Hardly Ever Otherwise

Maria Matios (¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿; born 19 December 1959) is a Ukrainian poet, novelist and official. She was born in the village of Roztoky in the Bukovina region, and presently resides in Kyiv. She authored 12 volumes of fiction and poetry, including the novel Sweet Darusia (2003), and the collections of stories titled The Short Life (2001) and Nation (2002). Her prose works have been translated into Russian, Polish, English, Serbian, and Belorussian.Her first poems were published when she was fifteen years old. In 1992 she published her first prose in Kyiv Magazine. Maria Matios bases her books on the unique experiences of her family, whose roots go back as far as 1790. She was the winner of the "Book of the Year 2004" prize and of the Taras Shevchenko National Award in 2005 (for her novel Sweet Darusia).In the 2014 Ukrainian election Matios was re-elected as a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament.

Everything eventually reaches its appointed place in time and space. Maria Matios's dramatic family saga, Hardly Ever Otherwise, narrates the story of several western Ukrainian families during the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and expands upon the idea that "it isn't time that is important, but the human condition in time."From the first page, Matios engages her reader with an impeccable style, which she employs to create a rich tapestry of cause and effect, at times depicting a logic that is both bitter and enigmatic. But nothing is ever fully revealed - it is only in the final pages of the novel that the events in the beginning are understood as a necessary part of a larger whole, and the section entitled Seasickness presents a compelling argument for why events almost always have to follow a particular course.In Matios's multi-tiered plot, the grand passions of ordinary people are illuminated under the caliginous light of an ethereal mysticism, and digressions on love, envy, transgression, and atonement are woven into the story. The reader is submerged into a rich world populated by a grand cast of characters and ideas, which Matios animates with her prolific imagination and subtle wisdom.Each character in this outstanding drama has an irrefutable alibi, a unique truth, and a private conflict with honor and duty. Her characters do not always act in accordance with logic and written-law, as the laws of honor clash with the laws of the heart. And this is why it is hardly ever otherwise.

Part One: Four Brothers, Like Kith and Kin... 7 Part Two: Fare Ye Well, Father... 79 Part Three: The Swing of Life ... 129