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Keith Gessen - Community Reviews back

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Chris' Fish Place
Chris' Fish Place rated it 6 years ago
I read this after watching the HBO mini series about the disaster. If you have seen it, the firefighter’s wife, the one who follows her husband, her account opens this collection of oral histories. It pretty sets the stage for the rest of the history that follows. It is not easy reading. There are b...
Tower of Iron Will
Tower of Iron Will rated it 9 years ago
Voices from Chernobyl is a collection of first person accounts from survivors of the Chernobyl accident. The people Alexievich interviewed are not scientists or politicians, they are soldiers, farmers, and school teachers. Often the survivors describe the events around Chernobyl as being like a war,...
Reader! Reader!
Reader! Reader! rated it 9 years ago
An excellent collection of oral histories. And an important collection of oral histories. Alexievich interviewed many people affected by Chernobyl—evacuated residents, re-settlers (largely the elderly who lived in the area their entire lives and ethnic Russians fleeing southern/eastern former USSR s...
wjmcomposer
wjmcomposer rated it 9 years ago
Honestly, I have no words, but fortunately she does. This is a must read, a statement I do not make lightly. Yes, it will depress you at times. Yes, you will weep. But to avoid is to turn yet another blind eye to not just history, but to reality, to humanity, and to forever hide oneself from the wor...
moving under skies
moving under skies rated it 10 years ago
I'd love to do theory on these stories. I really loved this book despite my prejudice against the short story. Petrushevskaya is as bleak and troubling as the title of this collection suggests, but since her work is so firmly rooted in soviet history and culture she never seemed gratuitously grim. I...
Blondie and Read
Blondie and Read rated it 10 years ago
I was scrolling through Wordpress reading articles and reviews at work, when I got an IM from the woman next to me. She asks if I've read that book. I had no idea what she was talking about. She said she'd been peaking over my shoulder and saw Lucky Jim pop up. When I told her I had not, she went on...
Amber's Thoughts
Amber's Thoughts rated it 11 years ago
I wish I could hide behind some papers at a faculty assembly and make my Martian Invader face, or close the door to my office after some event of special academic absurdity and leap about in an ape imitation as private commentary. Lucky Jim is dangerous reading for an underpaid college lecturer. His...
Chris' Fish Place
Chris' Fish Place rated it 11 years ago
The story referred to in the title is the one called "Revenge". It's aptly titled because it is about relationships.I love this book.I've only read one short story by Petrushevskaya in another collection. I picked this up over the weekend at a bookstore. I had heard good things about it.It's nice...
Aerin
Aerin rated it 11 years ago
We don't need the destruction of entire cities to know what it's like to survive a catastrophe. Whenever we lose someone we love deeply we experience the end of the world as we know it. The central idea of the story is not merely that the apocalypse is coming, but that it's coming for you. And there...
Skinny Dipping Into Books
Skinny Dipping Into Books rated it 11 years ago
totally and absolutely unedited. Lost five times.. saving as safety. These stories are divided into two sections; the more overtly scary ones and the more surreal type shorts. A loose common thread among the entire collection was a dark eeriness. However I needed more. I needed them to coal...
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