L. Bordetsky-Williams's Blog: Doctor Zhivago

My novel, Forget Russia, an Editors' Choice Book of the Historical Novels Review, is discounted ON SALE on Amazon. It's an immigrant story dealing with love, revolution, and betrayal.--Forget Russia looks at inherited trauma and how one young woman journeys back to an ancestral homeland to heal not only herself but the women who came before her.

Very exciting, my latest podcast interview with Rebel Girls Bookclub, "a book club for feminist literary nerds," just went live. The interview was conducted by the amazing team of Harmony Birch and Maggie, who look at "rebellious heroines." Their questions were incredible. Please check out the Podcast. It can be found on Apple, Spotify, and Anchor. Harmony and Maggie can also be found on twitter: @RebelGirlsBook1 or on Instagram: @rgbcpod
Please check out the interview:

https://anchor.fm/rgbc/episodes/Forge...

There are many references to Russian literature in Forget Russia. As a teenager, my way of blocking out the world was to read Russian literature! I know...sounds crazy. Then when I studied Russian language and literature in college, I can't express how much I loved it. I believe there really is such a thing as a Russian soul, and the first sentence of Forget Russia starts off with Anna's mother telling her that her problem is she has a Russian soul! I'm thinking today of the spiritual nature of Tolstoy. One of the main characters in Forget Russia, Iosif, has a picture of Tolstoy, with his long white beard, hanging in his room. He helps Anna understand what a prophet Tolstoy was, how beloved he was as a writer. While Tolstoy's novels are really long, his story, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," is short and easy to read and digest even though it's so profound. What is the correct way to live? I love when Ivan realizes that every time he is rising in society he is actually descending lower and lower in his soul. I also love how when Ivan dies, most people at the funeral think that they may be able to get his job or even get his apartment. Living in NYC, the apartment comment really hit home. It felt like this story was written yesterday!

I was thinking today about the quote from the wonderful novel, "The Green Tent," by Lyudmila Ulitskaya: "It is fascinating to trace the trajectories of people destined to meet." It is amazing how people who come into our lives and change them. It's as if they are all part of a larger unseen story, a fabric of story beneath our very lives. I felt that way when I was a student in the Soviet Union in the 1980's and met so many wonderful young Soviet Jews, who ultimately changed the course of my life. In my novel, Forget Russia, I seek to recreate all that they meant to me.