Luda and Milena

What would I say if I were asked to respond about the short story, “Luda and Milena?”

I would say that I thought this short story was nothing but weird. Luda and Milena were two lonely women, desperately fighting over the love of a man who seemed to be so shallow that he would be enticed by one meal. In my eyes, there is something wrong with this.

Luda and Milena struggle in a competition to impress Aron by bringing him various types of food. Not only does this show the desperation of Luda and Milena in their pathetic lives, but also shows how shallow Aron actually is, to be judging his relationship interests on the quality of a woman’s cooking.

Although I did not appreciate the plot and context of this story, I do think that Lara Vapnyar did a wonderful job showing Russian culture.

WOMAN: “Watch it, asshole!”
LUDA: “No, it is you asshole!”

This manner of speech shows the speech differences after being fluenty Russian and trying to adapt to our slang language. I found it interesting that Vapnyar included this piece of speech, even though we know the author knows how to write in English.

Yet the most alarming aspect of this story was when Milena reacted to Aron’s death by simply saying “’Quick and easy. And he died happy, didn’t he?’” Not only was this weird, but we also found out that Milena did not actually care for Aron the way we thought she did.