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Il libro russo dei sogni a colori
Nella città siberiana di Perm', durante la prima guerra in Cecenia, un drappello di personaggi singolari abita in un malconcio condominio di epoca sovietica: c'è Azade, musulmana deportata, che negli odori della latrina del cortile legge i sogni e le ansie dei vicini. Mirkhat, un suicida che non vuole andarsene tra i morti e vuole invece riscrivere la sua storia e quella degli altri. Una banda di bambini terribili, che sniffano colla e parlano come profeti. Ol'ga, un'ebrea che lavora per un quotidiano pro-governativo e traduce in rassicuranti eufemismi gli orrori ceceni. Suo figlio Jurij, un veterano affetto da psicosi traumatica che sogna di essere un pesce. E Tanja, che crea reperti falsi e bizzarri per il polveroso museo in cui lavora; affascinata dai colori, dalle nuvole e dai sogni di volo, annota tutto puntualmente su un taccuino da cui non si separa mai. E poi ci sono dei misteriosi Americani di Origine Russa in arrivo... Tutti esuli, tutti senza patria. Un romanzo che è una fantasmagoria di storie e immagini, in cui ogni personaggio ha le sue strategie o i suoi sortilegi per passare dall'apparente assurdità della vita a un significato che la riscatti.
410 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
34 people are currently reading
805 people want to read
About the author
Gina Ochsner
17 books67 followersGINA OCHSNER is the author of two collections of short stories, People I Wanted to Be and The Necessary Grace to Fall, both of which won the Oregon Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Glimmer Train, and others. She is a recipient of the Flannery OConnor Award, the Ruth Hindman Foundation Prize, Guggenheim and NEA Grants, and the Raymond Carver Prize. She lives in Oregon. "
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews
February 19, 2025
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"You are hiding behind your imagination and that flimsy thing people call hope."
The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight is set in post-Soviet Russia and centers on the people living in a crumbling apartment, where a man fell from the roof and now his ghost lingers at the building, heckling the living.
One of the characters is a woman named Tanya, who works at a museum that holds a collection of art knockoffs made from things like chewing gum and foam or popsicle sticks and tomato juice. When the museum director hears of a mysterious American group looking to fund art in Russia, he enlists Tanya in convincing the group to fund the museum where she works.
Of greater interest to me was Olga, a woman who works as a translator for a newspaper called the Red Star, where she’s forced to dilute the truth in her translations or churn out propaganda she quietly disagrees with.
I picked up this book because of its seemingly ghostly and quirky elements, but discovered something much more serious. It's a story of loss and longing, and of soldiering on in the face of hopelessness.
The opening chapters were among my favorite. Ochsner crafts such detailed and believable portraits of her characters that they materialized right in front of me. For me, these were the highlight of the book. But I can't help wishing that Ochsner had leaned more heavily into the ghostly aspect of the novel. There were glimmers of magical realism too, little crumbs that left me desperate for more.
Not quite the book I was expecting, but the writing is sharp and poignant, and the characters leap off the page.
"You are hiding behind your imagination and that flimsy thing people call hope."
The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight is set in post-Soviet Russia and centers on the people living in a crumbling apartment, where a man fell from the roof and now his ghost lingers at the building, heckling the living.
One of the characters is a woman named Tanya, who works at a museum that holds a collection of art knockoffs made from things like chewing gum and foam or popsicle sticks and tomato juice. When the museum director hears of a mysterious American group looking to fund art in Russia, he enlists Tanya in convincing the group to fund the museum where she works.
Of greater interest to me was Olga, a woman who works as a translator for a newspaper called the Red Star, where she’s forced to dilute the truth in her translations or churn out propaganda she quietly disagrees with.
I picked up this book because of its seemingly ghostly and quirky elements, but discovered something much more serious. It's a story of loss and longing, and of soldiering on in the face of hopelessness.
The opening chapters were among my favorite. Ochsner crafts such detailed and believable portraits of her characters that they materialized right in front of me. For me, these were the highlight of the book. But I can't help wishing that Ochsner had leaned more heavily into the ghostly aspect of the novel. There were glimmers of magical realism too, little crumbs that left me desperate for more.
Not quite the book I was expecting, but the writing is sharp and poignant, and the characters leap off the page.
September 29, 2010
I savored this little book--the elegant writing, the willingness of characters to make definitive statements about life. This is what I love about fiction, something I find irritating in non-fiction, because it's all too often invoked in the self-help genre. But characters giving us advice and insight into the truths about life? This is what I love best in fiction.
(Unless it's Phillip Roth-- like being pigeonholed by a bore at a party for 80 pages--but that's not real fiction, it's authorial ranting, a whole other trip. Ditto Tolstoy at his most authorial-invasive.)
