Between Dog and Wolf

by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry

The hour between dog and wolf is twilight, when it is hard to distinguish between known and unknown, right and wrong. When one state has ended and another has not quite begun. In 1980s Russia, Soviet policies, cruel but familiar, are giving way to untested concepts such as glasnost and perestroika.

Four teenagers – Anya, Milka, Petya and Aleksey, whose lives, like those of their Western counterparts, are fuelled by sex, alcohol, and cigarettes – yearn for a world of Levi’s, Queen, foreign travel and the freedom to choose their fates. Instead, like their ancestors, they encounter heartbreak and tragedy. With a nod to Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard , crumbling dachas surrounded by apple orchards, the scenes of idyllic summers, are slated for destruction as capitalism corrupts and corrodes the best of the past without bringing a promise of renewal.

Yet while depicting a bloody and desperate era, this exceptional debut novel pulsates with life. It is radiant with friendship and love, the power of literature, values and politics, as its characters struggle to survive, to save their country and one another.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Historical Fiction, 21st Century, Russia

335 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 19, 2023

About the author

Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry is a Russian-Armenian émigré who moved to the United States in 1995 after having witnessed perestroika and the fall of the Iron Curtain. Writing in English, her second language, she has published fifty stories and received nine Pushcart nominations. Her work has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Electric Literature, Indiana Review, The Southern Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, and elsewhere. Gorcheva-Newberry is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction; the Tennessee Williams scholarship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference; and the Prairie Schooner Raz/Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction for her collection of stories, What Isn't Remembered, which was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award. She lives with her family, splitting her time between New York, Virginia, and Russia.

Reviews

[Anna Gniwotts]

exquisite and heartbreaking representation of friendship, love, and loss, as well as the grief for losing a beloved country and childhood. 10/10 sobbed for like an hour during the last chapters

[Bessie Prior]

this book was heavily moving. like at first i didn’t like the changes in the end but i think it was acc quite representative of the situation and how little i can relate to SOVIET RUSSIA surprise that huh… but generation perestroika, something that is hardly mentioned or spoken about anymore… this did in a well written way. i honestly really liked this book. idk what i would change.. or I DO but then it would be a spoiler but then also i’ve jUST REALISED WHat IT SIGNIFIES i should have done english lit fr

[Ruby Payne]

Broke my heart!!! While a bit clumsy in places, it’s owing to how passionate and honest it all is.

[Anya Alekseevna]

So sad because it is so true. It didn't read as a fictional story; similar and even worse things did happen. It was painful to read but not in a sharp knife stabbing type of pain rather a numbing stone thudding your chest type. You live but it's hard to breathe. It is, after all, a book on loss and grief and how these seem inherent to the Russian Soul. The questions the protagonist keeps grappling with, - "Do Russians carry some profound, detrimental sadness?" And where does it come from? - never get answered. And could they?

The mood, the thinking, the descriptions felt true, felt like home. The home, where I feel "like I have no legs. I can't really find my footing. It's familiar and foreign at the same time".

Between Dog and Wolf is an accurate dip into the lost era of a lost generation.

[Rachel Evans]

Although it is depressing to realise that this book is probably classed as historical fiction, I absolutely loved it. The characters jump off the page and the sense of place is beautifully created. I always love me a soviet novel and being able to remember the news events that thread through this book made it extra enjoyable. Very much recommend

[Ida Talberg]

Fyfaen. Forfatteren har en utrolig fortellerevne som klarer å formidle historiene til så mange triste skjebner på en såpass vakker og vemodig måte. Gråt litt. Masse gåsehud. Lærte også masse om russisk kultur og historie.

[Sophie]

Given to me by Claire. I really enjoyed this book, it was so interesting learning about what it’s like uprising up in Russia 1980’s. Very sad book but actually didn’t get that much of an emotional reaction from me. Would love to read more about the iron curtain.

[Molly Field]

bittersweet start to finish

[Josef]

A strong 4.5

Magnificent and truly heart wrenching.

[Imogen]

Absolutely gorgeous

[Louise Walsh]

Part 1 was good part 2 was not, too pro American

[Chloee]

4.5

[Larry Brown]

Devoured this one. The soviet backdrop added a lot to the story and the characters lives.

