Una vita per noi

by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry

URSS, anni ’80. Anya e Milka sono amiche del cuore. Adolescenti, trascorrono le estati nella dacia di Anya, chiacchierando sotto i meli e fantasticando sulla vita dei loro coetanei americani, mentre i genitori e l’anziana nonna di Anya rievocano la seconda guerra mondiale e le difficoltà che hanno dovuto affrontare. Nei mesi che trascorrono a Mosca, insieme ai loro compagni di classe, Trifonov e Lopatin, Anya e Milka formano un gruppo di amici inseparabili. Condividono segreti e desideri, e discutono di politica mentre l’impero sovietico è ormai vicino al collasso. Ma il loro tempo insieme viene interrotto da un fatto tragico che sconvolge le loro vite.
Anni dopo, Anya torna in Russia dall’America, dov’è emigrata. A Mosca rincontra Lopatin, ora speculatore edilizio senza scrupoli intenzionato a comprare la dacia dei genitori di Anya e a sbarazzarsi del meleto di famiglia. Tormentata dai fantasmi della gioventù, Anya comprende che la memoria non svanisce, ma ci accompagna nel tempo.
In parte ispirato a Il giardino dei ciliegi di Anton Čechov, Una vita per noi è uno struggente romanzo di formazione in cui le paure e le speranze dell’adolescenza fanno eco a quelle di un mondo in dissoluzione che si apre all’ignoto. Un debutto sorprendente che è diventato un successo internazionale.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Russia, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Historical, Book Club

361 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 15, 2022

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

[MarilynW · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Orchard by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry

This story would be depressing at any time but more so right now. Anya and Milka are coming of age in 1980s USSR. Anya, who lives in a tiny apartment with her parents and her maternal grandmother, has grown up on the stories her grandmother tells of barely surviving starvation during the blockade of Leningrad. Anya's four year old uncle did starve to death and Anya's grandmother had to do the unthinkable to save Anya's three year old sister. Anya's parents tell of the hardships of surviving WWII. But what is there to look forward to now? Anya's parents work very long hours and now are being made to work even longer hours, while what meager supplies that they have been able to get are shrinking. Anya has this same future to look forward to, a drab gray existence where the goal is to find a man who works and brings home what little money he makes. Whether he beats her or their children does not matter, having a man is what matters, having babies is what she is supposed to do.

The afterword is an important part of the story, for me. The author lived through this time in the USSR, heard the stories first hand, knows what she escaped and what was really happening then and now. This was not an enjoyable read and this book was especially hard to read against the background of current world events. It seems some things never change or else they just get worse.

Pub Mar 15, 2022

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for this ARC.

[Canadian Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I devour these stories of Russia. I need to understand how these people can live in the stifling conditions they do, imprisoned in a culture of communism and political corruption. How their world is grey. The housing, the education, the poverty for the bulk of the population, the weather. The brightness of youth and curiosity quickly squeezed out. Hope and dreams savagely flattened. Their world as they know it.

This is a story about 4 teenagers and the friendship they brought to each other’s lives in the 1980’s. The dreams of travelling; of leaving the country and seeing the rest of the world in colour. The hope the country would evolve to be a better place. The joy they found in being together; debating, conversing and having fun as limited as that was with the political suffocation they endured. But life happened and brought tragedy. The grief of loss weighing them down forever. The grief of a country that never really changed. This history carried on the backs of an entire population.

The terrain is harsh and extreme. The hardships families faced. The story of these teens whose lives tragically never played out with what we take for granted in the West.

The writing is beautiful but heavy. It is slow but worth the investment. The author herself has based this story on her own youth and experiences growing up in Moscow.
4⭐️

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Orchard covers four teenagers in 1980s Russia and beyond. It’s supposedly loosely based on Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. But having never read that story, I can’t comment on any similarities.
What I can say is that while Gorcheva-Newberry does a good job of defining the time and place, it’s a hard book to read. The writing was beautiful but dense. And the story is slow moving. And very, very sad.
As befits a story about teenagers, there’s a lot of talk about sex as it seems to consume a lot of their thoughts and actions.
I would say I appreciated this book more than I enjoyed it. I felt I learned a lot about Russia, especially the mindset of the people, both in the 1980s and in 2005 when Anya returned from America to see her parents.
It speaks to the loss of country and what it means for all of the characters, not just the teenagers but also Anya’s parents.
Make sure to read the Author’s Note, as she drew on her own life for this book.
My thanks to Netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

[Olive Fellows (abookolive)]

Soon after becoming General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev famously rebranded two Russian words: glasnost and perestroika, meaning openness and restructuring, respectively. With these words he ushered in a new era for the USSR, one in which citizens had more freedoms and economic options. It was a period of change unlike anything the nation had yet witnessed, and, for Soviet youth, it meant hope for the future. This was “Generation Perestroika,” as author Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry calls it in her debut novel The Orchard, a coming-of-age tale loosely inspired by Anton Chekhov’s final play, The Cherry Orchard.

