Any bones

It is a world where it is impossible to accurately distinguish everyday life from ritual. The home, the entrance hall, the bathhouse, the mailboxes – everything becomes a space of memory and wonder. The story unfolds slowly, like a ceremony, in which objects, bodies, and words preserve much more than meets the eye. "Beloved Bones" is a novel that speaks of loyalty, fears, and human vulnerability in the language of magical reality and folkloric intuition.

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Katrina Zīle's novel "Beloved Bones" tells the story of a woman who keeps the bones of two men in a furniture unit in her home. The atmospheric work, steeped in magical realism, intertwines the everyday life of Vilnius's residential districts with Lithuanian folklore. The time of the novel's events is undefined, conditional. Life here is met and seen off in the bathhouse of an apartment building; shepherds travel to pastures on trolleybuses; animals are kept in apartments; bread is baked on the stairwell, by the mailboxes; rituals are held in the house, miracles occur. The narrative style resembles a ritual shroud, in which key events, feelings, memories, flashes of black humor and crude language are wrapped, exploring themes of relationships, loyalty, superstitions, and humanity.