Natasha and Other Stories

Natasha and Other Stories

by David Bezmozgis
Natasha and Other Stories

Natasha and Other Stories

by David Bezmozgis

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Overview

Now a Major Motion Picture

A dazzling debut—and a publishing phenomenon—Natasha: And Other Stories is the tender, savagely funny collection from a young immigrant who has taken the critics by storm.

Few readers had heard of David Bezmozgis before May 2003, when Harper's, Zoetrope, and The New Yorker all printed stories from his forthcoming collection. In the space of a few weeks, America thus met the Bermans—Bella and Roman and their son, Mark—Russian Jews who have fled the Riga of Brezhnev for Toronto, the city of their dreams.

Told through Mark's eyes, the stories in Natasha possess a serious wit and uniquely Jewish perspective that recall the first published stories of Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth, not to mention the work of Jhumpa Lahiri, Nathan Englander, and Adam Haslett.

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' First Book Prize for Canada and the Caribbean, the Toronto Book Award, Reform Judaism Prize for Jewish Fiction, Koffler Centre of the Arts' Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the City of Toronto Book Award, the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize for Fiction, and the Moment Magazine Fiction Award

Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and the Governor General’s Award for Literature, the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for Best First Collection of Short Fiction in the English Language

Named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year, a Los Angeles Times' 1 of the 25 Best Books of the Year, a New York Public Library's 25 Best Books to Remember, and a Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781429988650
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date: 04/01/2010
Sold by: Macmillan
Format: eBook
Pages: 160
File size: 707 KB

About the Author

David Bezmozgis was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1973. His first book, Natasha and Other Stories, won a regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was a 2004 New York Times Notable Book. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library. In 2010, he was named one of The New Yorker's “20 Under 40.”

Read an Excerpt


Excerpt from Natasha by David Bezmozgis. Copyright © 2004 by Nada Films, Inc. To be published in June, 2004 Farrar Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved.


GOLDFINCH WAS FLAPPING CLOTHESLINES, a tenement delirious with striving. 6030 Bathurst: insomniac scheming Odessa. Cedarcroft: reeking borscht in the hallways. My parents, Baltic aristocrats, took an apartment at 715 Finch fronting a ravine and across from an elementary school-one respectable block away from the Russian swarm. We lived on the fifth floor, my cousin, aunt, and uncle directly below us on the fourth. Except for the Nahumovskys, a couple in their fifties, there were no other Russians in the building. For this privilege, my parents paid twenty extra dollars a month in rent.

In March of 1980, near the end of the school year but only three weeks after our arrival in Toronto, I was enrolled in Charles H. Best elementary. Each morning, with our house key hanging from a brown shoelace around my neck, I kissed my parents goodbye and, along with my cousin Jana, tramped across the ravine—I to the first grade, she to the second. At three o'clock, bearing the germs of a new vocabulary, we tramped back home. Together, we then waited until six for our parents to return from George Brown City College, where they were taking their obligatory classes in English.

In the evenings we assembled and compiled our linguistic bounty.

Hello, havaryew?

Red, yellow, green, blue.

May I Please go to the washroom?

Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenny.

Joining us most nights were the Nahumovskys. They attended the same English classes and traveled with my parents on the same bus. Rita Nahurnovsky was a beautician, her face spackled with makeup, and Misha Nahumovsky was a tool and die maker. They came from Minsk and didn't know a soul in Canada. With abounding enthusiasm, they incorporated themselves into our family. My parents were glad to have them. Our life was tough, we had it hard—but the Nahumovskys had it harder. They were alone, they were older, they were stupefied by the demands of language. Being essentially helpless themselves, my parents found it gratifying to help the more helpless Nahumovskys.

After dinner, as we gathered on cheap stools around our table, my mother repeated the day's lessons for the benefit of the Nahumovskys and, to a slightly lesser degree, for the benefit of my father. My mother had always been a dedicated student and she extended this dedication to George Brown City College. My father and the Nahumovskys came to rely on her detailed notes and her understanding of the curriculum. For as long as they could, they listened attentively and gropled toward comprehension. When this became too frustrating, my father put on the kettle, Rita painted my mother's nails, and Misha told Soviet jokes.

In a first-grade classroom a teacher calls on her students and inquires after their nationality. "Sasha," she says. Sasha says, "Russian." "Very good," says the teacher. "Arnan," she says. Arnan says, "Armenian," "Very good," says the teacher. "Lubka," she says. Lubka says, "Ukraininan," "Very good," says the teacher. And then she asks Dima. Dima says, "Jewish." "What a shame," says the teacher, "so young and already a Jew."

Reading Group Guide

Discussion Questions
1. In "Tapka" what does the dog symbolize to Rita? To Mark's mother? What is the significance of the dog to Mark, initially as a young boy and then as a mature narrator? On page 9, Mark observes, "we had intuited an elemental truth: love needs no leash." Do you agree? How does his observation relate to the events in "Tapka"? Does the story end happily or tragically? Explain.
2. Despite being set in Canada, do you think the struggles faced by the Bermans in "Roman Berman, Massage Therapist" might apply to other immigrants elsewhere in the world, particularly America? Explain. Why is Doctor Kornblum interested in the Bermans? When the family leaves the Kornblums, Mark wonders, "As we walked back to the Pontiac it was unclear whether nothing or everything had changed" (p 36). Do you think anything changed? Explain.
3. In what ways is "The Second Strongest Man" a continuation of the themes introduced in "Roman Berman, Massage Therapist"? Does the second story resolve some of the questions posed in the earlier story? Explain. Why is Roman's confession to Gregory on page 60, stating that he often thinks of returning to Russia, a significant moment in the story? By the end, how do you think Mark views his father's situation versus that of Gregory?
4. How is the story "An Animal To The Memory" about both the rejection and acceptance of one's cultural identity? What conflicting messages does Mark receive about his heritage? On page 69, Mark's mother says that he is not leaving Hebrew school until he learns what it is to be a Jew. Does Gurvich finally teach Mark what it means to be a Jew? How?
5. In the title story, how does Bezmozgis gradually reveal that Natasha is not like other girls that Mark has met? How do Mark, Natasha and Zina each view sex differently? On page 94, do you think that Mark and Natasha's discussion about sexuality objectification reveals anything about men's and women's attitude toward sex in general? Why? On page 104, Natasha accuses Mark of being like his uncle, of wanting people to make his decisions for him. Do you agree? Explain. By the story's end, what has Natasha taught Mark about himself?
6. In "Choynski," how do the events leading to the deaths of Mark's grandmother and Charley Davis mirror each other? How does the story's narrative structure contribute to this mirroring effect? What do Joe Choynski and the theme of fighting symbolize in the story as a whole? Why do you think it's so important that Mark return his grandmother's false teeth to her? What does the story seem to be saying about the importance of the things that people leave behind after they die?
7. In "Minyan," why does Bezmozgis never define the exact nature of Itzik and Herschel's relationship? Do you think that defining it would change the story's meaning? Explain. According to Zalman, what will happen to Herschel? Do you think that "Minyan" is a fitting end to Natasha? Why?
8. Do you think that reading Natasha's stories together, in the order they are arranged, offers a different experience than if you were to read the stories independently in a magazine? Why? In what ways is Natasha more like a novel than other story collections you may have read?
9. Do you think that being Jewish or a Russian immigrant alters how you read the stories in Natasha? In what ways do the stories transcend the specificity of their characters' experience and become universal? Which stories and characters in Natasha did you most relate to? Explain.

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