A Lesbian Love That Was Never Lived

In her first major prose work, the Ukrainian author Liliia Zhernov writes about motherhood, war, and emigration. But above all, it is about the painful memory of a destructive love between two women.

“Butter Me Up! Lull Me To Sleep!” is a confessional novel about a love that was never fully lived. The narrator and protagonist remains unnamed. Yet she speaks with a candor that feels immediate and intimate.

She has endured motherhood, war, and emigration. Now she looks back, with pain and tenderness, on her one great love for another woman. A relationship that was at once devastating, tender, and masochistic.

A Map of Loss

The story is told from the innermost depths of her self. This self dissolves increasingly between the past and the present, memory and writing, body and voice. The beloved also receives no name. She is simply “she”.

Visible is this woman in letters, fragments of memory, scents, and bodily traces. They are the fragments of a narrator who does not seek an exit, but continues to speak to the beloved in a whisper: through words, rhythms, architecture, and the memory of the body.

“Butter Me Up! Lull Me To Sleep!” draws a map of loss that leads through European cities, train stations, and dreams. Yet the real action unfolds inside the protagonist. Her memory becomes the site of a love that is past, and yet does not end.

Liliia Zhernov was born in Kyiv and has lived in Zurich since 2022. In May 2025, she was named a fellow of the Weiterschreiben Schweiz program. Her writings have been published and presented in Switzerland and Germany.

“Butter Me Up! Lull Me To Sleep!” (Amazon affiliate link) is her first major work of prose. In addition to her literary work, Zhernov is also active in theater. Both forms shape her artistic output in Switzerland’s cultural scene. (dd/pm)