Ochsner's characters are far from bores, and their insights are unique, but also specifically Russian, so that I felt I was meeting real Russians--rare for books by Western writers. The humor is Russian, the way of thinking about the world, how one tolerates intolerable situations, how one lives in an impossible world. For instance, an intelligent Jewish woman, works for an anti-semitic, right-wing newspaper, Red Star, censoring stories, "translating" items from stark, unflattering news--mostly about he war in Chechnya, where her son served--into utter drivel, soft-pedaling to the point of smothering it with a pillow.
The humor felt so true to the Russians I've known. It's a tour of ways Russians encounter and manage to live their often very difficult lives. A Russian man tells us what vodka means to Russian men. There's a spot-on example of the New Russian, a practical girl who only wants a toaster oven and is trying to get her shell-shocked boyfriend to make her pregnant. There's the head in the clouds Russian "who lives by sky alone." (a Voznesensky poem I always liked, Chagall's Cornflowers--this book so made me think of it...) A ridiculous museum full of fake exhibits fashioned from styrofoam and chewing gum.
I think the lightness of this book perhaps disappointed some... but, a bit like Joseph Skibell's book "A Blessing on the Moon" (about the afterlife of the Jewish community of a Polish town in WWII,) it avails itself of the oddly weightless tools of magical realism to treat a grim and difficult subject.
(Unless it's Phillip Roth-- like being pigeonholed by a bore at a party for 80 pages--but that's not real fiction, it's authorial ranting, a whole other trip. Ditto Tolstoy at his most authorial-invasive.)
Ochsner's characters are far from bores, and their insights are unique, but also specifically Russian, so that I felt I was meeting real Russians--rare for books by Western writers. The humor is Russian, the way of thinking about the world, how one tolerates intolerable situations, how one lives in an impossible world. For instance, an intelligent Jewish woman, works for an anti-semitic, right-wing newspaper, Red Star, censoring stories, "translating" items from stark, unflattering news--mostly about he war in Chechnya, where her son served--into utter drivel, soft-pedaling to the point of smothering it with a pillow.
The humor felt so true to the Russians I've known. It's a tour of ways Russians encounter and manage to live their often very difficult lives. A Russian man tells us what vodka means to Russian men. There's a spot-on example of the New Russian, a practical girl who only wants a toaster oven and is trying to get her shell-shocked boyfriend to make her pregnant. There's the head in the clouds Russian "who lives by sky alone." (a Voznesensky poem I always liked, Chagall's Cornflowers--this book so made me think of it...) A ridiculous museum full of fake exhibits fashioned from styrofoam and chewing gum.
I think the lightness of this book perhaps disappointed some... but, a bit like Joseph Skibell's book "A Blessing on the Moon" (about the afterlife of the Jewish community of a Polish town in WWII,) it avails itself of the oddly weightless tools of magical realism to treat a grim and difficult subject.
February 16, 2021
A beautifully written novel set in post Soviet Russia. Brimming with the enchantment particular to the magical realism genre, but ends up pointing the reader to the concrete and imperfect world.
July 3, 2010
Ochsner repeats what we already know about life in the former Soviet Union--it's grim, arbitrary and absurd. The different ethnicities coexist uneasily together on the edge of deprivation and despair.
But "The Russian Dreambook" transcends cliche through memorable characters and narrative. These are lives of parable, lived with gallows humor. Though the physical circumstances are dreary, often unbearable, the world is still filled with magic and dreams. There is no clarity in this Russia--every borderline, every act, every word, life itself, is fluid and unsettled, like the mud of the melting snow.
My one big disappointment was the ending. The mood changes too abruptly, too easily, to follow what has gone before in these characters' lives. While the rest of the book was filled with "color and flight"--sharp, mythical, truthful-- the final chapter fell to earth (literally) with neatly tied endings, convenient disappearances, and just rewards.
But "The Russian Dreambook" transcends cliche through memorable characters and narrative. These are lives of parable, lived with gallows humor. Though the physical circumstances are dreary, often unbearable, the world is still filled with magic and dreams. There is no clarity in this Russia--every borderline, every act, every word, life itself, is fluid and unsettled, like the mud of the melting snow.
My one big disappointment was the ending. The mood changes too abruptly, too easily, to follow what has gone before in these characters' lives. While the rest of the book was filled with "color and flight"--sharp, mythical, truthful-- the final chapter fell to earth (literally) with neatly tied endings, convenient disappearances, and just rewards.
February 28, 2018
A magical realism book set in post-Soviet Russia. This novel follows the lives of several families who all live in an apartment building. Several of the characters work together in a museum which features art that is replicas of replicas. In a random lucky chance, they make it as a finalist for a grant from some rich American art patrons. As is common in Russian books, tragedy and hilarity ensue when the Americans come to visit Russia. Another added side story to this novel is the ghost of one of the characters, who haunts the people in the apartment. I was originally going to give this 4 stars, but the last couple of chapters were spectacular in that they were so well-written and just tugged at my heart, so I'm raising it to 5 stars.
