Enakozvočja
Miš Publishing House, 2022
Memories, these are “happy, sad, vivid, all-pervading or repressed; more or less adapted, developed into stories or fragmented, even fragmentary, they give meaning to the lives of persons, interweave their present with the past, and domesticate the inscrutability of time and its ebb and flow.
The essence of the fourteen stories of Leonora Flis in the collection Enakozvočja, according to the representative of the publishing house Mateja Novak, is perhaps best described by a sentence in the story Silence: “Stuck in memory, she glided through the moments of the years in the bathtub, looking for a connection with the present.”
Leonora Flis, with an exceptional ear for painting details that bring her stories to life with scents, colors and sounds, meticulously observes human approaches and distances and farewells. However, he does not avoid descriptions of traumatic events.
Mateja Novak
The author knows how to create powerful symbols from the most banal objects, and it is the same here, because the hat is not only a covering that accompanies all her beautiful moments with her grandfather, but also hides the scars of war. In addition to objects, sensory perceptions are also important, as memories can be awakened by the smell of father's favorite sweater, the warmth of his touch, the smell of the sea or the feeling of the wind on his face. Recalling memories thus works through different channels, but at the same time there is still the question of accuracy and precision of memory.
Veronika Šoster (ARS Radio Slovenija)
Enakozvočja (Miš, 2022) is the second collection of short prose by Leonora Flis, a writer who also studied and worked in America and, as a university professor, holds an M.Sc. also deals with British and American literature. The biographical information seems relevant in the context of her literary oeuvre, after all, some of the stories in the present collection cross the pond. Diverse and often astonishing ranges are one of the constants of Enakozvočij, be it spatial coordinates, mood contrasting (from tragedy and trauma dictated by war or man's evil nature, through sadness and mourning, all the way to humor, exuberance, even optimism), perhaps the most common is the time span, some stories are set closer to the present, but most of them take place in our semi-past. Thus, one has to agree with the note on the back of the collection that the real heroes of these stories are actually memories, namely they shape and determine the rhythm, flavor and colors of the protagonists' lives even in the present. Unsettled stories about loves and attachments, which sometimes seem to come together suddenly and without warning, other times relationships are broken even before they start well, and thirdly, unraveling and untangling from too close and forbidden contact takes a lifetime or several generations. Readable and meaningful!
Berivka
Leonora Flis is a writer who is not afraid to dig deep into human emotions, be it those associated with joy or those connected to trauma. She is a brilliant observer of human nature and the surroundings which offer the background for her stories. She has received many praises for her writing and her stories have been translated into several languages.