The Silver Bone

The Silver Bone / Andrey Kurkov;
trans. from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk
NY: HarperVia, c2024.
288 p.

This is the first in a projected mystery series by well known Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov. It features Samson Kolechko, a young man whose father is murdered in the street by soldiers during a time of unrest, and in the attack Samson loses an ear (which plays a role in the story later on).

It's set in 1919 Kyiv, when WWI had ended but Ukraine was a battleground of multiple factions vying for control. There are Red Army soldiers, insurgents, police and others all trying to rule. It's basically chaos. Two Red Army soldiers barge in and commandeer rooms in Samson's apartment -- it's quite large, as it had been their family home but his parents and sister are all dead now. In this way, Samson overhears some sketchy plans, reports them, gets drafted into the police force, meets a woman, solves a mystery involving a specially tailored suit and a silver bone, and sets the reader up for a series with more to come. 

I liked it; it is definitely recognizeable as Kurkov's writing, and it gives a vivid picture of a chaotic point in history. However, there were some choices that I was a little uncomfortable with, as when the characters refer to ongoing violence as the actions of "Petliura's men". I found mentioning only the Ukrainian faction a bit strange.

As for the story itself, Samson is an interesting character, a bit passive with a lot of the action just happening to him, but he does make an effort to consciously act, eventually. There is a bit of a fantastical element as well, as with some of Kurkov's other works -- in this, Samson's severed ear (which he keeps in a box) magically enables him to eavesdrop on anyone near it. This comes in handy at this point in history, especially once he begins working for the police. I also liked the parts involving the tailor and the unusual suit; the suit itself gives Samson a big clue as to who he is looking for. However, I thought the storyline was a bit farfetched and has no strong payoff in the end, but perhaps the series will improve. I'll read the next one when it's published, and then see if I will go on with it.

 

Life Went On Anyway

 

Life Went On Anyway / Oleg Sentsov
trans. from the Russian by Uilleam Blacker
Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum, 2019, c2015
104 p.

Another book by a Ukrainian man, published by Deep Vellum, this one consists of short semi-autobiographical stories by Oleg Sentsov, a Sakharov Peace Prize-winning filmmaker & writer who was in prison in Russia while writing these. He was arrested and sentenced to 20 years for "terrorism" charges, created by sham Russian occupiers. These stories were shared by PEN International and others to draw more attention to his plight. 

Fortunately, he was released from prison in 2019 after a hunger strike, and returned to Crimea. He now serves in the Ukrainian armed forces.

This collection is light in the sense that it's reflective, mainly about childhood, and the selections are really short. You can easily read this in one go. The final story is the one that says something about Crimea specifically, but all together, the stories give a sense of life in Ukraine for his generation. The memories spur some philosophizing in the stories; the stories feel simple and straightforward, not overworked but honest. It's a small book but one that rewards a reader. 

Grey Bees

 

Grey Bees / Andrey Kurkov
translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk
Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum, 2022, c2020
320 p.

I'm still busily reading books by Ukrainians and about Ukraine. This novel is the latest from well known Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov. I've read a few of his earlier novels, and found this one more somber and less fantastical than earlier reads. It's also a bit longer; it deals with serious issues in a more straightforward way. 

Sergey is a middle-aged beekeeper who lives in the Grey Zone, the area in the Donbas that has been occupied by Russians since 2014. His village now consists of Sergey and his childhood frenemy as the only remaining citizens. Their interactions reveal the presence of both Russian and Ukrainian troops on both sides. But as summer draws near, Sergey wants to take his bees to a location where the guns and skirmishes won't bother them as they gather their honey. So he packs the hives into his old car, and heads into Ukraine proper to find a flowery spot to settle for the season. 

First he stops in a small town and camps in a field, befriending the local shopkeeper. But his relationship with her upsets the men in the town, particularly a former combatant with some PTSD. So he moves on, and ends up in Crimea. 

This section is quite startling - it evokes a lush, beautiful landscape full of menace due to Russian invaders. His developing relationship with the family of a beekeeper he once knew (who has disappeared in one of the roundups of Crimean Tatars by the Russians) reveal the history of the area over the years of Russian occupation. It's stark and yet told in a gentle way; Sergey is a bit of a charmed man, simple and not very suspicious although alarms are always going off for the reader. 