June 22, 2010
Huge-hearted with a spirituality both grounded and airy; such a mix of magic, hope, sadness, compassion & cruelty—and also hilarity & absurdity; comparable in its POV shifts (and generational shifts) to J S Foer’s EXTREMELY LOUD, but more open to ghosts and fables; really in a class of its own, alive with synesthesia: “colour with the noise turned low” (119); “Red she loved. In particular, Siberian red, a lead chromate that can be made to dance the scales of colour from lemon yellow to chrome orange to a disturbing blood hue.” (181)
“If God is light, then God is colour.” (181)
I learn from Ochsner's sense of timing and windy chapters, following the psyches and dreams of four characters, the hopeful, affection-starved Tanya being my favorite, *especially* when she paints icons with egg and beer and industrial make-up. Each chapter opens somehow inevitably with a pearl; for instance, Chapter 8, from the point of view of Azade who keeps the portajohn (the “Little Necessary”), opens: “Though Azade had smelled the upside-down dreams of bats and the warm and weedy dreams of eels, nothing reeked as much as the dreams of humans.” (193) I learn from how she writes the community—such friction and destitution among the apartment building occupants—racial prejudice and bullying and need and some common understandings. She weaves together their histories and legends and parables (brought to mind the Yugoslavian film “Time of the Gypsies” for its wide range of emotion and level of reality).
There is much here on the power of story and of word and of truth. This from Azade, one of the POV characters: “Every story Azade had ever known she heard first from her mother. Because this is the way it is with words between parents and children. The stories of the adults are given to the children as a gift, as a blessing, as a reminder, as a curse. And when the story jumps from mouth to mouth, skin to skin, it becomes so fluid and malleable as to sustain numerous retellings in innumerable contexts, stretching so much as to allow a daughter to know all that the mother knew, and in this way to thoroughly become her.” (69)
There is also much here on how we respond—or don’t respond—to suffering, explored most powerfully for me in two characters: Olga who translates all suffering into euphemism for the propagandistic Red Star newspaper and the youngest of the “Americans of Russian Extraction” who come to visit, a vegan doing graduate work on concentration camps, about whom we get this insight from Tanya (regarding prison camps): “This girl would fold her so-tall body into an isolation cell to see what such torture felt like for a mere twenty seconds and she’d look at the glass display case of bones and hair, shoes and glasses—the things that outlasted the men and women who’d died so horribly in a place that was nothing short of hell on earth. She would do this, and if not here in Perm, then somewhere else, Tanya was certain of it, because she felt entitled by distant heritage to some portion of collective suffering, as if suffering were something one could lay claim to and collect.” (318)
“If God is light, then God is colour.” (181)
I learn from Ochsner's sense of timing and windy chapters, following the psyches and dreams of four characters, the hopeful, affection-starved Tanya being my favorite, *especially* when she paints icons with egg and beer and industrial make-up. Each chapter opens somehow inevitably with a pearl; for instance, Chapter 8, from the point of view of Azade who keeps the portajohn (the “Little Necessary”), opens: “Though Azade had smelled the upside-down dreams of bats and the warm and weedy dreams of eels, nothing reeked as much as the dreams of humans.” (193) I learn from how she writes the community—such friction and destitution among the apartment building occupants—racial prejudice and bullying and need and some common understandings. She weaves together their histories and legends and parables (brought to mind the Yugoslavian film “Time of the Gypsies” for its wide range of emotion and level of reality).
There is much here on the power of story and of word and of truth. This from Azade, one of the POV characters: “Every story Azade had ever known she heard first from her mother. Because this is the way it is with words between parents and children. The stories of the adults are given to the children as a gift, as a blessing, as a reminder, as a curse. And when the story jumps from mouth to mouth, skin to skin, it becomes so fluid and malleable as to sustain numerous retellings in innumerable contexts, stretching so much as to allow a daughter to know all that the mother knew, and in this way to thoroughly become her.” (69)
There is also much here on how we respond—or don’t respond—to suffering, explored most powerfully for me in two characters: Olga who translates all suffering into euphemism for the propagandistic Red Star newspaper and the youngest of the “Americans of Russian Extraction” who come to visit, a vegan doing graduate work on concentration camps, about whom we get this insight from Tanya (regarding prison camps): “This girl would fold her so-tall body into an isolation cell to see what such torture felt like for a mere twenty seconds and she’d look at the glass display case of bones and hair, shoes and glasses—the things that outlasted the men and women who’d died so horribly in a place that was nothing short of hell on earth. She would do this, and if not here in Perm, then somewhere else, Tanya was certain of it, because she felt entitled by distant heritage to some portion of collective suffering, as if suffering were something one could lay claim to and collect.” (318)
July 28, 2010
Um. Well, this takes place in post-Soviet Russia, and is more or less about three widows - an Eastern Orthodox Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew - who all live in the same condemned apartment building with their children. Christian Lukeria torments her overweight granddaughter Tanya who spends a lot of her time obsessing over clouds and colors; Muslim Azade learns people's secrets by smelling their excrement and worries over where she went wrong with her son Vitek; Jewish Olga frets over the fate of her idiot son Yuri and his selfish girlfriend Zoya. Also, there's a gaggle of feral children running around. The book begins with the suicide of Mircha, Azade's husband, whose ghost shows up soon after to cause mischief. Much of the actual plot revolves around the local museum where Yuri, Zoya, and Tanya all work. None of the exhibits are originals, and in fact most were created by Tanya herself out of candy wrappers and glue. However, when the possibility arises of a grant from some wealthy Americans, the entire apartment building is in a tizzy. The ending is happy - more or less - though it feels forced and borders on deus ex machina. This is the sort of novel where you have to just absorb things as they come and not approach it expecting some sort of coherent storyline. Mostly it's about a group of characters, and much of the book is spent explaining their personalities, motivations, and histories. And that's usually fine by me, except that this time around everyone was so exceptionally screwed up that I couldn't muster the least bit of sympathy for any of them. Perhaps another reader would find it darkly humorous but mostly I was just glad when it was over.
August 18, 2010
For the first 150pps or so, this was the best book I'd read in a while, or at least the one I was most excited about. Ochsner has an amazing way of balancing deep character insight, a strong metaphorical sense of location and the particular sense of living in post-Soviet Russia (maybe she could do the same, for example, in tidewater Maryland and maybe not-- who knows?), and a flair for writing jazzy, fizzy, fun sentences that practically dance outside the bounds of literal meaning.
And then, for me at least, the book kind of fell apart. I can practically pinpoint the moment, when dead Mircha suggested there was buried treasure in a big and getting bigger sinkhole and Vera finished the application for a grant over coffee with the suddenly articulate Zoya. In other words, it all comes together too quickly, too author-forcefully and also, well, not at all. I feel like lots of key moments here were lost in the forceful run to make something of the metaphors that'd been introduced, and what didn't serve that end (the repeated conversations about the war in Chechnya, for example) were clearly filler, meant to space out the ending.
I was very excited by this book, and then very disappointed.
And then, for me at least, the book kind of fell apart. I can practically pinpoint the moment, when dead Mircha suggested there was buried treasure in a big and getting bigger sinkhole and Vera finished the application for a grant over coffee with the suddenly articulate Zoya. In other words, it all comes together too quickly, too author-forcefully and also, well, not at all. I feel like lots of key moments here were lost in the forceful run to make something of the metaphors that'd been introduced, and what didn't serve that end (the repeated conversations about the war in Chechnya, for example) were clearly filler, meant to space out the ending.
I was very excited by this book, and then very disappointed.
July 14, 2010
I appreciate magical realism and lyrical prose as much as the next person, but after a point there needs to be something substantive for the reader to hold onto - I could have walked away from this book at any point while reading and ended up where I did after slogging through 370 pages. There is a fine line between artful, absurdist whimsy and haphazard self-indulgence... only reason I'm giving it two stars instead of one is because there are brief moments of poignant characterization, there is interesting perspective on the highly diverse melting pot that is the former Soviet Union in the present day, and it was usually not boring (just ultimately pointless).
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March 30, 2024This novel was set in Russia during the immediate post-Soviet period, and it would be hard to find a more promising setting for a magic realist novel. The absurdities of everyday life are there - a museum full of not just fake but hand made exhibits, a woman whose job is to translate the news, both literally, and metaphorically - translating the casualty reports from Chechnya into something more palatable being one example. There's a character who literally drowns out the real world by wearing a discarded space helmet.
The book centres around a group of characters living in the same crumbling apartment block and it starts out very promisingly. The characters are drawn with vivid brush strokes, and their cynicism goes hand in hand by a determination to just get by. However, I started to lose interest slightly less than half way through - it became harder to keep the relationships between the characters clear as the chapters jumped between viewpoints, with some clearly connected (a few of them work in the same museum), but others whose stories are only there by virtue of them being neighbours.
In the end the story started to make less and less sense, which seems an odd criticism for a magic realist novel until you understand that the power of absurdity lies in its ability to illuminate truth. Marquez's Macondo (in 100 Years of Solitude) had the weird and the wondrous, but it served as a vehicle to examine history (colonial exploitation, military dictatorship). In Ochsner's novel, a corpse comes back to life (or is this just imagined), children dig a massive tunnel under the building's outdoor latrine and countless objects somehow emerge including parts of an abandoned tank. Are we supposed to take this as metaphor? If so how literally do we view this - digging up the past after literally shitting on it?
The weakest section involves a visit from a delegation of would be American do-gooders, who wish to preserve Russian culture, but want a sanitized version - objecting that exhibits of gruesome medical specimens are objectionable not because they are faked but because they're well in bad taste.
This is a pity, as I did learn something about Russian history - the most interesting bits being the backstory of one of the characters (who was in charge of the latrine) whose parents were ethnic minorities and Muslim and forced to re-settle under the Stalinist regime.
In the end this was very much magic realism in style, but even that couldn't sustain itself successfully throughout the course of the novel. I very much wanted to like this, but I am afraid I couldn't
The book centres around a group of characters living in the same crumbling apartment block and it starts out very promisingly. The characters are drawn with vivid brush strokes, and their cynicism goes hand in hand by a determination to just get by. However, I started to lose interest slightly less than half way through - it became harder to keep the relationships between the characters clear as the chapters jumped between viewpoints, with some clearly connected (a few of them work in the same museum), but others whose stories are only there by virtue of them being neighbours.
In the end the story started to make less and less sense, which seems an odd criticism for a magic realist novel until you understand that the power of absurdity lies in its ability to illuminate truth. Marquez's Macondo (in 100 Years of Solitude) had the weird and the wondrous, but it served as a vehicle to examine history (colonial exploitation, military dictatorship). In Ochsner's novel, a corpse comes back to life (or is this just imagined), children dig a massive tunnel under the building's outdoor latrine and countless objects somehow emerge including parts of an abandoned tank. Are we supposed to take this as metaphor? If so how literally do we view this - digging up the past after literally shitting on it?
The weakest section involves a visit from a delegation of would be American do-gooders, who wish to preserve Russian culture, but want a sanitized version - objecting that exhibits of gruesome medical specimens are objectionable not because they are faked but because they're well in bad taste.
This is a pity, as I did learn something about Russian history - the most interesting bits being the backstory of one of the characters (who was in charge of the latrine) whose parents were ethnic minorities and Muslim and forced to re-settle under the Stalinist regime.
In the end this was very much magic realism in style, but even that couldn't sustain itself successfully throughout the course of the novel. I very much wanted to like this, but I am afraid I couldn't
March 20, 2010
The Russian Book of Color and Flight offers provocative insight into what has happened in post-Soviet Russia. As it continues playing "King of the Hill" by fighting wars with Cheynya, Bosnia, Afganistan, Georgia, etc. (not in a historical timeline), the ordinary Russian bears the brunt of such folly.
Muslims, Jews, and Christians circumspectly inhabit a condemned building. While there is no plot per se, the narratives are provided by the main characters in the building. How they live (totally influenced by their various religions), their jobs, the absolute lack of sustainable goods, e.g., fuel, ink, money, and food. Though plausible, it is absurdly unreal. Dystopian fiction with huge satirical swathes.
Tanya, abandoned by her mother and raised by her cynical grandmother, "re-creates art" in the museum in which she works. Tanya also incessantly writes in her blue notebook, her constant companion. What is notable about her style of writing is the recurring inclusion of her view of the extraordinary colors visible despite her bleak surroundings, and how one would create such colors, e.g., a "Prussian blue" versus a "French blue," etc. I found her to be one of the most interesting characters in the book.
The least enjoyable part of the book was the recurring references to the significance of the communal outdoor privy, its occupants and their daily business within its confines.
There also is a mystical component with Azade, the privy attendant who is able to divine the troubles of the occupants by their gaseous emissions and their meager ordure.
Despite this continously annoying segue, I could not stop reading this book. The author's writing is phenomenal, and I would like to read more of her work.(less)
Muslims, Jews, and Christians circumspectly inhabit a condemned building. While there is no plot per se, the narratives are provided by the main characters in the building. How they live (totally influenced by their various religions), their jobs, the absolute lack of sustainable goods, e.g., fuel, ink, money, and food. Though plausible, it is absurdly unreal. Dystopian fiction with huge satirical swathes.
Tanya, abandoned by her mother and raised by her cynical grandmother, "re-creates art" in the museum in which she works. Tanya also incessantly writes in her blue notebook, her constant companion. What is notable about her style of writing is the recurring inclusion of her view of the extraordinary colors visible despite her bleak surroundings, and how one would create such colors, e.g., a "Prussian blue" versus a "French blue," etc. I found her to be one of the most interesting characters in the book.
The least enjoyable part of the book was the recurring references to the significance of the communal outdoor privy, its occupants and their daily business within its confines.
There also is a mystical component with Azade, the privy attendant who is able to divine the troubles of the occupants by their gaseous emissions and their meager ordure.
Despite this continously annoying segue, I could not stop reading this book. The author's writing is phenomenal, and I would like to read more of her work.(less)
January 15, 2011
I just assumed the author of a book with this title and story would be Russian, but she went to Russia and observed things and then produced this. (According to an interview - http://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2009/0...). The book's premise is amusing but the characters I found annoying - it seemed more like an American's idea of Russians than Russians.
I am again reminded that even if someone is a award winning fiction writer a particular book may not work for you, the reader. I stopped after fifty pages. Enough!
I am again reminded that even if someone is a award winning fiction writer a particular book may not work for you, the reader. I stopped after fifty pages. Enough!
December 15, 2009
This was a book I won on Goodreads.com, so I felt obligated to finish it. The author uses beautiful, descriptive language which I enjoyed, but it was completely wiped out by her obsession with bodily functions. The book never really went anywhere as far as I could tell. If there was a symbolic meaning, it was lost on me. I just didn't get it.
I hope that Gina Ochsner goes on to write something uplifting because she truly has a gift for prose.
I hope that Gina Ochsner goes on to write something uplifting because she truly has a gift for prose.
December 7, 2009
Gina Ochsner has a poetic style of writing and is especially gifted at descriptions. Unfortunately it is not enough to float this novel into the air. This story of post-soviet life simply does not ring true. The characters never ascend past caricatures and Russian / Jewish stereotypes. I understand this is her debut novel and she has two collections of short stories. I am interested in reading her short fiction but this first novel just doesn't do it for me.
November 17, 2020
I’ve read about 90% of this book and I’m not sure I can bring myself to spend more time on it when there’s great unread works like “War and Peace” on my shelf right now.
I love that the author is exploring classic Russian Lit questions (What does it mean to be a Russian? What is the essential nature of man? How can hate and suffering and deep longing for goodness exist together in the same person? What is language? What is art? Why believe in God? What is love?) and great Russian Lit themes (suffering, beauty, darkness, death, sexual love, history, tradition, story) but framed in a post-Soviet, deteriorated Russia. And the atmosphere of Russia’s spiritual deterioration is STRONG as the latrines too often crudely described and featured in this book. Still, a glimpse of beauty and a sense of the Holy persist even in the ugly Russia reflected in this novel. While these things are fascinating to me, I’m not sure whether the author was successful in making good, worthwhile art here.
I do love that the main protagonist is a Christian and I’d especially love to see where that leads.
I will definitely return to this book, but putting it to bed for now.
I love that the author is exploring classic Russian Lit questions (What does it mean to be a Russian? What is the essential nature of man? How can hate and suffering and deep longing for goodness exist together in the same person? What is language? What is art? Why believe in God? What is love?) and great Russian Lit themes (suffering, beauty, darkness, death, sexual love, history, tradition, story) but framed in a post-Soviet, deteriorated Russia. And the atmosphere of Russia’s spiritual deterioration is STRONG as the latrines too often crudely described and featured in this book. Still, a glimpse of beauty and a sense of the Holy persist even in the ugly Russia reflected in this novel. While these things are fascinating to me, I’m not sure whether the author was successful in making good, worthwhile art here.
I do love that the main protagonist is a Christian and I’d especially love to see where that leads.
I will definitely return to this book, but putting it to bed for now.
October 7, 2011
I read this book at the same time that I was listening to Winter Garden and the story of the siege of Leningrad. An interesting synchronicity. I don't know much about Gina Ochsner, but she must have some strong Russian roots or ties because she has captured the sardonic approach to life that I see in most modern Russian novels - I often do not like it but something in this book kept me going. Perhaps it is the touch of the mystical. Also, reading the two books together made me more sensitive to little scenes and ideas in this book. And she is a good writer.
The people who tell the story of The Russian Dreambook all live in a condemned tenement in a medium sized Russian city. There is no sewer system and other infrastructure, but there are Jews, Orthodox Christians,& Muslims living there together bound by the discomfort. The story is told by various people from the tenement. Three young people work at the All Russian Art Museum. The Museum displays only cardboard or foam reproductions of Russian art. Tanya has created the pieces in the Russian icon exhibit from cardboard and ice cream sticks - as she is working on a new icon she muses that these icons are a lot like much of Russia - it is jury rigged but after it is made the maker looks at it and see that it is good. Wonderful!
In another wonderful scene, Tanya is on the bus and sees a woman with her baby and is overwhelmed by the way the mother keeps kissing and touching the child. Tanya was raised by her grandmother who disapproves of such affection and never shows any affection towards Tanya. I was struck by the realization that the Tanya's grandmother, like the mother in Winter Garden, would have been in the siege of Leningrad and would have learned to keep affection at arms length to avoid pain and suffering.
The writing in this book is so superior to Winter Garden that I would opt for this one over the other. It is much more difficult to read but much richer.
The people who tell the story of The Russian Dreambook all live in a condemned tenement in a medium sized Russian city. There is no sewer system and other infrastructure, but there are Jews, Orthodox Christians,& Muslims living there together bound by the discomfort. The story is told by various people from the tenement. Three young people work at the All Russian Art Museum. The Museum displays only cardboard or foam reproductions of Russian art. Tanya has created the pieces in the Russian icon exhibit from cardboard and ice cream sticks - as she is working on a new icon she muses that these icons are a lot like much of Russia - it is jury rigged but after it is made the maker looks at it and see that it is good. Wonderful!
In another wonderful scene, Tanya is on the bus and sees a woman with her baby and is overwhelmed by the way the mother keeps kissing and touching the child. Tanya was raised by her grandmother who disapproves of such affection and never shows any affection towards Tanya. I was struck by the realization that the Tanya's grandmother, like the mother in Winter Garden, would have been in the siege of Leningrad and would have learned to keep affection at arms length to avoid pain and suffering.
