Status
Available
Collection
Publication
London ; New York : Hogarth, [2015]
Description
Fiction. Literature. Short Stories. HTML:From the New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena�??dazzling, poignant, and lyrical interwoven stories about family, sacrifice, the legacy of war, and the redemptive power of art. This stunning, exquisitely written collection introduces a cast of remarkable characters whose lives intersect in ways both life-affirming and heartbreaking. A 1930s Soviet censor painstakingly corrects offending photographs, deep underneath Leningrad, bewitched by the image of a disgraced prima ballerina. A chorus of women recount their stories and those of their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners who settled their Siberian mining town. Two pairs of brothers share a fierce, protective love. Young men across the former USSR face violence at home and in the military. And great sacrifices are made in the name of an oil landscape unremarkable except for the almost incomprehensibly peaceful past it depicts. In stunning prose, with rich… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member porch_reader
Marra's first novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, was one of my favorite reads in 2014. Even though his follow-up, The Tsar of Love and Techno, is my first book of 2016, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up on my best of 2016 list.
The Tsar of Love and Techno begins in 1937 Leningrad.
Marra is a fantastic author, creating unique voices for each character. The way that he plays with structure in this novel left me wanting to immediately begin again so that I could better understand how he weaves together the stories so seamlessly. Almost every page has a sentence that captures the idea it is trying to convey so precisely that it brought me up short. For example: "But to some people ignorance is a sleeping mask they mistake for corrective lenses." This was a very satisfying first read of 2016.
The Tsar of Love and Techno begins in 1937 Leningrad.
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Roman Osipovich Markin considers himself a true artist, but he is currently working for Soviet censors to remove political dissidents, including his own brother, from artworks. One of the landscapes that he revises connects his story to a range of other characters whose stories extend to present day. A captured soldier, a blind artist, a gangster, and an actress are all impacted by Pyotr Zakharov-Chechenets' 1843 painting, Empty Pasture in Afternoon. The stories are not told linearly, allowing Marra to add layers to the stories that have come before. Marra is a fantastic author, creating unique voices for each character. The way that he plays with structure in this novel left me wanting to immediately begin again so that I could better understand how he weaves together the stories so seamlessly. Almost every page has a sentence that captures the idea it is trying to convey so precisely that it brought me up short. For example: "But to some people ignorance is a sleeping mask they mistake for corrective lenses." This was a very satisfying first read of 2016.
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LibraryThing member gbill
Anthony Marra has real talent. His second novel, ‘The Tsar of Love and Techno’, is even better than his first, ‘A Constellation of Vital Phenomena’. The book is described as having separate short stories, and I suppose they are, but they are so highly interrelated that it really didn’t
As with ‘Constellation’, Marra returns to Chechnya during its devastating wars, and also covers Russia at the time of Stalin’s purges and into the present-day, under Putin and the oligarchs. The conditions are difficult to fathom: corruption, repression, murder, pollution, poverty, conscription, and drugs. And yet, the novel is far from depressing. If anything, it’s uplifting.
One of the common threads is what people do under circumstances that are crushing them – whether it be the censor who paints his dead brother into works of art he is editing for the communist government, or the father living in one of the most polluted cities in the world who quits his job and opens a cheesy cosmonautics museum, or the soldier in Chechnya who invents having a wife, which the others then fantasize over. The elderly swimming in a lake of toxic runoff, as if nothing had ever gone wrong in their wretched lives, symbolized this most of all, and had me emotional, without realizing why, surprised as I read along. The brothers saying good-bye to one another as one went off to war in Chechnya did as well. There are several other moments of poignant beauty.
I think Marra puts his finger on what it is to be Russian. Conditions over the centuries breed mistrust, cynicism, and crime – but at the same time, humor, profundity, and hope. People may live in fantasy worlds to cope, but they also better appreciate reality, and the small moments in life. Through it all there is a dream that Russia’s time will come, Russia’s time will eventually come, and I think that’s what the novel is about.
Quotes:
On America, and compassion:
“She couldn’t understand why so many of its residents viewed nursing homes as elderly storage where sons and daughters imprison parents to recompense unresolved childhood traumas. Compared to elder care in Russia, it was a beacon of warmth and compassion. When she saw her first wheelchair ramp in LAX, she had mistaken it for some kind of weird public sculpture. When she learned what a wheelchair ramp was, when she learned that they were mandated by law, she felt a pure rush of patriotism for a country she’d only been living in for a few hours. Of the century’s magnificent and terrible inventions, what was more humane, more elegant, more generous than the wheelchair ramp?”
On art, and compassion:
“The portrait artist must acknowledge human complexity with each brushstroke. The eyes, nose, and mouth that compose a sitter’s face, just like the suffering and joy that compose his soul, are similar to those of ten million others yet still singular to him. This acknowledgment is where art begins. It may also be where mercy begins. If criminals drew the faces of their victims before perpetrating their crimes and judges drew the faces of the guilty before sentencing them, then there would be no faces for executioners to draw.”
On children:
“Vera had held this body when it was moments old, had washed, fed, clothed it, and on her best days she couldn’t look at her daughter without swelling with self-regard for having given birth to someone so worthy of love. Now that body had grown beyond the jurisdiction of her protection. Though it was rarely deployed in Vera’s emotional vocabulary, she could think of no better word than wonder to describe the startling closeness of just standing here beside her child. Forget Lydia’s poor choices. Forget the demons Vera could only guess at. The very fact Lydia was alive gave her mother the faith to believe she had done this one thing right.”
And:
“Sergei had replied in a garbled sob, the compact heat of his breath like a hand dryer on Vladimir’s skin. If you could trade, but you couldn’t. If there was a way to make it okay, but there wasn’t. If you can, but you can’t. Why are children doomed to remain beautiful to their parents, even when they become so ugly to themselves?”
On communism (Lenin…wow):
“No doubt he had heard Lenin’s famous reaction to Beethoven’s Sonata No. 23: It is wonderful, ethereal music. But I am unable to listen to it. It moves me to stroke the heads of my fellow beings for being able to produce such beautiful things in spite of the abominable hell they are living in. It is necessary to smash those heads, smash them without mercy.”
On disillusionment:
“I’d never imagined that something as solemn and final as death could be this idiotic. It was the keyhole through which I first glimpsed life’s madness: The institutions we believe in will pervert us, our loved one’s will fail us, and death is a falling piano.”
On good-bye, and brotherly love; very touching scenes in the book:
“I counted down from ten as Kolya hummed the national anthem. Sometimes he’d clasp my hand to his chest and as his pulse throbbed against my palm the act seemed less like make-believe than the rehearsal for a final good-bye.