The contrast between Sergey's stoic manner and the danger we as readers can sense really makes the book work. When he is pushed to leave Crimea, a group of local police take one of his hives in the night, and when it's returned he must pack up and head home to his village in the Grey Zone -- but there is something odd happening with the hive that was 'borrowed', and though it isn't explicitly stated, Sergey seems to finally wake up to the potential of danger and sabotage, and to the necessity to act in the face of oppression. 

It's a longer and slower read than some of his earlier work, but still has flashes of his trademark satire. It's a darker and more contemporary theme, however, and so feels more serious. Definitely worth a read.

Lucky Breaks

 

Lucky Breaks / Yevgenia Belorusets
trans. from the Russian by Eugene Ostashevsky
NY: New Directions, c2022.
112 p.

This is the latest and most well known Ukrainian book of this year -- it's a collection of short stories, some nearly vignettes, that follow the lives of the women of Eastern Ukraine -- the Donbas area, specifically, an area that has been under Russian occupation since 2014. 

Belorusets is a photojournalist who lives between Kyiv and Berlin, and this book includes some of her photographs of daily life in the Donbas. You can see some of these photos on the publisher's page for this book.  They illustrate the life that goes on even under war and occupation, but the stories stand alone without needing to refer to the images. 

The stories all look at ways in which women face the everyday under these circumstances. Many flee to other parts of Ukraine, Kyiv in particular, but they end up having to take any work they can find; professors become office cleaning ladies, and so forth. Women in feminine occupations like cosmetologists or florists struggle and disappear, as noted by a dispassionate narrator. The stories expand on life under occupation but don't necessarily grapple directly with it. One story has the narrator's sister approaching soldiers, but most don't speak directly to the day to day wartime realities as much as to the effects on self-awareness, the sense of identity, and the imagination itself. 

They are brief, unsettling and powerful stories. This collection was fascinating, and definitely worth picking up if you are interested in learning more about the Eastern regions of Ukraine. Many of the translations from Ukrainian and Russian are from the Western regions, as those areas have had longer connections to European literary circles, so it's great to see this one added to those available in English. It's sharp, contemporary, and very timely. 

The only drawback to this book, for me, was that it was published in a miniscule typeface, so hard to read. I've been recommending the ebook version for my library users to make it easier on the eyes. But other than that physical issue, I'd recommend this one to all. 

The Ladies from St Petersburg

 

The Ladies from St. Petersburg / Nina Berberova
trans. from the Russian by Marian Schwartz
Cambridge, MA: New Directions, 2000, c1990
122 p.

Although August and Women in Translation Month is over for this year, I've finished a few more titles that I started in August, so before I move on to other books, there are a few more reviews to share! 

I picked up this little collection recently; the cover states that this is a collection of three novellas. That's stretching it a bit -- these are three short stories. The book is only 122 pages, the font is a decent reading size, and white space abounds. 

Still, they are three really good short stories. And definitely worth your time to search out. Berberova was a Russian emigree, first to Paris, then to New York. The first two stories take place in the Old World, but the third is clearly New York. In the first, mother and daughter are taking their vacation in a country boarding house in Russia, ignoring the looming revolution that's happening around them. Disaster strikes in an unexpected way; the details of the disaster and the fallout are precise and disturbing. The second features a woman who must relocate from her town in Ukraine because of the fighting, and like many other internal refugees she rents a room in a boarding house to live in. Unfortunately, she doesn't get along with the other members of the household -- they are suspicious of her, prying, spying on her, hostile to this woman from a higher, educated class. Both of these two stories were written in the 1920s, and both are sharp, with unhappy endings. Just about what you'd expect from Russian fiction. 

The final story is set in The City, and while it also features an emigre, in this one the narrative is more dreamlike and modern, having been written much later. It was fascinating but also strange. A man finds a room to live in in the attic of a huge apartment block, which has a whole "main street" of shops on one floor for the residents; the attic overlooks this floor. This is odd enough, but the other residents of the attic are also strange, as he discovers as he makes the rounds. There are still the themes of isolation, hostility, lack of belonging, as in the first two, but told in a different way here. And the conclusion feels much more American in a way. 

