The Tsar of Love and Techno

Didn't think at first that I would necessarily enjoy this collection of short stories but the writing was wonderful and the way the characters were interwoven was brilliant and lovely. Also, some of his lines were truly hilarious. Very well done. The audio was good, but the accent work was not the best I've heard.

What a beautiful mind Marra has. Such compassion, and such a gift with language. It's like he took that “everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” adage to heart, deeply to heart, and wants us to as well so he pummels us with it mercilessly for hundreds of pages except his pummeling is tender and lyrical and loving and sweet and funny and poignant. We loathe his characters then love them then ultimately recognize ourselves in them — we are all products of broken environments and flawed systems.Marra has a taste for the absurd, both comic and tragic (note to self: continue pondering whether there's any difference), and the Russian / Chechnyan settings he chooses offer plenty of senseless tragedy, loss of life and soul, which Marra uses as opportunity to highlight the resilience of human spirit.Some excerpts I simply have to share:We fell in and out of love with fevered frequency. We constantly became people we would later regret having been.I have human friends, obviously. But everything's easier with a cat. He wants a little fish soup in a saucer and the occasional scratch on the head. I want the illusion that an animal bred to trade affection for food can understand the inquietudes of my soul.They were building a life of small kindnesses together. Some days it was extraordinary.I probably shouldn't've read this so closely on the heels of [b:Constellation 16141936 A Constellation of Vital Phenomena Anthony Marra https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1368039202l/16141936.SY75.jpg 19926928] because, like friend K., I want nothing so much as to start it all over again; but unlike K. I just can't justify the time right now. Pick this up when you have time - lots of time.

I stayed away from this book after absolutely loving Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon. How could any book live up to the lofty expectations set by what I consider one of my top 5 reads. Tsar shows it's not a fluke. Marra is a master and once again I found sentences that stopped me cold. It feels almost manipulative how he's able to illicit larger emotions with the tiniest of gestures. It is a 10 cm square of canvas, a tinfoil wrapped spaceship of the imagination, a cassette tape. And damn funny amidst the bleakness of Russia and heartbreaking without getting mired in the maudlin.

Marra juggles multiple characters inhabiting a collection of interconnected short stories that span 75 years and makes it look easy. The shifts in tone were uneven but maybe it's more the good ones were so good - Alexei's chapter will blow your hair back and the Grozny Tourists bureau hooked me hard.

I love Anthony Marra's books. They are about Russia and Chechnya and places I've never cared about and yet the raw sweetness to his writing on war and crime and love and family touches my heart. His characters have many flaws, but there is usually something about them achingly human that makes you like them anyway. A few things today that touched me. A boy thinks his dad is weird and narcissistic because he has a photo of himself taken each birthday and hangs on the wall. “Not photos of me or Mom, just of you It's like you saw a photo spread of Kim Jong il's living room and really liked his style,” the son says. And then he learns the reason behind the hanging of the photos. His father explains, finally, “There are no photos of my father. There used to be, but my mother had to destroy them. ... I can't remember his face. I don't know who he was. I don't know where I began, Seryozha. ... They are for you. So you will know.” So many things we dislike or condemn because we don't know the reason behind it.
Another, I won't give details because of a spoiler but it's a memory of a perfect day, of two boys seeing how much their father loved their Mom, of how happy their mother was, and knowing that it was only months later that she died. Remembering that scene of the happy day, the son says, “What an improbably thing it is to be alive on Earth.” And that sentence struck home to me, and made me so appreciate being alive this day, and reminded me not to waste a minute of this amazing life.
I also love the way he weaves individual stories together, so you realize you're learning about the grandson of a character you learned of much earlier, and see how the things he put in place long had beautiful results.