Click here to read the rest of my review in the Harvard Review!

[Holly R W · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found myself reading "The Orchard" during the present Russian invasion of Ukraine. The author grew up in Russia and then emigrated to the United States as a young adult. I was drawn to the book to get some insight into this part of the world. My knowledge of eastern Europe would fit in a thimble.

The story line itself is bleak and sad. The plot centers around two young teens living in the Soviet Union: Anya and Milka. They are best friends. Their family situations are vastly different. As Milka has an unhappy home life, she practically lives at Anya's home. During the summers, they go to Anya's family's modest dacha in the country, where the family relaxes and also tends their apple orchard. Soon, the girls pair up with boyfriends, Trifonav and Lopatin, and experience sex. As the plot unfolds, the characters experience more than their fair share of tragedy.

I found the author's writing and imagery to be beautiful. I could so clearly see what she was describing. I also appreciated the glimpse into what it would have been like to live in Russia in the 1980's.

Typical for the time, Anya's apartment featured a kitchen and two bedrooms. I'm unsure about whether there was a living room. Food shortages were a given. Female clothing came in three colors: brown, black and gray. (Anya longed for prettier clothes.) Both parents worked long hours for not much pay. Winters were harsh - cold and snowy. A typical after school snack was fried bologna and boiled potatoes. Both Anya and Milka started smoking cigarettes at age 14. Russian citizens weren't allowed to travel out of the country and were told that Americans were treated as slaves in the U.S. Anya's schooling sounded rigorous. Exposure to a wide swath of Russian literature, including Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard", was taken for granted.

The author wrote too, about the political changes that Anya and her friends see. She calls them "the Perestroika generation". In her author's note, Ms. Gorcheva-Newberry wrote, "In a single decade, my generation lived under Breznev, Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev and Yeltsin... [We did] dream about a brighter, happier future, the new democratic world we would scrape together and erect on the debris of the old one. We were hungry, defiant teenagers on the cusp of spring and yet, another revolution, our country's demise and rebirth."

Like the author, Anya emigrates to the United States as an exchange student, building a life for herself there. Twenty years elapse before she returns to Russia and sees her parents again. This too, was interesting to me.

3.5 stars

Content Warning: Rape, Death

[Julia Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisitely written novel about loss: the loss of a family member, a best friend, a nation, a home. It does the impossible by capturing the mixed longing and regret that come from looking back at one's life. Just a beautiful, beautiful book – a heartbreaker.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry sets her debut novel, The Orchard, in Russia during the volatile period of perestroika, the restructuring of the USSR in the 1980's, and the years that follow. Much of the novel is a coming of age tale centering around Anya Raneva and her best friend, Milka Putova, and then expands in their teenage years to include their boyfriends, Trifonov and Lopitan. The story tracks the emotional, political, intellectual and social growth of these friends. Gorcheva-Newberry is Russian-Armenian emigre whom moved to the U.S. in 1995; she knows the place and the times and this work feels true and authentic.

Themes include cyclical Russian political systems, each being seized by the next while bringing a great deal of upheaval to the average citizen; womanhood and motherhood; the Russian way of living simultaneously in the past and present; and how one's motherland remains deep in one's marrow no matter where one chooses to live.

Gorcheva-Newberry's prose is descriptive without being flowery. A couple of examples:

"My mother always had a way of cutting off conversations, as she did heads off live fish we caught."

"hugging my grandmother was like hugging an old beloved novel, breathing secrets and wisdom from its pages."

A few passages that resonated with me and gave me pause:

"To want something and to be able to do it are two different things. Perhaps only a few fortunates get to experience both. Perhaps that's what happiness is all about--to be able to reconcile your desires with your abilities."

I find this such an interesting way to define happiness. I can see that living in such a suppressed society could make one eager to have more experiences and equate that with happiness. Yet that is only one component of what happiness is for me. This thought then led me down the rabbit hole of what is the difference between happiness and joy. I won't write an essay here, and you can ponder this thought if you'd like.

