- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Portobello Books Ltd (2 Mar 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1846270073
- ISBN-13: 978-1846270079
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.6 x 4.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 652,139 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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'A heartbreaking comic masterpiece that already has a place in the literature of protest' -Guardian --Review
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'Ochsner is a true artist' -The Times
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
An extraordinary, bewitching book. It starts slowly but gradually entwines you, half fairy tale, half a story of life in a provincial Russian town during the uncertain period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It provokes and lingers in the mind. The author is described as living in the United States, but her knowledge of a decaying Russia suggests a first hand knowledge of the country's first faltering steps into its capitalist future.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I thoroughly enjoyed this book which brings a magical quality to a tale of otherwise quite grim lives in a run-down apartment block in provincial Russia. I thought the book beautifully captured the sense that the ground is not always solid, that the strangest things might be true and that fact and fiction are often just different ways of looking at the same thing. Having spent some time in Russia I recognised this approach to a changing world where anything might be true, as well as the strain of dark humour running throughout the novel.
A brilliant book with well-drawn characters, this is not another average book set in Russia, it really gets under the skin of how it might be to live in that world.
A brilliant book with well-drawn characters, this is not another average book set in Russia, it really gets under the skin of how it might be to live in that world.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I found this book full of life and ideas; it's a big sweeping novel about the absurdity of Russian life, and the combination of lyricism with that absurdity is heart-breakingly sad at times. Although the blackly comic ending brings resolution to some of the characters at least, part of the point of the book (and the constant complaint of the mothers) is that nothing ever really changes in Russia; things just get a little bit worse. The book is centred on a trio who all work in a run-down, small-town museum, faking exhibits; the hard materialistic Zoya, her boyfriend Yuri who is haunted by what he has seen on military service in Chechnya, and the clumsy, poetic Tanya who is the real heroine of the book, as real and breathing a character as I've read in a long time. They haven't been paid for months, but they keep coming in to work, largely because it's warm and has a toilet, unlike the condemned and (literally) sinking block of flats where they all live. At one point they are huddled together in a café over an application for funding from an American charity, trying to make sense of the phrase `positive work ethic.' "But do such words even belong together?" one asks, in exasperation. Their mothers back at the flats also form a trio; one Orthodox, one Jewish and one Muslim, they are at once at each others' throats and shamelessly in need of each other. The author manages a very light touch, even when dealing with big issues, and a wistful humour in the midst of a lot of darkness, that I would copy if I had the ability, but as I probably don't, I will just admire.
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