Kseniya Melnik

Rating: 3.5* of five

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA LIBRARYTHING EARLY REVIEWERS. THANK YOU.

My Review: Stories about Russian life, that transport you to a time and place, yet leave you wondering what the hell it is that you just read. Do people in this capitalist society have empathy enough to spare for those whose lives are like theirs but poorer? Love Italian Style, or In Line for Bananas made me wonder. A woman whose inner life is whirling away as she stands in a Soviet-era line to get necessities, planning, dreaming, wondering if she dares to fuck a footballer visiting from Italy...Rumba, the meditations of a man teaching a gifted but very recalcitrant student to dance, trying to persuade better consistency and sign both their tickets out of the hellish poverty gripping them; or Snow in May, a kid's complete failure to focus on a very important piano recital looming before his fantasizing eyes.

Set in Magadan, a former Stalinist gulag town, or featuring characters from it, The stories interlink in ways I found unsatisfyiing. Too little cohesion to form a novel, too much to be a collection (which should give an overview of an author's interests and intentions, not just develop the same ones), it was a well-written but poorly thought out presentation of an interesting talent's capabilities.… (más)

I didn't realise that this was a set of short stories when I started it, which took me by surprise. They're all set in or about people from the Gulag city of Magadan, and that hangs heavy over the book in different ways. Each short story features people who are trying, in some way, to be someone or somewhere else. The stories are set in different times, but there didn't seem to be a logic to their ordering. They weren't choronological or necessarily connected, although some names appear multiple times. There is a slightly melacholy air to the pieces, no one seems entirely happy. A bit like the weather, it has a slightly threateneing or gloomy air. The ones I enjoyed most, for entirely different reaons, were the first and last.… (más)

Not so much a collection of short stories as an assemblage of linked events.
Each segment is preceded simply by the year in which it takes place. All are about people in or from Magadan, a harsh, cold and bleak city, former site of Stalin's gulags. Each story feels like a glimpse into the past of a relative - indeed, many of them are presented as someone telling of their past experiences. The characters we gain these visions of are all connected; related - although it's not always immediately obvious who's who...
I liked the format. I liked the writing. I appreciated the vivid scene-setting, and I felt for the people portrayed. (I also felt that it's highly likely that these were, perhaps, the author's own family stories.) At times, though, I felt like the book was making a bit of an effort to hit all of the American stereotypes about Russia and Russians: borscht, standing in lines, longing for the West, regimentation, ballet dancers, chess clubs, mail-order brides, Party membership... etc. Yes, it gave a 'view from the other side' to these things - but I still kind of wished there was a bit more...

And - the book as a whole was, for me, a bit too bleak to be wholly enjoyable.

A quote: "'Krucina' was an archaic word for grief, found in the old folk songs and poems. 'Krucina' grief was not regular sadness or disappointment with everyday troubles, but rather the existential sorrow about a woman's lot."

Overall, the book is not specifically about a woman's lot - there are men, woman and children here - but through the detailing of small, everyday disappointments, betrayals and griefs, the work as a whole transcends them and speaks to this greater, existential grief that is (in the author's view?), something intrinsic to Russia.

Copy provided by NetGalley. Many thanks to them, and the publisher.
… (más)