I found the writing style clear and descriptive, focused on character, and people's thoughts and reactions to difficult circumstances. She's just telling you what happened, not interpreting or analyzing it - that's your job as the reader. The stories are memorable, and I'm now interested in finding out more about Berberova, an author I've never read before. She was apparently a prolific writer, so hopefully I can track down more work in English. 

Three Apples Fell From the Sky

Three Apples Fell From the Sky / Narine Abgaryan
trans. from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden
London: Oneworld, 2020, c2015.
256 p.

This charming book, translated by Lisa C. Hayden of Lizok's Bookshelf, was a wonderful discovery. Set in a tiny Armenian village high in the mountains, it tells the story of the village inhabitants in three parts.

The title comes from the Armenian folk saying "And three apples fell from heaven: One for the storyteller, One for the listener, And one for the eavesdropper." This is also reflected in the three part structure, and it works wonderfully.

The village of Maran is isolated, up a winding road that is difficult to navigate. The village has slowly dwindled over the years until it's now a group of elderly residents staying put. But when two of them find a second romance, the spark of unexpected romance lights up the village with unexpected joy.

The story is told in long detours of memory, giving the backstory of many of the main characters and families. There's a feel of folktale, as in the appearance of a white peacock that lives on the porch of one couple and is mysteriously the guardian of their grandson. Or the appearance of deceased members of the village passing on messages, or the young brother of one of the main characters who could foresee disasters. 

But even through war, famine, natural disasters and the slow decline of the village, there is a beautiful sense of individuals and community. There is an overarching peace to the story, and a very satisfying conclusion with notes of hope and joy. 

Anatolia Sevoyants is 58 when the story opens, and convinced she has a fatal illness she prepares herself to die. But she doesn't die, instead she promises to marry the village smith, just so she can get him out of her house so she can die in peace -- but finds herself married instead of dead. 

From this startling beginning, her story winds backward into her family history and into the families and lives of the village of Maran. And the finale of the book also focuses on Anatolia and her new husband Vasily's miraculous marriage and its results. 

I really liked Anatolia's story a lot; suddenly in the middle of the story she becomes the village librarian, as someone who can read. This was a surprise and a delightful element too; she decorates the little used library until it has a "coziness and lightness...reminiscent of a reading room in a well-tended conservatory". And she reads and reads. 

The characters in this book are just wonderful, realistic and individual. The relationships are so finely explored, the setting is brought to such realism that I feel like I could find my way around Maran if I happened to be there, the structure of the book is so finely balanced, and the writing is full of fresh imagery and a sense that someone is really just telling you a story. I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone looking for a read that will leave you feeling better than when you started. 

There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children Until They Moved Back In

There Once Lived A Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya   Trans. from the Russian by Anna Summers
NY: Penguin, 2014, c2002.
181 p.

Bleak. Hopeless. Misery, existential ennui, lack of money and love. If you're looking for stories full of these elements, you've found the mother lode.

I read another collection by this author last year, and really liked it. There was black humour and a lot of shorter stories so maybe that's why I found it less overwhelming. Or perhaps it's just 2020, and its burdens, that made this book feel so dark and dreary, without any light in it at all.

This one has three novellas, one longer than the others. They all focus on families, and the completely dysfunctional parent/child relationships that continue across generations. The first has a woman who dotes on her criminal son, who is involved with bad company and shakes down his mother for her few rubles each month. Meanwhile she's taking care of a grandson, her daughter's child who has been abandoned to his grandmother while the daughter goes off with a new man and has yet another child. There is no money, people treat her terribly, and her own mother is in an asylum and is yet another burden on her. There's no happy ending here or elsewhere. 

The other two stories are much the same; the final one is terrifying in its cold hearted and violent decisions, all made for the benefit of a grandchild. I felt that there was a lot of despair in these ones, and no redeeming "resilience" but the truth of how the Soviet system ground down regular people into disconnection and survival mode. 

If you are already feeling down or hopeless, I don't recommend adding this book to your pile at this point. Unless it is as a warning of what could be if we continue down the path of looking out for number one and letting totalitarian politicians thrive.

The Slynx

The Slynx / Tatyana Tolstaya
trans. from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell
NY: NYRB, 2007, c2000.
299 p.

Another strange Russian science fiction novel today. This one takes place 200 years after "the Blast", obviously a nuclear war which has caused radiation contamination and various mutations among people, wildlife and flora of all kinds. 

