The status of reality in the modern book serial (based on Vera Bogdanova's novel Seven Ways of Pickling Souls)

The aim of the article is to identify, using a single case study, the reason for the recourse to documentary techniques in a book serial. The material for analysis is the book serial Seven Ways of Pickling Souls by the contemporary Russian writer Vera Bogdanova, released in the summer of 2024 on the Bookmate service (since September 30, 2024 - Yandex Books). Employing methods of narrative analysis, point-of-view analysis, semiotic analysis, historical-cultural contextualization, and elements of media theory, or serial theory, the article investigates how the imitation of documentality functions within a mystical and mystifying narrative. The article demonstrates how the poetics of a contemporary writer transforms when creating a book serial. The research establishes that the book serial, as a relatively new genre formation, renews the relationship between the reader and the author through the use of cinematic and specifically literary devices. The intense, hyper-saturated reality modeled in Seven Ways of Pickling Souls, due to its segmentation into small fragments, aligns more effectively with the rhythm of life of the modern reader. The reality status of Vera Bogdanova's book serial is formed, firstly, through the hyperreality of the story's setting and the simulation of actuality; secondly, through references to archetypes (rather than prototypes) and a mythological consciousness that constructs images identified as real, which create an illusion of authenticity and enhance the reality effect; and thirdly, through the detective strategy chosen by the author, which is coupled with mystical manifestations and demonstrates the impossibility of definitively establishing a single, unambiguous truth. One of the key instruments for the transformation of the writer's poetics in the book serial is the use of quasi-documentary texts that function as factual material through which the artistic reality is authenticated. These quasi-documentary texts, most frequently presented in Vera Bogdanova's serial as simulated newspaper inserts, serve not only to create a genuine image of the fictional town of Staroaltaysk, define the chronological framework of events, and correlate them with artistic and real time, but also to establish a relatively objective reality within the discrete narrative of an unreliable narrator. The article determined that the purpose of employing documentary techniques in the book serial is to provide readers with a means of orientation within the hyperreal space and the first-person narrative delivered by an unreliable narrator, as well as to clarify the overarching idea of the work within the hyper-saturated reality of Vera Bogdanova's plot, which is fragmented into episodes. The author declares no conflicts of interests.