‘You will have the last human thought,’ I whispered.
‘You will be that thought,’ he said.
‘You will have the last word.’
‘Your name will be the last word.’”
On heroes and villains:
“What did he see when he saw me? You remain the hero of your own story even when you become the villain of someone else’s.”
On love:
“Beneath the sheets they were pale and naked and they pouched their hands in the warmth between their stomachs. They pressed together with a need that is never satisfied because we can’t trade atoms no matter how hard we thrust. Our hearts may skip but our substance remains fixed. We’re not gaseous no matter how we wish to cloud together inseparably. Nothing less would have satisfied Kolya, nothing less than obliterating himself in her was sufficient.”
On parents:
“Our children forever changed our relationships with our mothers. Pity replaced the mild contempt with which we had previously regarded them, and we loved them as we never had before, as we could only love ourselves, because despite our best intentions we had become them.”
On Russian metro stations, which are indeed beautiful:
“I’m talking about the metro. The Palace of the People, that’s what Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev called it. A palace not for tsars or princes, but for you and me.”
On war, words which certainly apply in America today:
“Holding the gun made me feel taller up top and longer down below. Somewhere in Chechnya was an eighteen-year-old Muslim holding a pistol for the first time and feeling this same surge of power?”
These bits of humor:
“You’re probably thinking that I’m a high-density, dehydrated slab of manliness, a testosterone prune, if you will, but as a boy, I was a plum.”
“The following morning the cabin attendant yanked me by my ear from a restful slumber. This was to be expected, given the only required experience for Russian Railways employment is a history of anger issues.”
“She was no taller than me – which is not to say I was short, just short for a biped.”
“Elderly women who hadn’t smiled since Gorbachev was general secretary queued outside the post office. They wore overcoats in midsummer, distrustful of every source of authority, even the calendar.”
“’Yeah, I’m getting my master’s at LSE.’
‘That’s the London airport?’
He smiled. ‘London School of Economics.’ Suddenly I was the yak-humping bumpkin from the Republic of Whogivesafuckistan and he was, well, the kind of person I wanted to be.”
“What my father lacked in education, he made up for in opinions. I silently prepared to hibernate through the long winter of his lecture.”
And finally this, putting its finger on both the smallness of man in the universe and at the same time, the miracle of his existence; the tenuous thread of our lives, but at the same, the meaning in its everyday moments:
“It’s ridiculous, so stupid, I know, to cross the entire solar system just to hear you and Galina butcher Tchaikovsky. If ever there was an utterance of perfection, it is this. If God has a voice, it is ours.
The calcium in the collarbones I have kissed. The iron in the blood flushing in those cheeks. We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A shimmer of photons bears the memory across the long, dark amnesia. We will be carried too, mysterious particles that we are.
In what dream does the empty edge of the universe hold this echo of vitality? In what prayer does the last human not die alone? Who would have imagined you would be with me, here, so far from life on Earth, so filled with its grace?
One more time through.
From the beginning.
Just give me that.
Please.”
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read that way for me. Regardless, it’s excellent, and has it all: human drama, love, pathos, history, profound moments, and wit. As with ‘Constellation’, Marra returns to Chechnya during its devastating wars, and also covers Russia at the time of Stalin’s purges and into the present-day, under Putin and the oligarchs. The conditions are difficult to fathom: corruption, repression, murder, pollution, poverty, conscription, and drugs. And yet, the novel is far from depressing. If anything, it’s uplifting.
One of the common threads is what people do under circumstances that are crushing them – whether it be the censor who paints his dead brother into works of art he is editing for the communist government, or the father living in one of the most polluted cities in the world who quits his job and opens a cheesy cosmonautics museum, or the soldier in Chechnya who invents having a wife, which the others then fantasize over. The elderly swimming in a lake of toxic runoff, as if nothing had ever gone wrong in their wretched lives, symbolized this most of all, and had me emotional, without realizing why, surprised as I read along. The brothers saying good-bye to one another as one went off to war in Chechnya did as well. There are several other moments of poignant beauty.
I think Marra puts his finger on what it is to be Russian. Conditions over the centuries breed mistrust, cynicism, and crime – but at the same time, humor, profundity, and hope. People may live in fantasy worlds to cope, but they also better appreciate reality, and the small moments in life. Through it all there is a dream that Russia’s time will come, Russia’s time will eventually come, and I think that’s what the novel is about.
Quotes:
On America, and compassion:
“She couldn’t understand why so many of its residents viewed nursing homes as elderly storage where sons and daughters imprison parents to recompense unresolved childhood traumas. Compared to elder care in Russia, it was a beacon of warmth and compassion. When she saw her first wheelchair ramp in LAX, she had mistaken it for some kind of weird public sculpture. When she learned what a wheelchair ramp was, when she learned that they were mandated by law, she felt a pure rush of patriotism for a country she’d only been living in for a few hours. Of the century’s magnificent and terrible inventions, what was more humane, more elegant, more generous than the wheelchair ramp?”
On art, and compassion:
“The portrait artist must acknowledge human complexity with each brushstroke. The eyes, nose, and mouth that compose a sitter’s face, just like the suffering and joy that compose his soul, are similar to those of ten million others yet still singular to him. This acknowledgment is where art begins. It may also be where mercy begins. If criminals drew the faces of their victims before perpetrating their crimes and judges drew the faces of the guilty before sentencing them, then there would be no faces for executioners to draw.”
On children:
“Vera had held this body when it was moments old, had washed, fed, clothed it, and on her best days she couldn’t look at her daughter without swelling with self-regard for having given birth to someone so worthy of love. Now that body had grown beyond the jurisdiction of her protection. Though it was rarely deployed in Vera’s emotional vocabulary, she could think of no better word than wonder to describe the startling closeness of just standing here beside her child. Forget Lydia’s poor choices. Forget the demons Vera could only guess at. The very fact Lydia was alive gave her mother the faith to believe she had done this one thing right.”
And:
“Sergei had replied in a garbled sob, the compact heat of his breath like a hand dryer on Vladimir’s skin. If you could trade, but you couldn’t. If there was a way to make it okay, but there wasn’t. If you can, but you can’t. Why are children doomed to remain beautiful to their parents, even when they become so ugly to themselves?”
On communism (Lenin…wow):
“No doubt he had heard Lenin’s famous reaction to Beethoven’s Sonata No. 23: It is wonderful, ethereal music. But I am unable to listen to it. It moves me to stroke the heads of my fellow beings for being able to produce such beautiful things in spite of the abominable hell they are living in. It is necessary to smash those heads, smash them without mercy.”