[Reva]

this 2024 read has also been haunting me. An excellent book, very nostalgic read and very interesting to see contemporary Russian fiction like this. Gave me a (somewhat expected) razor sharp perspective on the post-soviet russia that I studied very differently last year.

[kittyprincess]

Exceptional

[Kristina Drake]

part of me wishes that I didn’t read this, because now every coming of age story I’ve read just pales in comparison to it

[Kriegslok]

"Do you think Russians carry some profound, detrimental sadness?" I asked "Depends on what kind of Russians." I mean in general, Russian people who survived all the terror: the Revolution, the wars, Stalinist repressions. Perestroika. "Survived? Most are still going through shit. It's never really over. Even for those who left."

Between Dog and Wolf begins as recollections of a child growing up in the dying years of the Soviet Union. There is a deeply felt childhood nostalgia, a childhood free of adult concerns and childish pleasures that are found everywhere that new humans are developing the faculties that will possibly help them the horror of adulthood. A semi-autobiographical novel, the author's memories seem to come flooding through showing how it was possible for a child to enjoy life in the USSR. However, this happy existence is brutally shattered with the onset of adulthood. Quite how brutally the bubble bursts is quite shocking. 

This is a novel about friendships, about what is revealed, about what is kept secret, about what happens when secrets are revealed, about what happens when they are not. While it is set in Russia the human conflicts and friendships are common to humanity, as is the universal pain, misery and suffering out of which the survivors seek islands of escape and happiness where they try to patch up their innocence and rebuild their traumatised lives.

"But who can know all the grief the other person has felt or lived through? We aren't really allowed any intimate knowledge of someone's past, just a glimpse and speculation. An unfulfilled dream at best, a sorrowful secret at worst."

Central Europe and Russia went through some of the greatest trauma of the twentieth century, revolutions, wars, genocide, lawlessness, the rise and fall of ideologies and even countries.  People can not live through this without the scars and it is the survivors that the author here reveals and celebrates here. This novel is a beautiful recollection of an innocent childhood, its shattering as it breaks into adulthood, and how we deal with the shit of life. 

"As always, Lopatin had argued with him about the difference between Chekov's times and ours, the serfdom abolished a century ago, but Trifinov had said, "Serfdom - yes., serfs - no. This country needs them. There always must be someone to exploit, abuse, starve, punish."

[Julia]

Wow. Just wow. Unlike Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, I struggle to find the right words to describe how I felt reading this book. "Wow" was actually something I said to myself (out loud) quite a lot while reading it -- I just never expected to feel so much power and beauty and depth behind words before. I fell absolutely in love with this book and cannot recommend it enough (and am actively telling all my friends that they must read it). This novel carries so much weight, passion, love, life... It offers a glimpse into a chapter of history that is so important yet often somewhat overlooked. As the daughter of someone born around the same time and place as Anya in this story, I feel gratitude to be given deep personal insight into what this looked like. Kristina's beautiful, observant, detailed descriptions capture the nostalgia that even I feel looking back on my own experiences at my grandparents' dacha in the summertime. This is a masterpiece that I am grateful to have experienced and plan on reading again and again.

[Denise K.]

I picked up the UK version of this book on a press trip in Roanoke, Virginia. (The U.S. version is called The Orchard.) I had a hunch I would like it based on the first page, and I was completely correct. This coming-of-age novel kept me engaged every time I picked it up with its intriguing, relatable characters, descriptive prose and tragic plot. I also learned a great deal about Soviet Russia. While I already suspected that the story is very personal to author Gorcheva-Newberry, her Author's Note at the end of the book truly touched me and made me appreciate the beautiful work of art she created in order to heal. Yes, it was hauntingly sad and disturbing in some parts - but hey, it's Russian. As a bonus, the novel has more than a few "saucy" scenes, which were well-written and not gross or over the top. Overall, a juicy, poignant kickoff to my summer reading.

