Tag: The Common

Review: Three Apples Fell From the Sky

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Book review, Publication, reviewLeave a comment

Thanks to The Common, a magazine dedicated to literature of place, and editor Nina Sudhakar for working with me and publishing my review of Narine Abgaryan’s novel in Lisa C. Hayden’s translation. I highly recommend this book, and if anyone interested, I know of a Twitter read-together group that’s planning to dig into this novel in March 2021.

A brave writer begins her novel with the deathbed. Instead of hooking a reader the way the proverbial gun on the wall might, opening with a death scene threatens her with the inevitable backstory.

Luckily, Narine Abgaryan is both a brave and an experienced writer. Three Apples Fell from the Sky is her fifth full-length novel, which won Russia’s prestigious Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award in 2016. Maine-based Lisa C. Hayden translated this novel for Oneworld, and after a COVID19-based delay, the book was released in the UK in August 2020. The novel opens with Anatolia Sevoyants, the protagonist, as she lies down “to breathe her last.” Soon, though, we learn that while Anatolia fully intends to die, life is far from finished with her.

https://www.thecommononline.org/three-apples-fell-from-the-sky/

My review of Margarita Khemlin’s Klotsvog, in Lisa C. Hayden’s translation

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Book review, review1 Comment

I’m delighted to see my review of Margarita Khemlin’s powerful novel Klotsvog in Lisa C. Hayden’s translation up on The Common. Huge thanks to Nina Sudhakar for editing.

The piece is available online for free, and I urge you to spread the word, subscribe, and donate to this wonderful publication that focuses on writing of place. And they pay their writers, too!

“The year is 1950 in Kiev. A twenty-year-old college student, Maya Klotsvog, falls in love with her professor, Viktor Pavlovich. He’s eight years older and married. One day, the professor’s wife, Darina Dmitrievna, catches up with Maya at the tram stop and reveals that her husband loves Maya and has asked for a divorce. He wants to marry Maya and have children with her. But Darina Dmitrievna adds something else: “You’re Jewish and your children would be half Jewish. And you yourself know what the situation is now. You read the papers, listen to the radio. And then that shadow would fall on Viktor Pavlovich himself, too. Anything can happen. Don’t you agree? Babi Yar over there is full of half-bloods.”

https://www.thecommononline.org/review-klotsvog-by-margarita-khemlin/

Changing the rules of reality to get at the raw truth of an emotionally complicated experience

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn book, Book review, Like WaterLeave a comment

I’m deeply grateful to Jen Hinst-White of The Common for this thoughtful review of LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES:

The story drops an idea on the table and leaves the reader with something to puzzle out. It’s an example of Zilberbourg’s skill with brevity; even the longer pieces in this collection are just ten or twelve pages, stories to eat quickly and digest slowly. Some, like “Email” and “One’s Share,” are no longer than a paragraph. (This feels appropriate, given all the childrearing themes here. For parents of small children, sometimes an entire meal consists of small, stolen bites, chewed while doing something else. The same can be true for our reading and writing lives.)

The stories in this collection are so interrelated that questions provoked by one story are sometimes given context by another.

https://www.thecommononline.org/review-like-water-by-olga-zilberbourg/

My book is available from WTAW Press.

Gunnhild Øyehaug’s Knots, Review

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Book reviewLeave a comment

I recommend Gunnhild Øyehaug’s short story collection Knots, out from FSG this summer.

It felt foreordained to open this short story collection by the Norwegian writer Gunnhild Øyehaug and find IKEA on the first page, as in: “…park the car outside IKEA.” IKEA, now based in the Netherlands, originated in Sweden, but to many foreigners, it personifies Scandinavia—pleasant and unthreatening. “Blah, how boring,” was my first thought. Then, trying to stave off disappointment at being welcomed by the all-too-familiar global brand, I told myself, “Well, I guess IKEA did start somewhere nearby. Perhaps, Scandinavians have a particular attachment to clean lines.” (Nervous laughter.) I know that stereotyping is a form of blindness; in practice, my desire for novelty trips me up and leads to overly broad generalizations. Like a tourist, I had to remind myself to check my expectations at the airport.

Gunnhild Øyehaug’s Norway begins, indeed, with the comfortably familiar. . . .

Read the rest of my review on The Common.