by Olga Grushin
bookshelves: slavic, debut, published-2005 Read in January, 2007 time for a re-read For some reason I thought it was the most beguiling book ever when I was reading it. That is why I won't re-read - in case the bubble bursts in a second encounter
On The Vicissitudes of the Dream Life of Sukhanov.In the beginning it was fire...I've rescued this book from a mouldy crate (which once contained Portuguese tangerines) left on the floor of a firemen station in a provincial English town on a placid Saturday afternoon of early May.The first novel by ...
Emanuel Lavrentievich closed the book and returned to his review. There was an odd sensation in his eyes and the back of his throat, and a number of thoughts, all of which he knew he would be well advised not to dwell on, were doing their best to gain his attention. He moved his gaze over the words ...
A quarter way through and I want to give this more stars (added later: than the four I began with) - yes, plural - and I want to say it's the best Russian novel I've ever read...I'm throwing in Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, the lot.Even better, it's a Russian novel written in English. What more could one as...
Gave this a second try and remembered why I didn't finish it in the first place. One dimensional MCs, stiff dialogue, terrible narrative, bad sex, and a really, really shitty ending.
At first, the long, flowery sentences overfilled with adjectives put me off the story a little bit. But for just a few pages... because, somehow, the story, the writing morphed and these became beautiful, startling descriptions. Melancholy. Surrealism. Art. Life. Youth. Aging. Truly, this book is su...
I am listening to this on BBC Radio 4. Laura has the link, but I think the first section is no longer available. It is very, very abridged. I feel like I cannot judge the whole book by this. The whole book is gone through in 10 15-minute sections. I am not that impressed. Listening to the abridged B...
I've called this “A proper Russian Novel” and by this I mean that Olga Grushin has invested in the character of Sukhanov, all the angst and pathos, all the weakness and hubris that I remember reading in all those great Russian novels. Sukhanov goes on an epic journey of rediscovery, he is constantl...
time for a re-read
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