These Consequences are unpredictable; one character has fleshy cockscombs all over her body, one has a tail, others have talons instead of toes. But for the Oldeners, those few who survived the Blast, the Consequence is that they seem to live forever. This is not necessarily a delight. 

This new society is based in small groups gathered around villages named after the Murza in charge. The story's main character is the hapless Benedikt, son of an Oldener who has died from eating bad Firelings. Benedikt has a job transcribing fragments of writing shared by their Murza, Fyodor Kuzmich, Glory-Be. There are a handful of other transcriptionists in his unit, one a beautiful young woman with no apparent Consequences, Olenka. Another is a poor woman covered in waving cockscombs; she's so terrible to look at that nobody pays attention to the fact that she's the smartest one among them. 

Benedikt isn't the brightest but he is handsome and healthy. This despite the general lifestyle of eating mice, beating and maiming one another for fun, and plenty of endurance and misery. Villagers try very hard to avoid any sign of Freethinking; god forbid they draw the attention of the Saniturions who punish anyone with ideas of a better, non-serfdom kind of life, or those who read secret Oldener books. 

And worst of all, to fall under the eye of the Slynx, the mythical creature who lives in the woods and yowls, causing fear and trembling, and will leap from behind and tear out your spine so that you wander as a zombie of sorts until you die. 

But in a sudden upset of his circumstances, Benedikt finds himself a newbie Saniturion himself, with access to hundreds of books. He reads and reads, for escapism from the terrible life they all live, but he never seems to learn anything from his reading. Once he's read something, he doesn't understand that you can read it again, and he can't distinguish between literature and a volume of knitting instruction.

All this reading doesn't improve him, doesn't bring out the light of civilization in his heart; he remains the same simpleton he always was, just with more power. And others who claim to want to defend Art are just the same. 

Tolstaya has a lot to say about "What is Art?", just like her great grand-uncle Leo Tolstoy. Her take on it all is a bit different however. She creates an absurdist setting that is both heavily Russian and a return to the dark ages, in which remnants of the old world exist but are not understood by the new generations. Books, language, art, memory, civilization itself, are all questioned as to their value and their staying power. 

The language in the book is slightly off; Benedikt recalls his mother mourning for the days of "deportment stores" or "bootiks". I don't envy the translator her job with this one! The book just keeps moving from one surreal setting to the next, and Benedikt never seems to learn anything, even with the attempted guidance of Oldener Nikita, the Stoker (who provides fire to the village). 

And the Slynx itself? Benedikt believes that he feels the eye of the Slynx on him from time to time; he tries to describe the feeling in clumsy words but it's basically when an existential crisis is threatening, something he won't let develop but instead does something violent to avoid. I think the Slynx is that existential fear, which the Murzas have personified to terrorize those who might be tempted to think about any meaning in life or how things might be made better for the peasants. It's a society that depends on most of the population being miserable toilers in order to benefit a few at the top; it seems humanity never changes, even when they are sprouting mutations and Consequences! 

This was a super weird book, but one I like a lot for its frantic, topsy-turvy style. I was surprised by the sudden emphasis on books halfway through, but found so much humour, intellectual & literary references, and inventiveness in it. It's violent and terrible but also uncanny and unsettling with very black humour to leaven it all. Definitely an odd but memorable read. 

Vita Nostra

Vita Nostra / Marina & Sergey Dyachenko
trans. from Russian by Julia Meitov Hersey
NY: Harper Voyager, c2018
416 p.

Today's read is by a duo of authors, a wife and husband team -- Marina & Sergey Dyachenko. They have written quite a number of books together, but Marina noted in an interview that this one might be her favourite.

I'm so glad it was translated because it was a great read. It started out like a YA novel, with a teenage girl as the main character, encountering a strange man while on vacation who tells her she is special. I was dubious. But I kept on and by about chapter three I was hooked.

Sasha Samokhina must perform incomprehensible tasks given to her by Farit Kozhennikov -- to swim naked in sea exactly at the same time every day, or to take a daily run in the park on schedule once she's returned home. For every day that she completes her task correctly, she receives a strange gold coin, via throwing it up later. The tasks are testing her discipline, obedience and stamina. 