On disillusionment:
“I’d never imagined that something as solemn and final as death could be this idiotic. It was the keyhole through which I first glimpsed life’s madness: The institutions we believe in will pervert us, our loved one’s will fail us, and death is a falling piano.”
On good-bye, and brotherly love; very touching scenes in the book:
“I counted down from ten as Kolya hummed the national anthem. Sometimes he’d clasp my hand to his chest and as his pulse throbbed against my palm the act seemed less like make-believe than the rehearsal for a final good-bye.
‘You will have the last human thought,’ I whispered.
‘You will be that thought,’ he said.
‘You will have the last word.’
‘Your name will be the last word.’”
On heroes and villains:
“What did he see when he saw me? You remain the hero of your own story even when you become the villain of someone else’s.”
On love:
“Beneath the sheets they were pale and naked and they pouched their hands in the warmth between their stomachs. They pressed together with a need that is never satisfied because we can’t trade atoms no matter how hard we thrust. Our hearts may skip but our substance remains fixed. We’re not gaseous no matter how we wish to cloud together inseparably. Nothing less would have satisfied Kolya, nothing less than obliterating himself in her was sufficient.”
On parents:
“Our children forever changed our relationships with our mothers. Pity replaced the mild contempt with which we had previously regarded them, and we loved them as we never had before, as we could only love ourselves, because despite our best intentions we had become them.”
On Russian metro stations, which are indeed beautiful:
“I’m talking about the metro. The Palace of the People, that’s what Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev called it. A palace not for tsars or princes, but for you and me.”
On war, words which certainly apply in America today:
“Holding the gun made me feel taller up top and longer down below. Somewhere in Chechnya was an eighteen-year-old Muslim holding a pistol for the first time and feeling this same surge of power?”
These bits of humor:
“You’re probably thinking that I’m a high-density, dehydrated slab of manliness, a testosterone prune, if you will, but as a boy, I was a plum.”
“The following morning the cabin attendant yanked me by my ear from a restful slumber. This was to be expected, given the only required experience for Russian Railways employment is a history of anger issues.”
“She was no taller than me – which is not to say I was short, just short for a biped.”
“Elderly women who hadn’t smiled since Gorbachev was general secretary queued outside the post office. They wore overcoats in midsummer, distrustful of every source of authority, even the calendar.”
“’Yeah, I’m getting my master’s at LSE.’
‘That’s the London airport?’
He smiled. ‘London School of Economics.’ Suddenly I was the yak-humping bumpkin from the Republic of Whogivesafuckistan and he was, well, the kind of person I wanted to be.”
“What my father lacked in education, he made up for in opinions. I silently prepared to hibernate through the long winter of his lecture.”
And finally this, putting its finger on both the smallness of man in the universe and at the same time, the miracle of his existence; the tenuous thread of our lives, but at the same, the meaning in its everyday moments:
“It’s ridiculous, so stupid, I know, to cross the entire solar system just to hear you and Galina butcher Tchaikovsky. If ever there was an utterance of perfection, it is this. If God has a voice, it is ours.
The calcium in the collarbones I have kissed. The iron in the blood flushing in those cheeks. We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A shimmer of photons bears the memory across the long, dark amnesia. We will be carried too, mysterious particles that we are.
In what dream does the empty edge of the universe hold this echo of vitality? In what prayer does the last human not die alone? Who would have imagined you would be with me, here, so far from life on Earth, so filled with its grace?
One more time through.
From the beginning.
Just give me that.
Please.”
Show Less
LibraryThing member msf59
“There was coherence in exiting by the same door through which you entered, bookending with order this senselessly churning existence.”
In the 1930s, a failed portrait artist, is given the task, by Soviet censors, to erase images, from photographs. He will blot out the faces, of all political
This is the first tale, in a collection of interconnected stories, that span the decades. There is a legendary ballerina, a retired gangster, a pair of mercenaries, nickel miners and various war criminals, all thrown in to a vast human mixtape and all anchored by Marra's wonderful prose and his uncanny ability to capture the Russian landscape, in it's many diverse forms.
I was first introduced to Marra, through his novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena which completely blew me away. I am happy to report, his streak continues. He is quickly becoming a very important American writer.
In the 1930s, a failed portrait artist, is given the task, by Soviet censors, to erase images, from photographs. He will blot out the faces, of all political
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dissidents, including his own brother, who fell astray, a few years earlier. It is a painstaking job and he excels at it, until he makes a fateful mistake of his own...This is the first tale, in a collection of interconnected stories, that span the decades. There is a legendary ballerina, a retired gangster, a pair of mercenaries, nickel miners and various war criminals, all thrown in to a vast human mixtape and all anchored by Marra's wonderful prose and his uncanny ability to capture the Russian landscape, in it's many diverse forms.
I was first introduced to Marra, through his novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena which completely blew me away. I am happy to report, his streak continues. He is quickly becoming a very important American writer.
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LibraryThing member BrandieC
Although The Tsar of Love and Techno is, superficially, a collection of "interwoven" stories, I quickly realized that the stories were so closely linked that I couldn't rate each story individually, as I would ordinarily do with a collection of short stories. Rather, The Tsar of Love and Techno is
So many other reviewers have synopsized the various interlocking narratives and have rhapsodized over Marra's exquisite writing that I will not repeat those efforts here. Instead, I want to comment on two things which stood out for me. First was Marra's telling of "Granddaughters" in the first person plural (i.e., from the point of view of "we"). The "we" are a group of six women who are reflecting on their lost seventh member Lydia and the beauty they both admired and envied from afar, Galina. Of course, what they say is actually more a commentary on, and defense of, their own life choices. Marra has captured perfectly the voice of a group of girls, the tone of mingled jealousy of the one who got away and self-satisfaction at the fallen one forced to return.
The second element I particularly enjoyed was how Marra tied his cast of characters together, not only through the bonds of friendship and family, but also with their connections to a particular landscape painting. Like the comic book in Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven , this painting moves from hand to hand, valued by some simply as an artistic object but by others because of what really happened on the hill depicted in it. As much as I admired Station Eleven, though, Marra's use of this device is so much more nuanced and organic. His writing in this regard is masterful.
I did not particularly care for the book's cover, which, I am ashamed to admit, is why The Tsar of Love and Techno languished for so long on my to be read list. I should know better than to judge a book by its cover.
