If the Path Is Tangible

What could possibly better highlight the value of life than death? The confession novel “If the Path Is Touchable” shows the underside of obsession in love—Kira’s. She searches for the causes of coincidences, carefully collecting fragments of the path into a single tapestry. She hopes to calculate the very wrong turn that led her to madness, but she sinks deeper and deeper into reflection. Like the reflection of a mirror in a mirror, the author writes a book about Kira, who in turn writes a book about German. Her patchwork narration is woven from memories and dreams. The plot’s compositional puzzle, shifts of eras and locations, lyrical digressions—everything takes Kira’s story beyond familiar romantic prose. A novel of a condition, a novel of illusion, a novel of expectation carries the reader into the labyrinth of a many-sided emotional construct, where an accidental choice condemns the characters to a senseless run in circles of loneliness. From first glance to the last scream. Who will step out of the game first? Who has to make the main choice? The author on choosing a pseudonym: “Why Nika Gorn, and not Wendy Lynch, for example?”—you may ask. First, thankfully, I’m far from Wendy Lynch. And second, everything is a bit simpler and infinitely nicer than it is with Wendy. An associative chain—distant, detached, timeless, serene—led me to the image of a highland ridge. There, in the mountains, besides poetry, beauty lives inseparably. Chinese flora contains many curious names, but my choice fell on the healing flower—Mountain Arnica, which heals wounds and treats the heart. Then came a semantic bit of magic: Arnica was shortened to the goddess of victory “Nika,” and Mountain was shortened to the summoning “Horn.” From now on, Nika Gorn sounds and heals—speaks and shows for you.
Music: Anastasia Goncharova “If the Path Is Touchable”.