"I remembered by grandmother saying . . . that suffering made us human, moved us from sorrow to hope.."

A few thoughts that I spent time with around this idea: That humans suffer is an existential reality. As long as there have been humans, there has been suffering; and this state connects us to all those who have come before us and all those who will come after us. What mattered to our ancestors? What matters to us? What will matter to our descendants? I think that connection offers hope and can move one from a place of distress to a place of hope.

In the real world, my mother recently passed away and I experience sorrow. So I grieve. And I share my love for my mom. I tell stories with my siblings, with our daughters, with my aunts and uncles, with my cousins, and with my mom's friends. I see the hope--the goodness she was in this world and the joy that she left in her wake. And I model this for our daughters, hoping that they will have a template for being with suffering for the next person close to them that they lose.

We are all human and have common traits. Yet there are cultural differences which have me continuing to reach out to others to learn about their experiences of life.

“Russian people are fatalists; we believe that our future is preordained, irreversible . . . But then, we also believe in miracles, one grand sweep of imagination. Perhaps it’s what allows us to survive and to endure. And maybe it isn’t that at all, maybe it’s our enormous pride, the aggrandized vanity, which we carry to the grave, and the rest is just weather, wind and rain, spurts of blinding snow.”

[Kristine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really a coming of age story told through the eyes of Anya, but she has always been with her best friend, Milka. Both have turned 15. Life is at an uncertain path, and her grandmother lived through the wrath of Stalin and raising her Mother under that environment. To have friends or family suddenly disappear was expected. Anya’s mother is a romantic at heart, but also teaches Anya not to expect much from life. Anya’s mother and father have a running commentary of political debate. The mother is more open to change, but in a dour and pragmatic way. Her father, is a true believer in the Communist cause and is very reluctant to see any change occur, even as he lived under oppression.

So, Anya and Milka are the new generation. At a young age each is looking for fun, adventure, boyfriends, and sexual experience. Although, I think the intense friendship bond was well displayed and could relate to that experience at that age, it did drag a bit for me. Talks here, there, and everywhere while sneaking a smoke got a bit repetitive. They meet classmates, Trifornov and Lopatin who become Anya and Milka’s boyfriend. The four are now always together as the girls start to experience a more adult oriented life. They love singing, ‘We are the Champions’ by Queen, long to see American Movies, wear Levi’s and want something bigger out of the world. Yet, there is a divide, as they also cherish the old, especially going to the country, Dacha, we’re gardens are grown and large Apple Orchards blossom. This is where the parallel to the Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard comes into play. I have not read the book, but think it represents that The Apple Orchards we’re the old life and if they are ever taken away, life will never be the same. This is where Anya and Milka spent their childhood and her parents most enjoyed being. Her grandmother would also come each season. This is also where the Grandmother tells Anya a shocking secret about survival.

So, Russians are thought to culturally not express emotion, not smile, and not expect life to work out. Yet, each generation has lived through so much. Anya’s seems the most promising as Generation Perestroika, having grown up in the 80’s, except she saw constant change of leadership and values for the Soviet Union. Then the Soviet Union completely collapses. In this atmosphere it is hard to have a childhood, as most young people may want change, to get educated, to go abroad and possibly stay in another country, but a part of theme longs for home, wherever that home was. It really is a story on one level of growing from a child into an adult, and wanting to always have your best friend by your side to do this. Underneath this is a feeling of loss for country, for friends who either leave or some awful things happen to, for a sense or identity when your ‘home’ seems to have lost one. It made me much more aware of the experience many faced in the Soviet Union. It was not all positive. Yet there is much darkness, but also light. The Russians do not want to lose hope completely.

Overall, a compelling book and so timely in understanding the Russian mindset. Putin was referenced many times as Anya in 2005 goes back to visit her parents. Some think he will bring former glory back, others certainly do not, but it’s another very different leader who plays by his own rules.