The writing in this book is so superior to Winter Garden that I would opt for this one over the other. It is much more difficult to read but much richer.
December 20, 2011
This book is a mixture of desolate and charming.
By desolate, I mean that they live in mid-to-late 1900s Russia and have no money and are literally fishing in an overfished creek to be able to put food in their mouths. They go to jobs for which they are not paid. There is no running water or heat in the condemned buildings in which they are squatting. They're unlucky in love. One of the main characters kills himself then comes back as a ghost to continue talking to them.
But the way it's written is charming. A lot of the characters are magical and have little quirks. (One of the protagonists thinks he missed an opportunity to be born as a fish. Another always cooks things incorrectly on purpose because the only thing that should be perfect is God.) The descriptions are often lovely, but that didn't keep me interested.
I didn't hate this book enough to put it down in disgust; but in between reading sessions, I didn't find myself missing it, either -- so I'm going to chalk this experience up to a neutral (two stars = "it's okay," according to this system) and leave it there.
By desolate, I mean that they live in mid-to-late 1900s Russia and have no money and are literally fishing in an overfished creek to be able to put food in their mouths. They go to jobs for which they are not paid. There is no running water or heat in the condemned buildings in which they are squatting. They're unlucky in love. One of the main characters kills himself then comes back as a ghost to continue talking to them.
But the way it's written is charming. A lot of the characters are magical and have little quirks. (One of the protagonists thinks he missed an opportunity to be born as a fish. Another always cooks things incorrectly on purpose because the only thing that should be perfect is God.) The descriptions are often lovely, but that didn't keep me interested.
I didn't hate this book enough to put it down in disgust; but in between reading sessions, I didn't find myself missing it, either -- so I'm going to chalk this experience up to a neutral (two stars = "it's okay," according to this system) and leave it there.
March 16, 2010
An enjoyable read, but one you must be willing to meet on it's own terms. You need to shape yourself to the way that Ochsner tells her tales - you can't expect them to fit more familiar shapes.
I like the way a vague story builds at the hands of the various narrators. I like the multitude of references to other stories and myths and dreams within the book - it really does what the title claims. I like the gentle magic realism, and regular striking images that left me breathless.
After reading her short story collection I said I was looking forward to what Ochsner might do with a a novel, and I wasn't disappointed.
This novel is rambling and unwieldy at times - but just like the derelict building at the centre of the story it's faults are also it's beauty.
I like the way a vague story builds at the hands of the various narrators. I like the multitude of references to other stories and myths and dreams within the book - it really does what the title claims. I like the gentle magic realism, and regular striking images that left me breathless.
After reading her short story collection I said I was looking forward to what Ochsner might do with a a novel, and I wasn't disappointed.
This novel is rambling and unwieldy at times - but just like the derelict building at the centre of the story it's faults are also it's beauty.
April 30, 2020
Es un 3 que realmente es un 3.5
A pesar de ser un libro que adquirí solo porque me gustó la portada, me gustó la trama.
En cuanto a la narración, me resultó llevadera, aunque las historias entrelazadas de los personajes por momentos se vuelven un poco densas, tal vez no les hubiera hecho mucho caso de no ser que el final es algo abierto.
A pesar de ser un libro que adquirí solo porque me gustó la portada, me gustó la trama.
En cuanto a la narración, me resultó llevadera, aunque las historias entrelazadas de los personajes por momentos se vuelven un poco densas, tal vez no les hubiera hecho mucho caso de no ser que el final es algo abierto.
May 2, 2011
Has some genuinely lyrical passages, but her obsession with latrines and bodily functions mars it...
August 18, 2016
I really disliked reading this. It was bizarre, disjointed and, frankly, boring. A complete slog.
October 3, 2017
Lovely language.
April 23, 2019
Lovely from start to finish.
January 28, 2010
Tried to be both funny and moving and was neither.
August 2, 2017
La Russia ai tempi della prima guerra cecena. Un condominio di disperati nelle disperata Perm' da voce ad un originale e sorprendente romanzo corale fatto di storie vere, verosimili e assurde. Un romanzo nel quale incontriamo una variegata galleria di personaggi sradicati dai loro luoghi d'origine e tenuti insieme dal caso e dalla necessità. Ci sono Azade, una donna musulmana che gestisce la latrina del palazzo ed ha imparato a leggere le vite dei condomini dai loro escrementi e suo marito Mirkhat, che nonostante il fresco suicidio continua a stare con i vivi tormentandoli con i suoi ammonimenti. C'è la vecchia ortodossa Lukerija, un'arpia che commenta la vita da dietro i vetri della sua finestra e c'è Ol'ga, un'ebrea che lavora come traduttrice presso il giornale locale, incaricata di trovare le parole giuste per edulcorare, nascondere, trasformare la tragica realtà. C'è il gruppetto dei bambini di strada alle dipendenze del bullo del posto, che si aggira fra le macerie come uno stralunato coro greco che fa da sfondo alla tragedia e ci sono, soprattutto, Jur'rij e Tanja. Il primo giovane veterano di guerra che vorrebbe essere un pesce ed accetta passivamente tutto quello che succede, cercando protezione dentro ad un casco da astronauta che indossa per isolarsi dal mondo, e la seconda, innamorata senza speranza di Ju'rij, che affida a un taccuino il compito di raccogliere le sue fantasie fatte di nuvole e colori con i quali cerca di difendersi dalla realtà che incombe nera e pressante. Un libro sorprendente che riproduce le atmosfere di in un quadro di Chagall, con personaggi che si muovono nel mondo e fuori di esso, tra le cose e nonostante le cose, perché, sembra dirci l'autrice, anche se siamo costretti a vivere una realtà dolorosa e senza possibilità di riscatto (anzi forse proprio per questo), non possiamo rinunciare a sognare, ci è necessario come l'aria che respiriamo, è l'unico modo che abbiamo per evadere dalla prigione della vita, perché senza sogni non si può stare. E sono sempre sogni a colori.