I received a free copy of The Tsar of Love and Techno through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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an immersive experience, with such a strong sense of time and place that it must be appreciated and reviewed as a whole.So many other reviewers have synopsized the various interlocking narratives and have rhapsodized over Marra's exquisite writing that I will not repeat those efforts here. Instead, I want to comment on two things which stood out for me. First was Marra's telling of "Granddaughters" in the first person plural (i.e., from the point of view of "we"). The "we" are a group of six women who are reflecting on their lost seventh member Lydia and the beauty they both admired and envied from afar, Galina. Of course, what they say is actually more a commentary on, and defense of, their own life choices. Marra has captured perfectly the voice of a group of girls, the tone of mingled jealousy of the one who got away and self-satisfaction at the fallen one forced to return.
The second element I particularly enjoyed was how Marra tied his cast of characters together, not only through the bonds of friendship and family, but also with their connections to a particular landscape painting. Like the comic book in Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven , this painting moves from hand to hand, valued by some simply as an artistic object but by others because of what really happened on the hill depicted in it. As much as I admired Station Eleven, though, Marra's use of this device is so much more nuanced and organic. His writing in this regard is masterful.
I did not particularly care for the book's cover, which, I am ashamed to admit, is why The Tsar of Love and Techno languished for so long on my to be read list. I should know better than to judge a book by its cover.
I received a free copy of The Tsar of Love and Techno through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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LibraryThing member michigantrumpet
Anthony Marra's "Constellation of Vital Phenomena" was one of my favorite books of 2014. His return to Chechnya in "Tsar of Love and Techno" is another huge success. His characters are beautifully limned and swoop in nd out of time and each other's lives. It was a complete delight to discover how a
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1930's censor (who excels at painting out the pockmarks on Stalin's cheeks) is connected to an oligrch's qife and minor movie star, or to a young Internet scammer .... Or .... Or....Marra's writing is original and breathtaking. Although his character's circumstances are often quite grim, there are flashes of humor. One character shudders at the malign Swedish government who forces its citizenry to assemble furniture. Art, conformity, connection and betrayal are constant themes. I truly didn't want this one to end. Show Less
LibraryThing member TooBusyReading
I am more of a novel reader than a short story reader, but I loved the author's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena so much that I couldn't wait to read these stories.
And to me, it read more like a novel than just a collection of short stories. The stories are all interconnected, and loop back and
Mr. Marra's writing is extraordinary. Without being flowery, it is remarkably, beautifully descriptive. The characters are both hopeful and resigned.
I didn't mark passages as I was reading, so I flipped the book open at random to look for an example. The first thing I read:
“Back in my room, I scanned my modest belongings. Bottles filled with dusk light stood in the corner. The long-rotting carcass of my academic career sprawled across the desk.” And then, “There I was, Napoleon's height and I couldn't even conquer the apartment WC. I slipped the two pickle jars into the duffle, the Polaroid into my pocket, and then slipped myself out the door.”
There is a painting that keeps reappearing, censors who fail to properly censor, and a mix tape to be used only in case of emergency. Ballerinas and brothers.
These stories are not a straightforward telling of a story, but tell a story they do, in a winding, meandering path, sprinkled with humor and soul, and all the more beautiful for the journey they take.
I was given an advance reader's copy of this book for review. The quotes may have changed in the published edition.
And to me, it read more like a novel than just a collection of short stories. The stories are all interconnected, and loop back and
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forward through stories of characters I've come to love.Mr. Marra's writing is extraordinary. Without being flowery, it is remarkably, beautifully descriptive. The characters are both hopeful and resigned.
I didn't mark passages as I was reading, so I flipped the book open at random to look for an example. The first thing I read:
“Back in my room, I scanned my modest belongings. Bottles filled with dusk light stood in the corner. The long-rotting carcass of my academic career sprawled across the desk.” And then, “There I was, Napoleon's height and I couldn't even conquer the apartment WC. I slipped the two pickle jars into the duffle, the Polaroid into my pocket, and then slipped myself out the door.”
There is a painting that keeps reappearing, censors who fail to properly censor, and a mix tape to be used only in case of emergency. Ballerinas and brothers.
These stories are not a straightforward telling of a story, but tell a story they do, in a winding, meandering path, sprinkled with humor and soul, and all the more beautiful for the journey they take.
I was given an advance reader's copy of this book for review. The quotes may have changed in the published edition.
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LibraryThing member eenerd
Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous! As in: amazing and transportative writing, richly constructed characters, and content that you actually get something out of. It's literature, sure, but you actually learn about the world when you read Marra's stuff--which is a beautiful thing. I love this as much as I
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love Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, and that is some pretty serious awesome right there. Show Less
LibraryThing member klburnside
The Tsar of Love and Techno is one of those books that I wanted to read again as soon as I finished, not so much because I loved it, but more because I feel like I missed to much. The book is described as interconnected stories, but they are so heavily interconnected, that is felt more like a novel
I heard the author of this book speak at a book festival a few weeks ago, and he said that he felt one of his greatest strengths as a writer had to do with creating and solving puzzles. I remember absolutely loving that about his first book: the way the characters and their stories gradually intertwined to create this amazing tapestry. I don't think I read this book carefully enough to really take it all in.
Another thing Marra said in his talk was that he likes to use objects in his writing as needles to weave the various threads of stories together. I really like this about his writing, both in this book and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.
I wasn't blown away by this book like I was by Marra's first novel, but I would still highly recommend it.
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to me. I missed a lot because I kept forgetting who people were and how they played into the bigger picture.I heard the author of this book speak at a book festival a few weeks ago, and he said that he felt one of his greatest strengths as a writer had to do with creating and solving puzzles. I remember absolutely loving that about his first book: the way the characters and their stories gradually intertwined to create this amazing tapestry. I don't think I read this book carefully enough to really take it all in.
Another thing Marra said in his talk was that he likes to use objects in his writing as needles to weave the various threads of stories together. I really like this about his writing, both in this book and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.
I wasn't blown away by this book like I was by Marra's first novel, but I would still highly recommend it.
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LibraryThing member Dianekeenoy
I wanted to read this book because I loved Anthony Marra's first book, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. These are interlocking short stories that, to me, read almost like a novel. It's hard to imagine that both of these books about Chechnya could be so fascinating, but they are. It's hard to
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stop reading them once you start. This begins in the 1930s, in the tunnels in Leningrad where an artist has been given the job of erasing political dissidents from all official images and artworks beginning with his own brother. When an old painting of a dacha comes to his desk, he begins to draw his brother into every picture he censors. This decision goes through the decades, holding together the stories of a ballerina and her granddaughter, a gangster, a widower, a soldier all connected to this dacha. This is such an original book, like that of his first, that it's hard to imagine them being written by someone so young. Absolutely loved this. Show Less
LibraryThing member ozzer
In this collection of interlocking stories, Marra explores the urge to erase or cleanse ugly historical facts and the human need to seek meaning by remembering them. Although Marra’s focus is 20th Century Russia, clearly current events suggest that the urge to clean up the historical record
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remains alive and well in the world today (e.g., the botched invasion of Iraq and its sequelae). He uses a host of deeply flawed, but ultimately heroic characters to show how the truth needs to re-emerge. Because the stories jump between St. Petersburg, Siberia and Chechnya; and from the 1930s to the present, readers need to pay close attention to the details in order to see the linkages and thematic developments. In addition to re-introducing the same characters in the stories, Marra also re-visits specific details (e.g., a 19th century landscape, a mixed music tape) to connect the stories. Roman Markin’s job as an artist is to clean up history by airbrushing inconvenient people and things from paintings and photographs. After informing on his brother, Vaska, he is ordered to remove his image from a photograph. He chooses to resist by repeatedly adding Vaska’s image to his work. The subsequent stories spin out from this center. A ballerina who Roman airbrushed is condemned to the gulag, where she manages to entice the camp director by performing Swan Lake; her granddaughter wins a beauty contest and marries an oligarch despite her love of Kolya, a young man who is sent to Chechnya. Kolya, is captured and held as a virtual slave on a farm that was the inspiration of a landscape that Roman had previously preserved and embellished. Kolya’s brother, Alexei, obtains the landscape and uses it to locate the site of Kolya’s death. These are only some of the characters and their connections to each other. Although each story is compelling and they suggest an interconnected whole, their relationships to one another are often subtle and chaotic, leaving one with the impression that this collection may have been more effective if Marra had put more effort into linking them in the form of a novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member cattylj
My boyfriend has a knack for knowing when I reach the last 20 pages of a book and chooses that moment to badger me with questions or otherwise distract me. (Even if he's not home at the time, it's uncanny, I'll start getting texts as soon as I near the finish line.) But as I dove into the final
So I guess you could say I had a strong emotional response to this book. Marra really knows how to wield that deadly combination of humor and sadness. He knows just how to make you lower your guard, and then before you know it he's punched you in the gut, you're uncontrollably weepy, and snot is running down your face. Not just any book can make me feel so vulnerable.
The Tsar of Love and Techno is a series of time-hopping short stories that each revolve, in some way, around the actions of a Soviet censor. Using multiple narratives, Marra shows us the many ways that art can hurt, heal, inspire, and betray us. He shows that there is beauty in the pain and absurdity of life, and that can sometimes be our only comfort. Each character has depth and complexity, each is meticulously and expertly rendered. Each story is good enough on its own that it could serve as a stand alone, but together they're something else.
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story in The Tsar of Love and Techno, he knew to leave me alone. I was barely keeping it together over on my end of the couch and he would have had to deal with unintelligible sobs if he so much as asked, "What do you want for dinner?"So I guess you could say I had a strong emotional response to this book. Marra really knows how to wield that deadly combination of humor and sadness. He knows just how to make you lower your guard, and then before you know it he's punched you in the gut, you're uncontrollably weepy, and snot is running down your face. Not just any book can make me feel so vulnerable.
The Tsar of Love and Techno is a series of time-hopping short stories that each revolve, in some way, around the actions of a Soviet censor. Using multiple narratives, Marra shows us the many ways that art can hurt, heal, inspire, and betray us. He shows that there is beauty in the pain and absurdity of life, and that can sometimes be our only comfort. Each character has depth and complexity, each is meticulously and expertly rendered. Each story is good enough on its own that it could serve as a stand alone, but together they're something else.
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LibraryThing member c.archer
This is a strange book, but beautiful. I enjoyed the lyricism of the words immensely as well as the setting in Russia, both pre and post communism. However, I found myself often confused by the style of writing as to who, when and where each section pertained. This is an artfully crafted story and
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as such will greatly appeal to some readers and not so much to others. Show Less
LibraryThing member nfmgirl2
The Tsar of Love and Techno is an inventive and accomplished collection of interwoven short stories by the author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (my favorite read of 2015). The stories take place in the war-torn areas of Russia, Chechnya and Siberia, have characters, places, items and/or
An artist responsible for removing people from history.
Two ballerinas separated by a generation.
A quietly defiant man in love with a scarred and blind woman.
Two Russian prisoners of war.
Two young brothers living in a forest of metal.
A woman who was responsible for the execution of her own mother.
Young men seeking to avoid the war, and a father who will save his son by any means.
These are the characters that make up these stories.
My final word: I've become a huge fan of author Anthony Marra! His writing is top notch, the characters well developed, the storylines are fresh and innovative. His stories are full of strong characters, and his writing is overflowing with sensitivity and barrenness. There's a beauty in its desolation. Please read anything you can get your hands on written by this author!
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storylines in common, and span the years between 1937 to 2013.An artist responsible for removing people from history.
Two ballerinas separated by a generation.
A quietly defiant man in love with a scarred and blind woman.
Two Russian prisoners of war.
Two young brothers living in a forest of metal.
A woman who was responsible for the execution of her own mother.
Young men seeking to avoid the war, and a father who will save his son by any means.
These are the characters that make up these stories.
My final word: I've become a huge fan of author Anthony Marra! His writing is top notch, the characters well developed, the storylines are fresh and innovative. His stories are full of strong characters, and his writing is overflowing with sensitivity and barrenness. There's a beauty in its desolation. Please read anything you can get your hands on written by this author!
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LibraryThing member hubblegal
This is a series of interconnecting short stories which take place in Russia, spanning the years of 1937 to 2013, even including a story entitled “Outer Space, Year Unknown”. The first four stories comprise “Side A”, with “The Tsar of Love and Techno” being the Intermission story, with
As with any book of short stories, there will be those you enjoy more than others. My favorite in this collection is the first one, “The Leopard”, which tells about a censor working for the Department of Party Propaganda and Agitation in 1937. His job is to paint over enemies of the people from official images and artwork as if he could erase their entire existence from history. There are two scenes in this story that were heart breaking – the first is when he is commanded to paint over the image of his own deceased brother and the second when he works on the painting of a disgraced ballerina.
The author’s world is one that reads like a dystopian novel. The fact that this world actually existed makes it all the more harrowing. It’s a world where daughters turn in their mothers as traitors, a world where one wrong act or a whisper in the wrong ear can bring about accusation and execution. It’s a frightening world but also a world that shows startling beautiful moments of love. It’s a very moving book, though not an easy, quick read. There were times I’d get somewhat confused as to which character the story was about due to the many characters and locations and jumping around in time but I usually got back into it fairly quickly. It’s well worth the read and now I’m looking forward even more to reading the author’s first book “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena”. Recommended.
This book was given to me by Blogging for Books in return for an honest review.
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the next four stories being “Side B”. The stories are tied together through the characters and a Russian painting of a house and pasture where much of this book takes place.As with any book of short stories, there will be those you enjoy more than others. My favorite in this collection is the first one, “The Leopard”, which tells about a censor working for the Department of Party Propaganda and Agitation in 1937. His job is to paint over enemies of the people from official images and artwork as if he could erase their entire existence from history. There are two scenes in this story that were heart breaking – the first is when he is commanded to paint over the image of his own deceased brother and the second when he works on the painting of a disgraced ballerina.
The author’s world is one that reads like a dystopian novel. The fact that this world actually existed makes it all the more harrowing. It’s a world where daughters turn in their mothers as traitors, a world where one wrong act or a whisper in the wrong ear can bring about accusation and execution. It’s a frightening world but also a world that shows startling beautiful moments of love. It’s a very moving book, though not an easy, quick read. There were times I’d get somewhat confused as to which character the story was about due to the many characters and locations and jumping around in time but I usually got back into it fairly quickly. It’s well worth the read and now I’m looking forward even more to reading the author’s first book “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena”. Recommended.
This book was given to me by Blogging for Books in return for an honest review.
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LibraryThing member eachurch
A phenomenal collection of stories which can stand alone but stand together in a rather unique way. Marra has layered his stories in a way that creates a multilayered cake with multiple fillings. Some are bitter, some are unbearably sweet. All of them build on each other, enrich and inform each
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other in a truly remarkable way. Show Less
LibraryThing member countrylife
For someone like me, who has little knowledge of life in Russia during some of their hard times, this was a very interesting book. “Stories”, it says. Yet links thread through this book like tape from a cassette through a player. Linked through relationships, through one particular painting,
I listened to the audiobook version, which was read by three narrators – Mark Bramhall, Beata Pozniak, and Rustam Kasymov. They did a great job, and it gave me a more realistic sense of place, than struggling through names and places that I find hard to pronounce.
I was very taken with this book.
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through choices, and then those choices repeated by others. The stories start in 1937, and shoot back and forth through time – 2003, 2000, 2010, 1999, 2001, and 2011, and through location – Siberia, Chechnya, St. Petersburg. The writing is good, the pacing perfect, the humor dry, the stories grim. I listened to the audiobook version, which was read by three narrators – Mark Bramhall, Beata Pozniak, and Rustam Kasymov. They did a great job, and it gave me a more realistic sense of place, than struggling through names and places that I find hard to pronounce.
I was very taken with this book.
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LibraryThing member lisalangford
I will admit I didn't love this as much Marra's first, The Constellation of Vital Phenomena. The Tsar of Love and Techno consisted of stories that were all connected, though how they were all connected wasn't always obvious at the beginning. At times I found it a bit hard to follow.
This did have
This did have
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some lovely writing in it. Marra can make the pages sing. Show Less
LibraryThing member nivramkoorb
Anthony Marra is a great author. His first novel, "The Constellation of Vital Phenomena" was 5 star for me and so is this book. It consists of interlinked stories that connect characters in Soviet Union over various space and time. The writing is beautiful and as in his first novel you get a real
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feel for live in the old Soviet Union and the "new Soviet Union". I recommend both of his books. A great way to learn about history while experiencing a truly great young(31). Interestingly, his teacher at Stanford is Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Adam Johnson. Show Less
LibraryThing member lisapeet
I really liked this collection—I feel like I've been seeing a trend of very tightly-linked, interwoven short stories that don't just share characters or settings but build a whole... novel, for want of a better word, in smart and subtle ways. And this was definitely that. Marra's portrait of a
Even the places where I thought Marra might lose me—the title story, in the middle of the book, flirts a bit much with clever tossed-away aphorisms in the way Gary Shteyngart can put me off sometimes—but the humanity in the stories shone through enough to reel me back in. Even the last story, which actually is almost cruelly sentimental, still won me over. Taken as a whole, this was an impressive book.
I was sad almost the entire time I was reading it, shepherding my dear dog through surgery and then waiting for what I convinced myself would inevitably bad news (it wasn't), and the underlying sadness of the book meshed perfectly with my mood. It's not a chipper read. But very human, and humane, and I liked it a lot.
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corner of post–Cold War Russia is well-written, informative without being didactic and touching without being sentimental. He sets the scene in the first story, of a photo retoucher during the Great Purge, and moves on to a multiple portrait of large and small lives, getting by (or not getting by) post-1990. The Chechen War figures prominently, and the rise and fall of the oligarchy, all the rippling out from 1937.Even the places where I thought Marra might lose me—the title story, in the middle of the book, flirts a bit much with clever tossed-away aphorisms in the way Gary Shteyngart can put me off sometimes—but the humanity in the stories shone through enough to reel me back in. Even the last story, which actually is almost cruelly sentimental, still won me over. Taken as a whole, this was an impressive book.
I was sad almost the entire time I was reading it, shepherding my dear dog through surgery and then waiting for what I convinced myself would inevitably bad news (it wasn't), and the underlying sadness of the book meshed perfectly with my mood. It's not a chipper read. But very human, and humane, and I liked it a lot.
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LibraryThing member cathgilmore
The Tsar of Love and Techno begins in 1937 Leningrad with a nameless censor. A man whose artistic skill is such that his sole purpose is to erase people deemed to be enemies of the state from any and all paintings and photographs in which they appear. His talent is great but he sees what is doing
They learn to censor before they learn to write. They were never taught to create what they now destroy, and have no appreciation of what, precisely, they sacrifice. Loc 160
This elegiac thought is one that author Anthony Marra follows throughout this masterful collection of nine short stories. One author, one country, combined with multiple times, characters and sensibilities all moving as different colors to emerge, in the final story, in a landscape gorgeous in its hues and textures. That there is a painting in the stories, one modified and desired by a number of characters, and that this painting is a real one by a Russian artist from Chechnya only adds to the complexity of each story. The correction artist links to the son of a religious revolutionary links to a ballerina to a camp commandant to a grand-daughter to an oligarch to a mercenary to his brother…and does not stop there. Along the way and through the decades there is the painting, a photograph, a cassette tape and the memories, both collective and personal, that infuse each of these extraordinary ordinary characters.
The way in which Marra writes about the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia encapsulates the fatalistic humor of a people who have been led down so many overgrown paths that they no longer believe there is a way out. Instead, with a cynical acceptance they’ve settled into the surreal aspects of their lives. During the time of Brezhnev he describes robust young men entering civil service only to emerge years later
“anemic and stooped, cured forever of the inclination to be civil or of service to anyone” loc 1026
Or a group of friends who, in spreading rumors, may have contributed to the death of another friend’s daughter
Our role in Lydia’s murder blemishes the otherwise sterling regard we have for ourselves. Los 930
And for Kolya, a man who appears in one way or another in almost each story—as a soldier who fights in the war against Chechnya, loses his fiancé to a wealthy man and then becomes a mercenary in order to send his younger brother to university he accepts his choices but
…he couldn’t shake the sense that he was the architect of a city made entirely of off-ramps, all leading away from him. Loc 2752
It is safe to say that by the time I finished The Tsar of Love and Techno I had read the book twice because each of Marra’s words/sentences/phrases/paragraphs are all so magical I needed to read and repeat. That one person can blend such an ambrosia of gallows humor, self-deprecation, satire, and pathos into each of these stories would be beyond my imagining if I had not read it. I know as reviewers there are a finite amount of words we can use and repetition is inevitable, but I’m relatively certain I’ve not used this one before. Brilliant is the only word that fits a work that so perfectly reflects the tone of its time and place. The Tsar of Love and Techno is brilliant. The End.
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to the children of the USSRThey learn to censor before they learn to write. They were never taught to create what they now destroy, and have no appreciation of what, precisely, they sacrifice. Loc 160
This elegiac thought is one that author Anthony Marra follows throughout this masterful collection of nine short stories. One author, one country, combined with multiple times, characters and sensibilities all moving as different colors to emerge, in the final story, in a landscape gorgeous in its hues and textures. That there is a painting in the stories, one modified and desired by a number of characters, and that this painting is a real one by a Russian artist from Chechnya only adds to the complexity of each story. The correction artist links to the son of a religious revolutionary links to a ballerina to a camp commandant to a grand-daughter to an oligarch to a mercenary to his brother…and does not stop there. Along the way and through the decades there is the painting, a photograph, a cassette tape and the memories, both collective and personal, that infuse each of these extraordinary ordinary characters.
The way in which Marra writes about the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia encapsulates the fatalistic humor of a people who have been led down so many overgrown paths that they no longer believe there is a way out. Instead, with a cynical acceptance they’ve settled into the surreal aspects of their lives. During the time of Brezhnev he describes robust young men entering civil service only to emerge years later
“anemic and stooped, cured forever of the inclination to be civil or of service to anyone” loc 1026
Or a group of friends who, in spreading rumors, may have contributed to the death of another friend’s daughter
Our role in Lydia’s murder blemishes the otherwise sterling regard we have for ourselves. Los 930
And for Kolya, a man who appears in one way or another in almost each story—as a soldier who fights in the war against Chechnya, loses his fiancé to a wealthy man and then becomes a mercenary in order to send his younger brother to university he accepts his choices but
…he couldn’t shake the sense that he was the architect of a city made entirely of off-ramps, all leading away from him. Loc 2752
It is safe to say that by the time I finished The Tsar of Love and Techno I had read the book twice because each of Marra’s words/sentences/phrases/paragraphs are all so magical I needed to read and repeat. That one person can blend such an ambrosia of gallows humor, self-deprecation, satire, and pathos into each of these stories would be beyond my imagining if I had not read it. I know as reviewers there are a finite amount of words we can use and repetition is inevitable, but I’m relatively certain I’ve not used this one before. Brilliant is the only word that fits a work that so perfectly reflects the tone of its time and place. The Tsar of Love and Techno is brilliant. The End.
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LibraryThing member bookchickdi
Three years ago I read Anthony Marra's debut novel about people trapped in the Chechen war, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. I could not stop talking about it and recommended to anyone who would listen (and even those who wouldn't). I was thrilled when the critical accolades came in for Marra;
Marra's second book is a collection of linked short stories, The Tsar of Love and Techno, set in the USSR. This collection covers a wider range of years and characters, and it is even more brilliant because of that.
Marra starts off strong with The Leopard, a story set in 1937 that drops the reader into an nearly improbable situation, yet one that happened everyday in the Soviet Union. Roman Markin works in the Department of Party Propaganda and Agitation. His job is to erase people who have been determined by the government to be traitors.
He literally erases them- painting over them in photos and paintings. Families are ordered to turn over any evidence that a loved one ever existed to be eliminated. Roman visits his sister-in-law to collect photos of his brother Vaska, her husband who was executed for his religious practices, and to warn her of the dangers of disobeying the government.
Roman also instructs his sister-in-law to take photographs of her son every year in case she is arrested and he is placed in an orphanage. This will make it easier to find him if she is ever released. That fact just floored me.
Roman continues his work daily erasing people from existence. But he began adding something too- he put his dead brother into every painting he censored. He put images of Vaska as a young boy, a teen, an adult, an older man. Every single image he worked on had Vaska in it to atone for Roman's guilt over his brother.
Others people we meet in the collection of stories include Galina, the beautiful granddaughter of a famous ballerina, who deserted her first love to become the wife of a wealthy oil oligarch. We read of Kolya, her first love who became a soldier and drug dealer, and his brother Alexei who makes a mixtape for his brother to take into war with him.
A painting by a famous Russian artist of a pasture ties the stories together. Roman puts his brother into it, and Kolya ends up spending too much time in the actual pasture under unfortunate circumstances. Many of the characters in the story have a connection to this painting and it is a lifeline to some.
The writing in The Tsar of Love and Techno just stuns. Writing of how people turned their neighbors in to police for any suspected infraction, he says " Our city was small and whispers easily became verdict." That sentence conveys everything about life then and there in nine words.
Other examples are :
"The obvious is only obvious when it happens to someone else."
"I said nothing, and as is often the case with men who possess more power than wisdom, he took my silence for affirmation."
"Wealth announces itself with what's easy to break and impossible to clean." (Talking about Galina's apartment filled with white carpets and expensive chairs and art.)
"To say he felt guilty would ascribe to ethical borders that were lines on a map of a country that no longer existed."
"Uncertainty recalibrated the moral compass to point toward survival."
It took me a week to read The Tsar of Love and Techno because I simply didn't want it to ever end. I would read a story, and then take time to appreciate the writing, the complexity of the story, and what life was like for these people under the Soviet regime. What it took to survive, the choices people were forced to make when no good choice existed, just crushed me.
This is another masterpiece from Marra, one that proves that he is a force to be reckoned with in literature for a long time. I cannot do his book justice in this review, suffice it to say that The Tsar of Love and Techno knocked me out and is the best book I have read this year, possibly in two years. I give it my highest recommendation.
