The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya
My rating: 4/5 cats
i have a long and troubled relationship with the russians. for years i didn’t want to read them because i felt that i wouldn’t understand them with their troubled political history, their interchangeable names, their fucking ability to endure that is so intimidating and making-me-small-feeling. and then i read bulgakov. and i felt a little more confident…then i got a little older and i thought…maybe i’m ready for some dostoevsky…and then i wondered what i had been so worried about, because it was all so accessible. then in my twenties i read kurkov, solzhenitsyn, nabokov, makine, zamyatin, chekhov…i have been around the russian block, my friends…and yet…there’s still this barrier between us. i feel like there is so much subtext i am just missing…that unless you are russian, there is something gently exclusionary about the writing—that you could know all there is to know about russia and its history and its peoples and still—this is not intended for you. anyway, this book was very good but i’m sure that a real russian would appreciate it in some more deeply personal way than i ever could.
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