Shokotort
Cried and laughed with the hero of the book. This clever sense of humor and the deep sense of humanity is uplifting. Should be recommended as supplementary reading to any Russian history textbook of tzar era.
Skipped some sections, may be need to revisit those circular fairy tale loops at another stage in life.
For some reason starting almost every important story with “Oh, but wait, I need to tell you something before I do that” got annoying and I found myself skipping paragraphs. Otherwise, great work by great author.
Easy to love!
Writer's observations of life and relationships are fresh and piercing and.... Very inclusive.
read it in one go, over 24 hours, still have the tender feelings for Gogol and his relationships three days later
...есть у них, у недостатков, этих и всех прочих, такое свойство – чуть только упомяни о них, как из едва заметных делаются они более чем очевидными.
крутейший роман! в осадке от полноты чувств и мыслей.
“It dawned on him that he had never loved a woman wholeheartedly and that bead had always been the loved one...in other words, emotionally he hadn't grown up”
Inevitably, of course (because this is America), lurking behind the praise for Salter's achievement is the standard second-guess about all fine writing: that it's mandarin, arty for art's sake, prettied and exclusive, and that as such it conceals an absence of something crucial-someone's version of gritty substance, usually - which we Americans absolutely won't put up with (unless we do).
It's as if to be truly American and truth-qualifying we always have to bare the unpretty parts, tote the heavy lumber, get splinters in our hands - and in our sentences.
There are, however, no splinters in Salter's sentences. Relatively compact, it is no easy novel to sum up, so nuanced is its view human beings, so rich and varied its fictive effects, so large its intention.
the first two parts were amazing. i was transported not even to the medieval exotics of Persia and Uzbekistan, but to my childhood, when fiction reading was the highest / most sought after pleasure. but the last part soaked its ends in the Atlantic turning this otherwise magical story into a blockbuster.
Need to re-visit when i have more time for self-absorbed musings of an old intellectual
deep beautiful sentences
from interview with author “I've since been to Israel, and even though i do feel a kinship with the country, I know I am not of the place either. So multiple places have claims on my heart. I expect it will always be this way for me. I don't see it as a happy condition. I think it is healthier and more natural fro a person to feel himself at home in one place. For some reason, this identification is something all people crave, which is why the experience of exile is painful.”