And when she finishes her high school studies and is applying to colleges, Farit Kozhennikov tells her that her gold coins are the entrance to the Institute of Special Technologies, a distant college in a nowhere town, where she will be studying. This is not a suggestion.

This is where the book really picks up. Sasha heads out to Torpa to attend school, against her mother and stepfather's wishes -- it's so far away! They don't know anything about it! How will she make the right connections to get a job there! But she's determined. One of the reasons for this is that the instructors at Torpa, Farit Kozhennikov included, rule by fear -- if you fail or don't do as expected in your studies or tasks, someone in your family suffers. It's dark, twisted and confusing. 

The whole book is the same; confusing, but in the way that you feel that in just a few pages you'll understand...even though just like Sasha you're fumbling your way through incomprehensible assignments, laid out in intense intellectual and philosophical phrases and images. 

In one way the story is slow moving, not very plot driven -- the action is all in the mind. In this book, it's the ideas that drive it, and the slow expansion of what a reader might think the world is.

This is kind-of fantasy, although solidly based in an already surreal post-Soviet reality. There's magic, in the sense of telekinesis, learning to fly, and shifting realities -- but there is also just a lot of esoteric thought and conversation that makes you wonder about the theology of creation, or the reality of the world we perceive, or the power of language to shape our understanding. It feels like a more intense, fantastical experience of the world-expanding feeling of intense study when you attend university for the first time. 

This is dark in parts, with some violence and a very Soviet feel to many interactions. There is an atmosphere of fear and mistrust throughout. But Sasha applies herself to her studies, she takes on harder and harder tasks, and finds that she begins to crave learning more and more. And in the end, she overcomes Fear and surpasses even her teachers.  

This is a hard book to describe or summarize, but it was compelling even with its focus on the mind and what's happening to someone on the interior rather than flashy outer action. Unexpected and unusual, it was a very different reading experience.

There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband and He Hanged Himself

There Once Lived a Girl... / Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

trans. from the Russian by Anna Summers

NY: Penguin, 2013.

171 p.

These stories live up to their complicated and weird titles -- I've seen quite a few of Petrushevskaya's collections and they are all similarly titled. And I think it gives a sense of the unbalancing nature of her writing. This one is a collection of stories first published  between 1972 and 2008.

This is the first writing by Petrushevskaya that I have been able to read, and it was definitely worth it. She has a sharp eye, and uses it to skewer everyday life in Soviet Russia. She doesn't talk about politics directly but it permeates all her stories -- the personal is political. I was very engaged by the way she uses understatement masterfully to expose the bleak nature of both daily life and of souls. It seems to be the logical outcome of a system started by men with no appreciation or understanding of beauty as a part of life. (see Teffi's characterization of Lenin early on in the Soviet experiment).

Many of these stories focus on women, and the lives they lead in their tiny shared apartments, looking for love or companionship. The style is flatly narrative: this happened, then this happened. I think it matches the content well, and the sense of living in a flat grey Soviet world. I've been reading a few books set in the Soviet era over the last while, and it feels like she has that theme cornered here.

Like Mavis Gallant notes, short stories are best read one by one with a pause in between. I think that's especially true here, as the stories are structured in similar ways and cover similar topics. Take a breather between them or they might start to blend together a bit. I interspersed reading these with some of the other great titles I've shared so far this month and it worked well. 

I think many of my favourite stories were found in the first section of the book -- Like Penélope, or The Goddess Parka -- but also later ones, especially Milgrom. These do feature sewing in them so maybe that's why they sparked a particular fascination for me. But they were beautifully written too.

Like yesterday's read, Sofia Petrovna, the women in these stories have to manage uncertain, crowded living spaces and tenuous family relationships, but unlike that novel of the 30s, Petrushevskaya's characters also have an edge; they are more accustomed to Soviet style life by now. 

These "love" stories are anything but; hard-edged, desperate, lonely, cynical... these best describe our characters. They are trying to get what they can within this unwinnable system. 

If you're in the mood for bleak humour, stark cultural commentary and stories about women's lives in the midst of enormous bureaucracy, try some of these. Slowly, bit by bit. 

Sofia Petrovna

Sofia Petrovna / Lydia Chukovskaya;
trans. from the Russian by Aline Werth
Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1994, c1965.
120 p.

