I had put this book on my paperbackswap.com wish list in 2016 after seeing this on some recommended reading list. I finally requested it from my local library a few weeks back since, after six years of waiting for this book on paperback, I still haven't gotten it! I was #6 of 13 folks who had this book on their wish lists.
I had thought it was a series of independent stories. It is a series of connected stories. The connection is a painting. A character in one of the early stories may reappear several stories later. I read the book over a couple weeks so it was sometimes hard to remember a character who appeared at the beginning of the book and reappeared several chapters later. It would have been helpful if the author had provided an alphabetical list of the characters with a brief blurb of each.
The book is set in the USSR/post-USSR. I'm a baby boomer so grew up during the Cold War when the USSR was the enemy. At that time it was reported stores in the USSR typically had empty shelves (similar to empty shelves during cov-id). Life in the USSR was bleak. This book captures a lot of that.
I believe the entire book is told in the first person, which can be confusing as it seemed (at least to me) that it wasn't always the same character narrating from one chapter to the next. Sometimes I would ask myself "Wasn't this person killed in the previous chapter?"
It also seemed that things weren't explained well and I started to wonder if that was by design. One of the early stories was about two soldiers who, if I recall, were in the Chechen fighting. It was unclear if they had been separated from their comrades or had deserted.
I don't have the book in front of me but I believe every chapter had two dates/locations at the beginning. The dates could be decades apart. I thought it was confusing and didn't understand the significance to that particular chapter.
The writing was pretty good. The concept of the painting as the central figure was interesting.
I had thought it was a series of independent stories. It is a series of connected stories. The connection is a painting. A character in one of the early stories may reappear several stories later. I read the book over a couple weeks so it was sometimes hard to remember a character who appeared at the beginning of the book and reappeared several chapters later. It would have been helpful if the author had provided an alphabetical list of the characters with a brief blurb of each.
The book is set in the USSR/post-USSR. I'm a baby boomer so grew up during the Cold War when the USSR was the enemy. At that time it was reported stores in the USSR typically had empty shelves (similar to empty shelves during cov-id). Life in the USSR was bleak. This book captures a lot of that.
I believe the entire book is told in the first person, which can be confusing as it seemed (at least to me) that it wasn't always the same character narrating from one chapter to the next. Sometimes I would ask myself "Wasn't this person killed in the previous chapter?"
It also seemed that things weren't explained well and I started to wonder if that was by design. One of the early stories was about two soldiers who, if I recall, were in the Chechen fighting. It was unclear if they had been separated from their comrades or had deserted.
I don't have the book in front of me but I believe every chapter had two dates/locations at the beginning. The dates could be decades apart. I thought it was confusing and didn't understand the significance to that particular chapter.
The writing was pretty good. The concept of the painting as the central figure was interesting.