August 9, 2021
This is a charming book , it flowed very nicely and the characters were real and alive and full of humanity.
Set in a crumbling apartment block in what is presumed to be post Soviet Russia this book tells the story of the lives of a number of residents , their hopes, their dreams and their disappointments - particularly with Tanya her dreams.
The difficulties of life in a world where jobs are scarce and poorly paid ( if paid at all ) and the hopes of characters such as Olga, Tanya , Yuri and Adzade in their efforts to make life better for themselves and those they love are well written and drew me in - as well as the flip side of characters such as Vitek looking to exploit people and the situation to make a quick and not so clean buck.
Throw in an element of fantasy as the irascible Mircha throws himself from the top of the apartment block but still continues to haunt the block and the residents dispensing his wisdom and towards the end of the book the slow sinking of the block into the mud adds a pleasing aspect of myth and supernatural detail.
The way in which the museum is run, the way that the staff create works of art to mitigate the lack of money and resources is another well drawn example of the struggles of the people of the town and how they have to manage.
Tanya is the character around which the story circulates , her work in the museum, her good nature and hopes and affection for Yuri and how the museum director plays on her good nature - this leads into the final sub plot, the possibility of a grant from an American group for the support of arts, the visit of the Americans and their views of the town and the people and the museum added an extra layer of detail to what was an enjoyable book
Set in a crumbling apartment block in what is presumed to be post Soviet Russia this book tells the story of the lives of a number of residents , their hopes, their dreams and their disappointments - particularly with Tanya her dreams.
The difficulties of life in a world where jobs are scarce and poorly paid ( if paid at all ) and the hopes of characters such as Olga, Tanya , Yuri and Adzade in their efforts to make life better for themselves and those they love are well written and drew me in - as well as the flip side of characters such as Vitek looking to exploit people and the situation to make a quick and not so clean buck.
Throw in an element of fantasy as the irascible Mircha throws himself from the top of the apartment block but still continues to haunt the block and the residents dispensing his wisdom and towards the end of the book the slow sinking of the block into the mud adds a pleasing aspect of myth and supernatural detail.
The way in which the museum is run, the way that the staff create works of art to mitigate the lack of money and resources is another well drawn example of the struggles of the people of the town and how they have to manage.
Tanya is the character around which the story circulates , her work in the museum, her good nature and hopes and affection for Yuri and how the museum director plays on her good nature - this leads into the final sub plot, the possibility of a grant from an American group for the support of arts, the visit of the Americans and their views of the town and the people and the museum added an extra layer of detail to what was an enjoyable book
February 4, 2018
there's something special about the mindset you're in, reading a novel about post-soviet russia, where you see a sentence like this:
"With each move of a chess piece, Tanya could hear their excited misery and terrible human longings amplified by the strange acoustics of the cafe: too old for the army, too young to retire, too beat up by life to find a job and keep it, too broke for a bottle."
-- and think, yes, that is a totally normal way to describe an outdoor chess tournament.
"With each move of a chess piece, Tanya could hear their excited misery and terrible human longings amplified by the strange acoustics of the cafe: too old for the army, too young to retire, too beat up by life to find a job and keep it, too broke for a bottle."
-- and think, yes, that is a totally normal way to describe an outdoor chess tournament.
September 26, 2019
This is a surreal, darkly hilarious story about a Russia where everything is broken and makeshift and The All-Russia Museum must find a way to impress a group of visiting Americans so that they will support its ersatz, bizarre, phony displays with grant money. This novel rather reminds me of Thomas Glynn's "The Building." Recommended.
January 20, 2019
I read this years ago when I came across it in the library and have been trying to remember the title and author ever since. Finally found it! I think of this book every now and then - brilliant and deeply insightful.
November 23, 2025
A great book that gives the reader an insight into the struggles of post soviet life, the vivid personalities contrasts against the stark reality of the struggle to survive in a nation trying to find its place.
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