This slim novel has a story much bigger than its size implies. One of the only novels of the Soviet purges of the 1930s written contemporaneously, the author points out the degredations, the corruption and the suspicions of this totalitarian society. Most importantly, she points out how it affects every single citizen, high and low. 

In this society, a whisper holds power and a person can go from powerful government official to prisoner in a day. This uncertainty makes everyone afraid to trust, afraid to connect, even splitting spouses and families.

Sofia Petrovna is a simple woman, a widow who works at a stable job as a typist at a publisher's house. But the jealousies between office mates change as Stalinist propaganda grows -- now those jealousies and desire for someone else's job, someone's apartment, can lead to denunciations based only on wishes and dislikes. 

Sofia has a son, a young man who she is very proud and protective of. He's become an engineer and  been sent off to some camp somewhere to work. He comes up with a great innovation and is praised in the newspapers. Sofia feels relief; surely this will be enough to save him from any purge. 

But no. He's arrested, and Sofia then spends all of her time waiting in line at the prison, believing that he is innocent so of course, therefore, as soon as the officials understand this her son will be freed. She doesn't grasp that innocence has nothing to do with anything any longer. 

She doesn't get to see him, and hopes for a letter from him so that she can send him something -- food, clothing, anything he needs -- to keep him well. But she waits and waits. And in the meantime there are more suspicions, more disappearances, and a close friend who commits suicide rather than continue. Sofia is slowly becoming adapted to the atmosphere of the purges. 

And then she does get a letter. And the final few pages are shocking, terrifying, and immensely sad. I didn't expect what was coming but it says so, so much about this kind of society in just a few words and actions. 

This is an immensely striking book, powerful and truthful in a way that feels very personal. I'd recommend it to anyone, especially now. 

Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others & Me: the Best of Teffi

Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: the Best of Teffi
trans. from the Russian by
Anne Marie Jackson, Rose France & Elizabeth Chandler
NY: NYRB, 2016
226 p.

This is a wonderful collection of essays by Teffi, pseudonym of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, a Russian writer who lived as an exile in Paris after the Bolshevik Revolution. Her writing style is light, humorous, and yet also deep and incisive. 

The book is broken up into four sections: How I Live and Work; Staging Posts; Heady Days: Revolutions and Civil Wars; and Artists Remembered. 

Each has a handful of essays, and there are all fascinating. Teffi introduces herself and her writing career with a background on her family upbringing and her early attempts at publication. These are a great foundation for understanding her later interactions with other writers and famous residents of Moscow. 

The second section is a series of her popular essays about her life in Russia; these pieces were interesting and charmingly written. But the strongest part of the book, at least for this reader, were here essays about her encounters with Lenin (a cunning man with no interest in beauty or culture); with Tolstoy (she met him as a young 13 yr old as was so overcome she couldn't speak, just asked for an autograph and left, embarrassed); and Rasputin. Of course Rasputin still holds a fascination for modern day readers, nearly as strong as when he was alive and manipulating the Russian court. Teffi sees right through him and thinks him a rather pathetic and dirty man -- she states that he was a mesmerist and used touch to convince people of his instructions. And he was a womanizer; he tries to tell Teffi that she will come to him that week, touching her shoulder, but she says no she won't, and he recoils. She is convinced it is because his mesmeric power, having been rejected, bounces back at him painfully. It's a fascinating essay, drawing a picture of this strangely influential oddball in the pre-Revolution days. He was so polarizing that she says there were signs in people's houses when you went to dinner stating "In this house, we don't talk about Rasputin". 

Part Three of the book contains the essay about Rasputin, and other revolutionary topics. Here we find her most serious and darkest essay, The Gadarene Swine, which is not leavened by her usual sarcasm or irony, rather it's a fully depressing look at society in turmoil. 

The final section of the book looks at other writers -- here is her essay on meeting Tolstoy -- and the other established authors she knew well. 

All together it gives a picture of the life of a literary woman who was well connected and committed to the arts, and if not for the upheaval of her society she probably would have ended up as one of the big names of her era in a traditional sense. But her observing eye took on all that was around her and so we can see these years of revolution from the inside. 

I'll definitely be looking for her book Memories: from Moscow to the Black Sea, which is supposed to be even better.