Yelena AkhtiorskayaReseñas

I really wanted to like this book. But I was not able to enjoy it. Maybe it was something off putting about the characters or the way they were presented to the reader.

I won this book from Goodreads, and I was very much looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately I just could not get into it. I found both the writing style - lack of punctuation, unfinished thoughts, confusing phrasing, and the unlikeable characters so off-putting that I could not, and quite frankly would not allow myself to spend anymore time on this novel. I made it almost halfway through, but it was just annoying.

I am not a big poetry fan, and some of Akhtiorskaya's prose gets a bit too poetry-like for my taste, but then again one of her main characters in this novel is Pasha, a poet whose poetry may well have the same vague heaviness and semi-logical feel that the poetry-like bits of this novel exhibit. This novel is very 'Russian', reminding me very much of my college Russian language instructors, and the parts set in the US give an interesting perspective on a subculture of the US that I otherwise am not really familiar with. I enjoyed this book a lot.

i kept wondering if this book was translated from another language, since it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Not a lot happened, other than descriptions of members of a family both in Brooklyn and their native Ukraine. I didn't care about the characters, and everyone seemed a little sad. There are positive reviews (including the New York Times), so maybe I'm missing something.½

I wanted to love this book -- the exquisite writing, the Russian diaspora setting. But the threads don't connect and too few characters are developed. I hope her second novel has more depth and polish.

Very funny and incredibly well written,. I'd have liked a few less verbal pyrotechnics and a little more heart, though. Still, I'll be watching this author for what comes next.

Maybe 3.5. I listened to this book on CD so I didn't have the issues other have mentioned with punctuation or being able to distinguish who is speaking. I generally enjoyed this book about a Ukrainian family as at least some of them travel between Odessa and Brooklyn. It ended pretty abruptly although that wasn't all bad.

Maybe 3.5. I listened to this book on CD so I didn't have the issues other have mentioned with punctuation or being able to distinguish who is speaking. I generally enjoyed this book about a Ukrainian family as at least some of them travel between Odessa and Brooklyn. It ended pretty abruptly although that wasn't all bad.

Maybe 3.5. I listened to this book on CD so I didn't have the issues other have mentioned with punctuation or being able to distinguish who is speaking. I generally enjoyed this book about a Ukrainian family as at least some of them travel between Odessa and Brooklyn. It ended pretty abruptly although that wasn't all bad.

I simply LOVE writers who keep me alert in anticipation of savoring every phrase and who deliver continuously t​hrough the pages. When I look at Ms. Akhtiorskaya's photo on the book's jacket, I am dumbfounded: so young and such talent (the photo has to be at least somewhat current and the book was released just last year). Judging by her brief bio, the novel might be based at least on some of her own experience. In my mind it has to be. There is simply too much intimate knowledge to assign it to just vivid imagination. I am quite impressed.

The seemingly ubiquitous Soviet Jews immigration experience at Brighton Beach is suddenly not so ubiquitous anymore, as we follow the Nasmertov family... Bitter-sweet? Yes. But it's more than that. Ties are seemingly torn (one out of the family having not succumbed to immigration attractions) but they are actually not... Melancholy, hypochondria, dry humor - all this turned with uncanny insight into eloquent impressions. On the lighter side, the characters' neurotic behavior strongly reminds me of Woody Allen.... There is another thing - the family's love-hate feelings towards each other, the feelings that, in the end, show rather strong, if masked, loyalty. My only regret was about the ending - a little too ambiguous for my liking.

But on the whole, strikingly expressive writing. Akhtiorskaya makes inanimate objects come to life and tell a tiny story of their own. Every sentence is pregnant with meaning (or hidden meaning). Hilarious at times, wondrous at others, and with melancholic wistfulness throughout. That's my take.½

A strange mixture of Jewish-Russian emigre humor which can be confusing if you are not a part of the culture but highly entertaining none the less.

3.5 Interesting, some lovely very "Russian" moments, a subtle examination of the immigrant experience and cultural identity.

It has taken me several months to review Panic In A suitcase. I found it hard to read. My mind wandered and I felt claustrophobic. I put it down. I returned. I read a line that made me chuckle. I soon laughed. The book I read before this was a traditional immigration story and it was boring. I knew all the tropes and the characters were stereotypes. Ah, this was different. There is fluidity and flexibility in this families story. One of the two main characters Pasha visit his nuclear family who have all moved to Brooklyn. His family wants him to stay (mostly) but as he sees it "his fellow countrymen hadn't ventured bravely into a new land, they'd borrow a tiny nook at the very rear of someone else's crumbling estate to make a tidy replication of the messy, imperfect original they'd gone through so many hurdles to escape." So this is an immigration story where pining for the place you left looks different, is different in the back and forth and and almost being here and there. Its loose plot moves to Frida and I lost interest and it never came back. Its not about the characters, per se since I never cared for any of them but I couldn't find the humor anymore and the point was made, though the writing was exquisite to the end.

This book was an amazing read. The author showed true imagination and versatility with the writing. I would be please to read another title by the author.

This is a most unusually written quick moving novel. Unlike anything I've read before. It took a bit to get into, but it really transports you into this very real sounding Jewish/Russian immigrant family. I can highly recommend this book for someone who is interested in something different.

This author does a good job of bringing up some issues and difficulties experienced by Russian immigrants that I had not thought about. She goes beyond the typical issues of living, into deeper and subtle emotional experiences that are not always named. Because of that I kept reading. However, I had a hard time following the story and the relationships between the characters. Three stars.

I received this book from the early reviewers program.

Panic in a Suitcase is a perfect title for this novel. Pasha is panicked about his trip to visit his family, who has immigrated to New York City. Frida is panicked about her trip to Odessa, a return to the ancestral home. And the immigrant status in general is one of panic, arriving in a strange country, with nothing but a suitcase, to begin a new existence.

Pasha and Marina are particularly well drawn and each represents different aspects of the Nasmertov family. Frida is the rather unwilling amalgamation of both.

Yelena Akhtiorskaya offers a fresh and often humorous look at immigrant life in the United States. The references to the Russian literary scene, both in New York and in Odessa, also lend humor and an added touch to this story.

All this said, I wanted to like this novel more than I did. I found it uneven and a bit difficult to follow at times. Paragraphs didn’t seem to lead smoothly from one to the other and were often confusing. If this was intentional, I didn’t get it.

The ubiquity of music and how it changes us, the “Arab spring,” obscure fiction from Yelena Akhtiorskaya, an excellent primer on Argentine history, winningly indulgent memoirizing from Emily Witt on doing her MA in English at Cambridge, an American war family story from Kent Russell (so weird! I know army dudes and they would never treat their kids that way! Not in Canadia), an article by Gemma Sieff that juxtaposes the ethic and aesthetic of Terry Richardson photography (I am offended that by writing about Vincent Gallo in print, where people could see, in fucking 2011, they forced me to read about him in 2013, but let it pass) with that of the Abu Ghraib photos (again—2011? But let it pass) that makes me not miss the past decade at all, and some fairly uninspired reviews.

completed 8.21.14 2.5 stars½