Izvestia”) No. 7 (193), 2021, “The results of the literary awards 2021” by the press-secratary of the Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia. http://www.litiz.ru/arch.html, https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30044 and “The Looking Glass” after L. Carroll (Open Literary Club, 2022), is hunting for those who lack magic in their lives. It is light, kind, fabulous. Written by the Master of the Word. It’s so nice to spend time with this book over a cup of tea, wrapped in a cozy blanket and smiling at the Cat, that always smiles you back!

Tatyana Trubnikova,

member of the Union of Writers of Russia,

laureate of literary awards

The magazine “ZINZIVER” No.1 (127), 2022

(Magazines’ Hall “Gorky media”)

https://magazines.gorky.media/zin/2022/1/vzglyad-2.html

https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30244

https://reading-hall.ru/zinziver/1(127)2022.pdf

http://www.zinziver.ru/contents.php?id=2900

Unique book! I confess I’ve never read anything like that! An exciting plot of this amazing story, the end of which is unpredictable, reminded me of “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”. Alice, the main character of the “Trap”, being unreflected in the Giant Mirror of a mysterious Mansion, is looking for a Portal to Other Reality in order to find mutual love. However, instead of a rabbit, the “Trap” contains the Honorable Mister the Puss, because the action takes place in the museum-theater Bulgakov House (in Moscow), and the Cat in the “Trap” is precisely Bulgakov’s, not a Cheshire one. The funny and the scary are both in one bottle there, and that’s a joy! I was wandering inside a crystal with multifaceted mirrors, which reflected dreams and reality, good and evil, people and puppets, and, by the way, not so much the characters as myself. It’s an exciting feeling of touching Another Reality, an opportunity to look at life from unusual angles and to recode the future. The book is so concise and multifaceted! All the characters are perfectly visualizing by the reader, each has its own inimitable way of speaking. Just listen to the lovesick Pasha with his incorrigible accent! To recreate such a phantasmagoria requires great skill of a real Master, the hand of the Magician, and Alexandra Kryuchkova once again brilliantly demonstrated her talent. The grateful reader fearlessly follows her into the Looking Glass – through the labyrinth of fantasy into the Other Reality.

Irina Antonova,

member of the Union of Writers of Russia,

laureate of literary awards

The magazine “Literary Moscow” / “Moskva literaturnaya” No.2, 2022

The literary work of Alexandra Andreevna Kryuchkova is a separate phenomenon that will make itself known more than once and has long been waiting for a grateful researcher. I think that followers will certainly be found as well, and they will move along the already beaten path, some of them will discover their own Rabbit Hole, but not every Alice will have the courage to dive into it recklessly!

Tsvetaeva’s tragic intensity, Akhmatova’s Attic style and Alexandra’s inimitable handwriting are woven into one inseparable pattern of words, rhythms, reminiscent of a Labyrinth.

“Follow me, reader!” I want to exclaim after Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov. Enter the world of this book! Try to pass its Labyrinth! There, on the way, amazing secrets are hidden, which you still have to get to. However, it’s not as easy as it seems. A mystery, even the one, having slightly shown up to you, for some reason slips away again, but it irresistibly attracts you farther and deeper… Try to catch up and unravel it! Then, after the seemingly revealed secret, another one arises. New meanings and associations are woven into another intricate pattern. And your soul becomes involved in an amazing and exciting Game. You involuntarily become a part of the Game. And magical events begin to happen in your life…

Alexandra’s Moon Cat, which lives in her poetry (“The Moon Cat” book) and prose (the novel “Confession of a Ghost” and the thriller “A Trap for a Thought-Form” in the “Playing Another Reality” series), in my opinion, will take its place in the line and cavalcade of the famous mysterious cats of world literature! I am sure, the feline worlds of Hoffmann, Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe, Bulgakov, Natsume Soseki and the world of the aforementioned Moon Cat are by no means alien to each other. “You and I are so different,” but all the listed above literary cats are one warm bunch. And the charming Trickster with a browning and primus, and the mocking Cheshire, and the impudent Yamato, and the clever Pluto, and the philistine Murr, who has his own views on life, and “our one, our” the Moon Cat, according to Bulgakov’s apt statement, “will certainly make agreement with each other.”

And, perhaps, by prior agreement, they deign to “lift the curtain by the edge” (Vladimir Vysotsky, songs for the audio performance “Alice in Wonderland”), that is, lift the veil of Mystery, for you personally as well. Just turn the first page of Alexandra Kryuchkova’s book and… start reading.

You want your life to become an exciting Game, don’t you?

Gunnar Arshinov,

member of the Union of Writers of Russia,

laureate of literary awards

The newspaper “POETOGRAD” No. 1 (397), 2022, G. Arshinov, “Phenomena of Alexandra Kryuchkova’s literary work is Labyrinth of mysteries!”

http://www.poetograd.ru/arch.html

https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30302

The author expresses her great gratitude

to all the characters and prototypes of the novel,

including: