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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Angels, imaginary friends, near-saints, shades and über-ogres fall to Earth among ordinary Russians and routinely succeed in whetting the imagination in this sparkling collection from Tolstoy's great-grandniece, a longtime New Yorker fiction contributor. It includes her two previous story collections, On the Golden Porch and Sleepwalker in a Fog, along with more recent work. The opening story, "Loves Me, Loves Me Not," presents the classic hateful nanny/spoiled kids dyad, setting it in a Leningrad full of wonders: some menacing, others joyous. In "Okkerivil River," the hapless Simeonov sets off to rescue (or so he imagines) chanteuse Vera Vasilevna, who has serenaded him from his Victrola for half a lifetime. When he does find her, she turns out to be exactly like the title river: vivid, repugnant and polluted beyond human redress. In "The Circle," Vassily Mikailovich (Tolstaya wryly leaves him without a surname) turns 60 and finds little behind or ahead of him, despite meeting the ghost of former lover Isolde. In "Yorick," a baleen whale, provider of bone for button-making and enabler of childhood fantasies, is elegized as Hamlet's nursemaid and human cairn to the narrator. Beautiful, imaginative and disconcerting, Tolstaya's Russia is a labyrinth of treasures and horrors. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Tolstaya's voice is utterly her own, incorporating comic exaggeration, sly satire, bursts of lyricism and whimsy to intoxicating effect." --National Post (Canada)
"Tolstaya demonstrates an impressive range in these 23 stories...[that encompass] political satire, flights of surrealism and realistic urban and domestic dramas, nearly all set in the Soviet era...Children, old folks and the struggling in-betweens–Tolstaya sees into all their hearts. Remarkable" –Kirkus
“Tolstaya offsets layers of exquisitely constructed language with the colloquial and the idiomatic and in a similar way layers the commonplace with the supernatural. The creation of a brilliant jumble of motley metaphors is her gift – not plot, trajectory, or the arc of a story, but the plunge into the middle of dazzling verbiage, her bright universe.” –The Boston Phoenix
Praise for Tolstaya:
Tolstaya is "considered by many critics and writers to be the foremost writer of her generation, a miniaturist whose stories combine the linguistic stardust of Vladimir Nabokov and the emotional wisdom of Anton Chekhov."–The Washington Post
"Tolstaya demonstrates an impressive range in these 23 stories...[that encompass] political satire, flights of surrealism and realistic urban and domestic dramas, nearly all set in the Soviet era...Children, old folks and the struggling in-betweens–Tolstaya sees into all their hearts. Remarkable" –Kirkus
“Tolstaya offsets layers of exquisitely constructed language with the colloquial and the idiomatic and in a similar way layers the commonplace with the supernatural. The creation of a brilliant jumble of motley metaphors is her gift – not plot, trajectory, or the arc of a story, but the plunge into the middle of dazzling verbiage, her bright universe.” –The Boston Phoenix
Praise for Tolstaya:
Tolstaya is "considered by many critics and writers to be the foremost writer of her generation, a miniaturist whose stories combine the linguistic stardust of Vladimir Nabokov and the emotional wisdom of Anton Chekhov."–The Washington Post
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tolstaya, The Great Enchantress, July 21 2008
By Guttersnipe Das "Guttersnipe Das" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: White Walls: Collected Stories (Paperback)
If the literary style genie were to suddenly appear--he's bare-chested, muscled and tattooed like the rest of the genies, but wears spectacles and travels amid a flock of white index cards--I would say to that genie, "I want to be a queer Tatyana Tolstaya."Tolstaya is the grand enchantress of the More-Is-More School, firing off one inspired rant after another. Her characters launch diatribes on why women should have fur tails, or teeth that receive radio signals. Plot matters less than the gleeful generous fireworks of language. Or the plot is the only plot that matters, namely, `I'm going to find some meaning and/or delight in this world'.
For almost two years now I've been attached to this book; every month I reread a few stories in hopes that they will prove contagious. Most of the stories in magazines so stilted and mannerly in comparison, like a respectable dinner party with white wine and filet of sole, and the whole time you're sitting there wishing it would finish already, so you could do out and carouse. Carouse and cavort is what Tolstaya's stories do--they are parties with dancing and fireworks. The New York Review of Books Classics series has rescued a lot of important books (check out: Walser, Desani, Chaudhuri, Pintorelli, Krudy) but this is one of the very best. And read Tolstaya's novel The Slynx too, but read this one first.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing, April 20 2010
By Lawrence Thursk - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: White Walls: Collected Stories (Paperback)
Fantastic use of language, surprising flights of fancy on every page. Am reading it now and loving it! Definitely one of the best contemporary Russian writers I've come across.
3 of 23 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Satisfied customer., Oct 15 2007
By Bill B. Broughton - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: White Walls: Collected Stories (Paperback)
Perfect condition. On time delivery.However the book represnts one of the most depressing views of mankind I have ever read.
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