JANUARY 2016 - AudioFile
This beautifully written collection of nine linked stories set in Russia from the 1930s to the present is marred by the stilted performances of Beata Pozniak and Rustam Kasymov. Although listeners will have no trouble understanding their accents, both narrators read in a halting manner, pausing in unexpected places, disrupting the flow of the prose. The sections read by Mark Bramhall provide a welcome relief to the overly deliberate narration of the bulk of the audiobook. The stories follow the lives of four families over several generations as they attempt to cope with the changing Russian political atmosphere. The sometimes surprising connections among the characters are found through shared experiences, locales, and art. This powerful look at the Russian spirit is best experienced in print. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 08/03/2015
Marra follows A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (one of PW’s 10 best books of 2013) with this collection of nine interconnected stories, divided into sides A, B, and intermission. They probe personal facets of Russian life, from 1937 to the present—from Chechnya to Siberia and from labor camp to hillside meadow. In the first story, Roman Markin, a Stalin-era specialist in removing purged individuals from photographs and politically correcting artwork, airbrushes out his own brother, then begins secretly inserting his brother’s face into other pieces, including a photograph with a ballerina he’s erasing and a landscape by 19th-century Chechen painter Zakharov into which he’s adding a party boss. “Granddaughters,” set in the Siberian mining town of Kirovsk, focuses on Galina, the ballerina’s granddaughter. Inheriting her grandmother’s beauty if not her talent, Galina captures the Miss Siberia crown, the attentions of the 14th richest man in Russia, and a movie role in Web of Deceit, while her sweetheart, Kolya, ends up fighting and dying in Chechnya. In “The Grozny Tourist Bureau,” deputy museum director Ruslan Dukorov rescues the Zakharov landscape from war damage, then paints in his wife and child—killed, like Kolya, in the meadow depicted in the painting. The title story follows Kolya’s brother to the meadow. “A Temporary Exhibition” shows Roman’s nephew at the 2013 exhibition of Roman’s work arranged by Ruslan and his second wife. Marra portrays a society built on betrayal, pollution, lies, and bullying, where art, music, fantasy, even survival, can represent quiet acts of rebellion. As in his acclaimed novel, Marra finds in Chechnya an inspiration his for his uniquely funny, tragic, bizarre, and memorable fiction. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
Praise for The Tsar of Love and Techno:
“Powerful…strikingly reimagines a nearly a century of changes in Russia. [T]he book’s brilliance and humor are laced with the somber feeling that the country is allergic to evolution."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“As in his acclaimed novel, Marra finds in Chechnya an inspiration for his uniquely funny, tragic, bizarre, and memorable fiction.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
Selected praise and accolades for Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena:
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
New York Times Bestseller
National Book Award Longlist Selection
A Washington Post Top 10 Book of the Year
Washington Post Bestseller
NPR Bestseller
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Winner
An ALA Notable Book of the Year
A #1 Indie Pick
An Amazon.com Best Book of the Year
A Publisher's Weekly Top 10 Books of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
A Library Journal Top 10 Book of the Year
NBCC John Leonard Prize Winner
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by:
New York Magazine * Chicago Tribune * Kansas City Star * GQ
• NPR
• Christian Science Monitor
• San Francisco Chronicle
• Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Brilliant."
—New York Times
“A flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles....Here, in fresh, graceful prose, is a profound story that dares to be as tender as it is ghastly, a story about desperate lives in a remote land that will quickly seem impossibly close and important....I haven’t been so overwhelmed by a novel in years. At the risk of raising your expectations too high, I have to say you simply must read this book.”
—Ron Charles, Washington Post
“Extraordinary....a 21st century War and Peace....Marra seems to derive his astral calm in the face of catastrophe directly from Tolstoy.”
—Madison Smartt Bell, New York Times Book Review
“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is ambitious and intellectually restless....[Marra is] a lover not a fighter, a prose writer who resembles the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 and the Jonathan Safran Foer of Everything Is Illuminated.”
—Dwight Garner, New York Times
“Over and over again, this is an examination of the ways in which many broken pieces come together to make a new whole. In exquisite imagery, Marra tends carefully to the twisted strands of grace and tragedy....Everything in A Constellation of Vital Phenomena...is dignified with a hoping, aching heartbeat.”
—Ramona Ausubel, San Francisco Chronicle
Library Journal
05/01/2015
It's great to see Marra back so quickly after his recent New York Times best-selling and multi-award-winning A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. And it's no surprise that the stories here are set variously in the Soviet Union and Russia, with some featuring Chechnya, whose wars were the subject of Constellation. Among his characters: a 1930s Soviet censor pining over photographs he must alter of a disgraced ballerina and women recalling their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners who settled in Siberia.