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he even won a National Book Critics' Circle Award. It is a brilliant book.Marra's second book is a collection of linked short stories, The Tsar of Love and Techno, set in the USSR. This collection covers a wider range of years and characters, and it is even more brilliant because of that.
Marra starts off strong with The Leopard, a story set in 1937 that drops the reader into an nearly improbable situation, yet one that happened everyday in the Soviet Union. Roman Markin works in the Department of Party Propaganda and Agitation. His job is to erase people who have been determined by the government to be traitors.
He literally erases them- painting over them in photos and paintings. Families are ordered to turn over any evidence that a loved one ever existed to be eliminated. Roman visits his sister-in-law to collect photos of his brother Vaska, her husband who was executed for his religious practices, and to warn her of the dangers of disobeying the government.
Roman also instructs his sister-in-law to take photographs of her son every year in case she is arrested and he is placed in an orphanage. This will make it easier to find him if she is ever released. That fact just floored me.
Roman continues his work daily erasing people from existence. But he began adding something too- he put his dead brother into every painting he censored. He put images of Vaska as a young boy, a teen, an adult, an older man. Every single image he worked on had Vaska in it to atone for Roman's guilt over his brother.
Others people we meet in the collection of stories include Galina, the beautiful granddaughter of a famous ballerina, who deserted her first love to become the wife of a wealthy oil oligarch. We read of Kolya, her first love who became a soldier and drug dealer, and his brother Alexei who makes a mixtape for his brother to take into war with him.
A painting by a famous Russian artist of a pasture ties the stories together. Roman puts his brother into it, and Kolya ends up spending too much time in the actual pasture under unfortunate circumstances. Many of the characters in the story have a connection to this painting and it is a lifeline to some.
The writing in The Tsar of Love and Techno just stuns. Writing of how people turned their neighbors in to police for any suspected infraction, he says " Our city was small and whispers easily became verdict." That sentence conveys everything about life then and there in nine words.
Other examples are :
"The obvious is only obvious when it happens to someone else."
"I said nothing, and as is often the case with men who possess more power than wisdom, he took my silence for affirmation."
"Wealth announces itself with what's easy to break and impossible to clean." (Talking about Galina's apartment filled with white carpets and expensive chairs and art.)
"To say he felt guilty would ascribe to ethical borders that were lines on a map of a country that no longer existed."
"Uncertainty recalibrated the moral compass to point toward survival."
It took me a week to read The Tsar of Love and Techno because I simply didn't want it to ever end. I would read a story, and then take time to appreciate the writing, the complexity of the story, and what life was like for these people under the Soviet regime. What it took to survive, the choices people were forced to make when no good choice existed, just crushed me.
This is another masterpiece from Marra, one that proves that he is a force to be reckoned with in literature for a long time. I cannot do his book justice in this review, suffice it to say that The Tsar of Love and Techno knocked me out and is the best book I have read this year, possibly in two years. I give it my highest recommendation.
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LibraryThing member Dreesie
Wow.
I love books that feature connected short stories. That said, I wish I had kept notes of the characters' names from the beginning, because so many reappear much later in the book, and it took me a bit to wrap my head around who was who. Because not everyone knows everyone else. I feel like
At the same time, though, the use of the painting to connect the characters bugs me just a touch. It smacks of one of my favorite books, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreeland, published in 1999. If you liked this one, I highly recommend that one. Yes it's different, but you'll see what I mean!
I love books that feature connected short stories. That said, I wish I had kept notes of the characters' names from the beginning, because so many reappear much later in the book, and it took me a bit to wrap my head around who was who. Because not everyone knows everyone else. I feel like
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maybe I missed some tidbits that would add even more to the story--but nothing major. I can see how this could be a 5-star read for many. I wonder, if I had kept a character list, would it have been so for me?At the same time, though, the use of the painting to connect the characters bugs me just a touch. It smacks of one of my favorite books, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreeland, published in 1999. If you liked this one, I highly recommend that one. Yes it's different, but you'll see what I mean!
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LibraryThing member Hebephrene
Marra's first novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon was one of the best books of the last few years. This his followup falls short. The subject again is the War in Chechnya but this time told in short stories and this time more from the perspective of the Russians. Ambitiously he comes at these
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linked stories by using veyr different narrative approaches. Sometimes first person, sometimes third and jumping around in time but still focused on one story that of the death of a Russian soldier during the war. This he hoped would allow him to do something greater than a novel. It doesn't because while there are some terrific stories some are flat and feel mannered. The best was The Grozny Tourist Bureau which is told from the Chechnya's side about paintings airbrushed by a censor who is then along with the master whose work he wrecked is then collected. The censor painted figures in replacing those he removed. In Marra's fictional world a day in which you are not being tortured counts as a positive day. In other words this is the bleakest imaginable place to be. The mobility of the narrator and the flexible approach allows us to see the central story from myriad perspectives but some lack emotional power, others come off as snarky and cynical. Nor did the central story work since the main character, as heartbroken as he might be, is a thug. This is modern Russia and a new set of criminals much like the old ones have taken over. The Siberian village where the soldier hails from is a monument to environmental degradation and in consequence everyone is dying of cancer. Again, if you are not being tortured, life is good. Overall this felt like stories that he couldn't work into his novel and wanted to still use. Worth it but not but to the standard he set with the novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member Beamis12
I loved his first novel and though this is a book of short stories, I loved this one too. It is not often that one can read a book of shorts, connected thought they are and feel like one has indeed read a whole novel. This one starts with a censor in the 1930's, under Stalin and continues back and
ARC from publisher.
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forth until the present. The stories are connected through people, photographs, places and a painting. The images and descriptions are powerful, the prose amazing, at times there is even humor of the ironic sort. Through these wonderful stories we get a glimpse of the people in the former USSR, the dissidents, the babushkas, the soldiers in the military and the regular people trying to make a home and family. Particularly loved how he tied the elements together so tidily, this author is a true talent.ARC from publisher.
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LibraryThing member Gwendydd
This is a collection of inter-connected short stories set mostly in Chechnya, spanning from the Lenin era to the present day. Most of the stories focus on a particular family, or a particular artist, or a particular dacha. Like so much of literature about 20th-century Russia, a common theme in many
I listened to the audiobook. Each of the stories was read by a different narrator, which was effective.
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of the stories is the slipperiness of reality, and how reality can be constructed. Even though some of the characters only appear in one story, they are all well-developed. Most are very vulnerable, and as a reader you care about what happens to them. Of course, it's Russia, so the stories are not very happy, and there is a sense of tragedy built into all of them.I listened to the audiobook. Each of the stories was read by a different narrator, which was effective.
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