[Hannah Walker]

I picked this book up in a lovely little independent bookshop and it really didn't disappoint. A beautiful tale of friendship and grief that I got completely absorbed into. I sometimes find books set in countries I'm unfamiliar with difficult to read, purely because of unrecognisable (to me) names and places but the Author did such a great job of painting a picture with her words, I read it quickly and deeply. I got caught up in the world, time and place and grew to feel like I knew the characters. The depiction of friendship between two teenage girls right from the start was entirely relatable despite it being based in a different culture and it was comforting in that familiarity. I definitely recommend!

[Abigail Cohen]

The fastest I’ve ever read a book. I’m not super big on reading.
This novel was single-handedly the most beautiful intense heart filling book I have ever read . She talks about what it’s like growing up in Soviet Russia. It was incredibly poetic and romantic without being unrealistic. This is a book I could read again and again. I have some Russian family so I could relate a little bit extra to the book, but there were multiple moments where I was crying waterfalls of tears, and I have never ever cried this much during any movie or any book. Something about her genius style of writing had me blown away as she is too underrated for this quality of work.
I wish everyone I know could read it too .

[Kate]

Too Western in the way it’s written, which maybe is the point? But it was a bit grating, I’m not sure why. (I have a similar background to the author, maybe that’s why.)

Modern Russian politics also shoehorned in unnecessarily and awkwardly. Final section is set in 2008 yet they’re talking about Putin changing the constitution to remain in power indefinitely (this was in 2020) and Ukraine outlawing the Russian language (this never actually fully happened but wasn’t even on the agenda in 2008, relations were good; laws promoting Ukrainian only were in 2017 and 2019).

[Anjuna Harper]

God bless this book.
Beautiful writing describing coming of age and the years afterwards -- lost, unteathered from a past and relationships that were once hot fires turned into simmering coals, too distant and yet haunting you like a ghost.
The way time and experience itself tears family members and friends apart to a sickeningly isolating distance between values, politics, opportunities and culture.
And grief, so much grief.
I hope for an apple orchard in the new, less spoiled plot if land, too.
"We know who the perpertrator is. We are not to blame- we are survivors, we are the champions."

[Annette Morris]

Hugely enjoyable book about friendship from which I also learned lots about Russian life, culture and politics in the 1980's. The four main characters are wonderfully real and full of life as they navigate their way through their teens during a time of immense political turbulence for Russia. It is observant, sensitive, funny, heartbreaking and, at times, shocking. Excellent book but trigger warning for sexual abuse.

[Bethany Bell]

A bittersweet reminder that life is never just one thing - all light, no darkness, or vice versa. Though the pain can be rich and sudden, the sweetness can come when we least expect it, but sometimes we have to make the decision to open ourselves to it, and that’s often a difficult decision to make. So grateful that this text has helped me recognise the beauty in falling in love with friends and friendship - what can be sweeter and more fulfilling?

[Joanna Trigg]

God was this great. Heartbreaking. I sussed early on what was happening with Milka but I didn’t expect it to get so dark. What a terrible end for her. I loved the dialogue between the characters. The writing was superb. The author’s note at the end regarding loss and reflecting on her real experiences made it even more devastating. A beautiful character exploration of life during such challenging times.

[Dylan Kakoulli]

tbf, it’s probably more 2.5 than 2 stars out of 5 overall.

But still, WHAT a slog !

Slow paced, stiltedly written and with little to no character -or even plot development (which are both a MUST for book touted as being a ‘coming of age’ style read imo), Between Dog and Wolf disappointingly proved to be as dry, dull and deeply depressing as the land and characters it depicted.

2.5

[Molly Gartland]

A coming of age story set against the backdrop of the Soviet Union crumbling apart. Beautifully written, gripping story that lingered long past the last page. Have recommended it to so many people who also loved it.

[Ella Ruth]

This book was so beautiful. It’s like Elena Ferrante meets 1980s Russia— like grungy and melancholic but also sweet. The author depicts female friendship with such reverence and care, ultimately showing us that true friendship is the greatest love there is. I cried like four times. 😋 Read it!

[Olivier Bataille]

It was very intriguing to be immersed into Russia during Soviet times but I felt somewhat disconnected with the protagonist. The Author’s note gave some more insight at the end although a bit too late in my opinion.