Hoarsely loud voices of the generation. What is right and wrong with the prose of the ‘new thirty-year-olds’

Abstract

Journalist and literary critic D. Efremova examines the writing of the ‘new thirty-year-olds,’ or millennial prose, as a thematic and stylistic phenomenon. Analyzing the generation’s landmark novels of the 2020s (V. Bogdanova’s The Season of Poisoned Fruit [Sezon otravlennykh plodov] and Seven Methods of Soul-Pickling [Sem sposobov zasolki dush], M. Lebedeva’s It’s Dark There [Tam temno], and S. Pavlova’s Hunger [Golod], among others), Efremova identifies their common characteristics and defining features. The article also takes a close look at the critical reception of millennial prose and discusses the genre’s marketing component: the latter aspect is justified in the eyes of the critics who argue that millennials “are ushering in a new world of open and approachable literature, where each text gets its special reader” (K. Gritsenko). In her study of the ‘new thirty-year-olds,’ Efremova discovers that the new millennial novel, preoccupied with gender, generations, and a social and psychological agenda, is searching for the voice of the generation in a dialogue between the author and the reader.