Thank you NetGalley, Kristina Gordneva-Newberry, and Ballentine for an ARC of this book.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel contains wonderful, almost tangible, descriptions of life in Russia just before perestroika. The main characters are two teenage girls, so the reader sees the world through their eyes – school, studies, teenage drama, summer and winter activities and, of course, boys and sex. However, what makes this novel so interesting is the time/setting in which the events take place. The adults range from devoted communists to private questioners of the government, while the girls just live their life – fully believing that their country is the best, that capitalism is evil (and that life in the rest of world is terrible) and mostly, not really understanding that everything is about to change (but getting hints and questioning more and more as the novel progresses). I am making this sound like a light novel – it is not that at all – there is great sadness and tragedy arising not just from the difficulties of daily life in the Soviet Union but also from abuses of many natures. The last part of the book takes place many years later when one of the teenagers (now and adult who emigrated to the US) returns to visit her family. We see that although the players may have changed, the abuse of power and many deprivations have not. The novel is tied to The Cherry Orchard (Chekhov), and the apple orchard (a frequent scene of action) is quite symbolic. This was a hard novel to read during the tragic events presently occurring in Ukraine. I was going to try to make a statement to the effect that peretroiska and the events which followed it only led to greater evils – but I am really too emotional over Ukraine to find the proper words.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the 1980's, Russia is seeing its end of days as the USSR, but the inhabitants don't know that yet. Beginning during the era of Brezhnev, this account is at its most intriguing when recounting the lives of everyday Russians as experienced by two teenaged girls, Anya and Milka. Anya, a fictional version of author Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, lives with her parents, both committed and passionate lovers of the existing regime. Ironically, their lives reflect those of middle-class Americans, who they believe are living in Capitalist horrors. They even have a summer house with an apple orchard, and therein lies the similarities to the Cherry Orchard which is evoked enough so the reader gets the point. The orchard and its destruction = change which may or may not be for the best, but which in any case heralds a life that will never be the same again. I really loved the chapters that dealt with Anya's memories of life in the country she loved, all the food, the rituals, the clothing -- also the viewpoint from someone who lived on that side of the Iron Curtain, who, prior to glasnost and perestroika, was thought of as "them."

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one hurt. I know I need to ease up on these books that shatter me. I cried. I felt lost. I tried to breathe deeply but something heavy was pressing on my chest. So much lost forever.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe this book will resonate with a lot of people who grew up in Eastern Europe, around the fall of the Iron Curtain, and who later chose to emigrate to the west.
"The Orchard" is a coming of age novel, and a story about losing ones dreams. It's honest, brutal, friendly, deadly, haunting. It's the story of four friends who meet during high-school and whose lives are irrevocably changed by the political upheaval of the Perestroyka, and by the selfish acts of adults around them. Their unlikely friendship, the mixture of deep connection and meanness rings exactly like what I would have experienced in my own childhood and adolescence, even though I grew up some hundreds of miles west of Moscow, in a different country, and spoke a different language. The struggle, the desire to escape inescapable history was accurately captured in small delicate scenes. Every chapter is like a carpet of morning dew, glistening, cold, ephemeral. Unlike a lot of modern western literature, Russians know that bitter and sweet come in pairs, that extreme sadness is punctuated with moments of true connection and joy, which makes this read much more bearable, and realistic.
I won't deny that some scene changes felt rushed and abrupt (like the fight between Anya and Milka for e.g.) and some of the dialogue didn't read natural. I also think the novel needed to be longer, and perhaps explore Anya's life in the US more. But this was interspersed with brilliant dialogue that most Eastern-Europeans will recognize (like Anya's father laughing at Lopatin's accidental request for a drink "Right. I can just see you drinking lemonade.”). It made me realize that sometimes the people who grew up in a dictatorship were more free in their youth; free to go places unattended, free to argue with their parents. Unfortunately as long as each generation continues to be cannibalized (massive trigger and spoiler warning at the end of Part 1), there will be no peace, and their dreams will continuously be felled.
"I was not longer angry at (my parents), though still deeply saddened, because I knew they, too, had lived the life of disremembering, of unlearning everything they've been taught, a maelstrom of experiences turned to snow then to water."
I put this book down today, but my mind is still lost in the orchard, with those rebellious youngsters, marching toward the crushing blows life has prepared for them just a few steps ahead. For now I smell the flowers, and envision the fruit that will swell on the branches, if only one can keep that ax away.

[Marloes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anja en Milka, beste vriendinnen, groeien op in de jaren ’80, de laatste jaren van de Sovjet-Unie. Ze wonen in een buitenwijk van Moskou, waar Anja een liefdevol gezin vormt met haar ouders en oma terwijl de thuissituatie van Milka minder rooskleurig is. De zomers brengen ze onafscheidelijk door in de datsja van Anja’s familie, een buitenhuisje met een appelboomgaard, en terwijl haar ouders altijd ruziën over de politiek en de regering, over de ontwikkelingen in het land en de zorgen die ze hebben over de toekomst, fantaseren de vriendinnen vooral over een vrij en vreugdevol leven. Hun bestaan is niet volledig zorgeloos maar ze bespreken alles, ze delen hun gedachten en dromen zonder een blad voor de mond te nemen, ze luisteren naar de muziek van Queen, ze experimenteren en ontdekken het leven, hun lichaam en de liefde.

De karakters van de vriendinnen zijn erg verschillend, maar ze leren van elkaar, staan open voor de mening van de ander en steunen elkaar door dik en dun. Als ze 15 zijn krijgen ze relaties met klasgenoten Lopatin en Trifonov en samen vormen ze een hecht vriendenclubje, ze filosoferen over hun plaats in de veranderende wereld en hopen op een betere toekomst, ze praten over boeken en toneelstukken en dagen elkaar uit, totdat hun levens worden opgeschrikt door enkele dramatische gebeurtenissen en de groep uit elkaar valt.

Door hun eindeloze, knetterende en scherpe gesprekken leer je de verschillende personages steeds beter kennen, ze worden puur en rauw neergezet en dit is een echt coming of age-verhaal waarin de levensomstandigheden, het tijdsbeeld en de onderlinge verhoudingen raak, pijnlijk en tastbaar worden geschetst. Het verhaal gaat leven en hoewel het hier en daar wat fragmentarisch wordt verteld, heftige gebeurtenissen soms haast tussen neus en lippen door worden opgebiecht en ik af en toe graag meer over de bijbehorende emoties had willen lezen, is dit voornamelijk een krachtig portret van deze vrienden en hun familie.

Het is een kwetsbaar verhaal over opgroeien, confrontaties en verlies, over verlangen naar verandering en hoe dat hand in hand gaat met verwarring en angst voor het onbekende, over hoe je je verleden, zwaar als een rotsblok, met je meedraagt en hoe je nooit volledig afstand kunt nemen van je herinneringen, over hoop, optimisme, schuldgevoel en spijt. Het is sterk, inlevend en meeslepend geschreven en het tweede gedeelte, waarin Anja na 20 jaar in Amerika terugkeert naar Rusland om haar ouders op te zoeken, is reflectiever, biedt inzicht en beantwoordt vragen die nooit hardop zijn gesteld, waardoor het geheel mooi wordt afgerond. Zeker het lezen waard!

3.5-4⭐️

[Ceylin · Rating 4 out of 5]

4⭐ - this book was a little slow (might also be bc im in a reading slump) but it got so good after. so many things happening towards the end of the USSR. defo a recommendation if you're interested in that!

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 5 out of 5]

via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐑𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐬, 𝐰𝐞’𝐝 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐭 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐬𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐨𝐧.

Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry has become one of my favorite authors. I loved her stories in What Isn’t Remembered, it’s a book worth adding to your reading collection. Kristina’s debut novel The Orchard, is about four teenagers, thick as thieves, on the cusp of a new world. The Soviet Union is on the verge of collapse, a whole new life is about to unfurl before them. One where you don’t just marry, grow old and die loyal only to your country. Anya narrates from childhood and introduces us to her friends and family. A grandmother who knows the country is ‘too old and stubborn’ for change, that war wiped the land clean. She is one of the strongest voices in the novel. Milka is Anya’s best friend, no matter what the future brings, the only constant she is sure of is sweet Milka. Her parents often argue, her father full of patriotism loyal to the empire that chased the enemies out, suspicious of the West and if you believe in God, you’re a fool, blind to the horrors no higher being would allow to happen. Her grandmother believes in God, but at least Anya’s father respects her. Anya’s mother is disgusted by the state of things, hungry for progress and all things new. She is of the belief that one should be free to travel, own things they earn, not be kept in the dark. And don’t get her started on Stalin! Anya and Milka are a quiet audience to the fight that has always existed between them, it doesn’t matter. They are too busy with awakening sexuality and all the curiosities of the adult world that occupies the young.

They represent the youth of the Soviet Union, their desires, hopes, struggles. They are a generation moving alongside the ones before them dealing with the aftermath of constant wars. Everything is the same, people do not voice dissent nor openly behave differently, and certainly never question things. To Anya, everything is colorless. It seems their future is set- when the slow, old, worn-out women die, they will be replaced by girls like Anya and Milka and on and on until the end of time. That is their future, the only prophecy the people seem to be promised, a country without individuals. They dream about love and enjoy escape at her parent’s Dacha in springtime, where her parents care for an apple orchard. Anya is fascinated by an American girl, who writes a letter to their communist leader, and the culture of the united states. The children all have ideas of what Americans are like, how much happier and spoiled their lives must be by comparison to their own in a country of heavy censorship. What must it be like to live in a country that doesn’t live under strict adherence to a dictatorship? Is the West evil? But they are a strong people, capable of surviving the meanest turns of fate born out of nature or man.

When two classmates are invited into the girls lives, an intimacy forms. The strong, handsome Aleksey Lopatin, whose family is well connected members of the Communist Party and bookish, fragile Petya Trifonovis whose pursuits are of enriching the mind. Listening to rock music, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, exploring each others bodies, pairing up, reaching towards the future with wonderment of what will happen if it all collapses, they spend all their time together. As for the possibility of their country falling, it’s only a matter of when. Where will that leave all the people who remained loyal supporters? It is a story of powerlessness, hope and fear of change, a coming of age behind the iron curtain and what comes to pass when they are finally free. Anya’s future is in America as an exchange student, but not before deep grief enters her soul. She marries and remains in the USA. Years pass in America, she must return to help her parents who are being bullied into selling their dacha but it is the past the greets her and we learn what happened in her absence. Author Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, like the characters in her stunning novel, knows what it means to see her country and it’s purpose crumble. She is a Russian-Armenian émigré. How much of this novel, one wonders, is based on her own life experience? It is an interesting time, with so much happening globally, to be reading about people living in fear of their leaders and outside threats. Gorgeous writing. I can’t wait for her next novel.

Publication Date: March 15, 2022

Ballantine Books

Random House

[Ellinor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wenn ich mir vorstelle, wie es wäre, seine Jugend in der ehemaligen Sowjetunion zu verbringen, erscheint mir dies recht alptraumhaft und deprimierend. Als ich den Klappentext von Das Leben vor uns las, dachte ich, dass mich genau das erwarten würde. Doch weit gefehlt. Von der ersten Seite an hat mich dieses Buch komplett in seinen Sog gezogen. Die Sprache ist ganz wunderbar und auch alle Hauptfiguren mochte ich -trotz ihrer großen und kleinen Fehler - sehr. Ihre Jugend erschien mir geradezu normal, völlig anders als erwartet. Ihre Abenteuer ähneln denen derer, die im Westen aufwuchsen, auch wenn manches für sie mit mehr Aufwand und Risiko verbunden war.
Die unbeschwerte Jugend der Erzählerin Anja endet mit einem tragischen Ereignis. Die Geschichte macht daraufhin einen Zeitsprung und erzählt die Ereignisse zwanzig Jahre später. Dieser Bruch gelingt völlig reibungslos und führt alles am Ende zu einem wunderbaren Rahmen zusammen.
Ein sehr gelungenes Romandebüt, nach dem ich unbedingt zwei weitere Dinge lesen muss: die Kurzgeschichten der Autorin und Der Kirschgarten von Anton Tschechow, der den Hintergrund des Buches bildet. Ganz große Leseempfehlung!

[Lillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Burning through me, I feel the words I read. I feel changed, I feel deeper. As all great books do, this novel broadened my feeling and experience of humanity. These characters are real to me. I worry about them and wish them well. This is the most real, tangible, truth-filled account of experiences, of lives, that I have ever read to my knowledge. The author writes with such profound awareness and compassion it stops seeming like writing with awareness and compassion, instead it feels as if she has cast some spell that has truly created lives and then they told their own story. I carry this novel with me.

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review TK

[Briana · Rating 4 out of 5]

First and foremost, thank you to Netgalley and Ballatine Books for the eARC of The Orchard by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry in exchange for an honest review. I went into this without having too many high expectations. I have been in a bit of a reading slump, and I wanted something like a one-off literary fiction novel to get some reading done. I was not disappointed by this and in many ways, my expectations were exceeded.

This is a story of friendship and how a group of inseparable friends during the fall of the Soviet Union have managed to drift apart. It’s not quite a coming of age but it’s close to it in the way that things start off so hopeful only for things to end so tragically. The Orchard is told from the perspective of Anya who recounts her life with her best friend Milka. While Anya’s family runs an orchard and has a country house, Milka’s family life was always different which caused her to be more mature and sexual than Anya. I was able to call a lot of Milka’s issues early on, but Anya’s childhood innocence and naiveté kept her from seeing the sexual abuse Milka’s faced.

The first part of the book consists of twenty chapters as we go through Anya and Milka’s teen years and the many regimes that contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. Along the way we meet the boys, Lopatin and Trifonov who develop sexual relationships with Milka and Anya respectively. Like the girls, the boys are different to. Lopatin is a boisterous, glorious, attractive picture of strong old-Russian vigor while Trifonov is softer, nerdier, and a bit more of a classic noble with delicate features and is sickly. I consider Anya the most passive of all the characters in a sense because all the other characters have strong personalities and bigger hopes for their future.

During this, there is the obvious change that Russia goes through in the 80s as the backdrop to all the teen angst and development. Sex, exploration, drinking, and pursuing other teen pleasures make up a bulk of the story in addition to the subtle thread of plot similarities with Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. I haven’t read that play yet but it’s on my list to complete because I want more context here.

Tragedy starts to befall on the foursome, and they are torn apart just as how Russia is by the end of the decade. Part two is made up of the final ten chapters which explains that Anya moved to the United States in 1988, married an American, and teaches with a PhD in comparative literature. It’s been almost twenty years and Lopatin wants to buy her family’s orchard and her parents are aging with a feeling of hopelessness. Anya must return to Russia and confront not only ghosts of her past but put together a viable future for herself and her family.

I expected more of this book to focus on the conflict between Anya’s parents and Lopatin trying to buy her family’s orchard instead of so much detail on the teenage years. I don’t mind that, but I do think that for the conflict to take up so much of the book’s synopsis, it kind of happened quickly. I don’t have many complaints about this book. I thought it was crushing, honest, raw, and emotional. By the end I felt myself starting to cry and it introduced me to a history that I heard a very one-sided viewpoint on as an American citizen. I am fascinated with this culture and I want to know more about it if I can.

[Hora · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The best friends of our childhoods are the loves of our lives, and they break our hearts in worse ways."
-Fredrik Backman, Us Against You (Beartown, #2)
I usually can't be bothered to write a review for any book,no matter how horrifically bad or how astonishingly beautiful it is. But this is one of the few exceptions.
I want to begin by specifying that I don't think this book is for everyone. It touches a lot of sensitive topics and you should look up the tws before proceeding with it(I'll just list a few: sexual assault,mentions of paedophilia and cannibalism). Plus, I don't think the USSR and its downfall is everyone's cup of tea and although this book isn't only about that, it certainly becomes a central theme by the end of the book. But if you're reading this,you're probably interested enough by this subject.
Anyway.
This book is first and foremost about friendship(as I see it). The first third or so of the book is simply delightful, even though serious topics are still occasionally(or maybe more than occasionally and I just chose to focus on the wholesome side)mentioned, the main part is about two girls growing up together, unravelling the mysteries of girlhood and of the soviet union(what a combo). I'm not usually a sucker for coming of age media, but this one hit the spot just right. I suppose it might come off as cheesy to some people at times, but I think the scenes are realistic enough and there's an ongoing gloom hanging over everyone's heads at any time that balances out with the emotional moments.
As Anya and Milka(the MC and her best friend) progress into adolescence shit hits the fan and things start getting a bit more intense. If you haven't read the book yet you might want to stop here as I'm going to give some light spoilers up ahead.
By the end of the first part, tragedy has struck, which leads us to the second part, which is much darker than the first( it destroyed me emotionally haha I will never view friendship in the same way again haha *bursts down into tears*). Most of the time, deaths in books or movies don't really affect me that much, as I feel many characters who are killed off are underdeveloped and you don't get to see how they engage in mundane activities enough to get attached to them and get a real sense of their personality. But this isn't most times. The author offers you enough glimpses of these characters' day to day lives in order to actually feel something when they die.
I'm very passionate about Russia, so that was another big plus for me. The political context is expanded on enough to feel like you actually know more about what Eastern europe was like back then, but not too much for it too feel like a history book packaged in a story as a pretext to be published as a novel.
This is my first serious review of a book, so I don't really know how to finish it, but go read The Orchard, I guess? I really enjoyed it and I will be aggressively recommending it to everyone around me who is willing to lend me and ear and listen to me sobbing about it.

