A Terrible Country

A novel so captivating that I kept feeling it was a memoir. The author is Russian born though has lived in the US for most of his life. Basically the novel is about Andrei who returns to Russia in his 30's to care for his grandmother who is in declining health. He stays about a year and has no game plan for the rest of his life. He was mostly an academic, unable to find a professorship anywhere so felt like a loser. In Russia, he slowly meet others around his age and engages in sports and political discussions and also finds romance. The relationship and banter between Andrei and his grandmother was engaging. It is funny yet sad, sometimes confusing and frustrating, but very addictive. I really loved all that was going on and felt he was not a loser but finding his own voice.

An academic in his thirties, not too ambitious and a bit lost in his career, returns to his country of origin - Russia - to take care of his aging grandmother. What we get is an outsider's perspective of what it must be like to live in Moscow. Everyone's suspicious of foreigners, the coffeshops are overpriced, the KGB building is just around the corner, the hockey games are omnipresent but hard to find, all political protest is immediately surpressed, and people dream of going to their dachas in the summer. Corruption, dissent and nostalgia coexist.

I quite liked this, it had a good flow and just about the right level of politics. And even though the main character was ultimately flawed, he still mostly did a good job taking care of his forgetful yet still rather active 90 year old grandma, and I enjoyed witnessing that.

When they finally had to move their grandma, they cried, and so did I.The plumbing episode was weirdly detailed.