[Gloria Thompson]

DNF (did not finish) and stopped at 25%

I appreciated snippets of Russian life in the 1980s. Descriptions of the food, family, friends, reminiscing on hard times of the war and the toughness of the soviet experience. The "realness" of it, I loved. HOWEVER! I had to stop because of the complete unnecessary use of crude/vulgar descriptive language of each others bodies and obsession of sex. It was gratuitous, distracting and pulled me out of the story. A quarter of the way through and the author probably used the words: nipples, tits, pubic hair like 100 times. It did not need to be added for this story to be good and for what the author was trying to evoke. Also nothing was really happening plot-wise. Just two teenage girls coming-of-age. I think this is an example of why literary fiction doesn't suit me.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Orchard opens with a gorgeous description of childhood innocence/paradise. There are very clear connections with The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov, well before the name and title dropping begins. I struggled, though, because it is neither close enough nor different enough from the play.

Additionally, the “less than innocent” components are unnecessarily crude/vulgar, bordering on the gratuitous, distracting from the other elements of the work. The pacing is similarly extreme, either very slow or hurtling at breakneck speed.

The book comes in at a solid ok for me. I doubt I will be seeking out others by this author or using this one in my classes. Thank you to Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, Ballantine Books, and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

[liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

as an eastern european with parents that experienced the impact of the ussr, so many political, economic and social dynamics rang true for me while reading this book. it was simultaneously heartbreaking and bittersweet. i didn’t want it to end and yet couldn’t stop reading it. this book broke my heart and left me in tears.

[Isa ◡̈ · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Etwas zu wollen und in der Lage zu sein, es zu tun, ist zweierlei. Vielleicht erleben nur ein paar Glückskinder beides zusammen. Vielleicht ist es das, was man Glücklichsein nennt: die Fähigkeit, seine Wünsche mit den eigenen Fähigkeiten in Einklang zu bringen. Aber oft liegt es ja gar nicht an uns.» S. 106 ❤️‍🩹

Der Roman »Das Leben vor uns« erzählt die Geschichte von Anja und ihrer besten Freundin Milka, die im Moskau der 1980er und 90er Jahre als Teil der Generation Perestroika aufwachsen. Diese Zeit ist geprägt von der fundamentalen Veränderungen der russischen Gesellschaft im Hinblick auf Politik, politischer Unsicherheit, Knappheit, Krisen, Gesellschaftsordnung und Weltanschauung. Diesen realen Kontext nutzt die emigrierte Autorin Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry in ihrem ersten Roman.

Die beiden besten Freundinnen 👯‍♀️ sind unzertrennlich, kommen jedoch aus ganz verschiednen familiären Umfeldern. Während Anja gemeinsam mit ihren Eltern und ihrer Großmutter aufwächst und politische Diskussionen und kritische, intellektuelle Auseinandersetzungen zu ihrem Alltag gehören, glänzen Milkas Mutter und Stiefvater vor allem durch Abwesenheit. Anja & Milka teilen alles und verbringen ihre gesamte Kindheit und Jugend gemeinsam - bis zur Tragödie kurz vor ihrem Schulabschluss … 20 Jahre später kehrt Anja zurück nach Russland und findet ein stark verändertes Heimatland vor.

»Für sie [Anjas Mutter] war, Liebe ein wahres Gefühl, Hass ein Affekt. Ohne Liebe zu leben war, wie in einer Höhle zu wohnen: Man fror immerzu und war immer im Dunkeln.« (S.89) ❤️

Die Autorin vermag es, die Atmosphäre und Weltanschauung der damaligen Zeit und Generation in Worte zu fassen. Das Buch ist ein sehr authentischer und ehrlicher Blick auf die Generation Perestroika - vermutlich nicht zuletzt, da die Autorin selbst zu dieser zählt.

Ein fesselndes, bittersüßes Buch mit authentischen und liebevoll konstruierten Charakteren. Das Buch hat mich sehr begeistert und eine neue Perspektive auf Russland eröffnet und zum Recherchieren angeregt. Absolute Leseempfehlung! ♥️
_______________________

🇬🇧 ⬇️
_______________________

»Wanting something and being able to do it are two different things. Perhaps only a few lucky children experience both together. Maybe it's what's called being happy: the ability to match one's desires with one's abilities. But often it's not up to us at all.« p.106 (own translation)

The novel »The Orchard« tells the story of Anja and her best friend Milka, who grow up in Moscow in the 1980s and 90s as part of the Perestroika generation. This period is marked by the fundamental changes in Russian society in terms of politics, political insecurity, scarcity, crises, social order and world view. The emigrated author Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry uses this real context in her first novel.

The two best friends 👯‍♀️ are inseparable, but come from very different family backgrounds. While Anja grows up with her parents and grandmother and political discussions and critical, intellectual debates are part of her everyday life, Milka's mother and stepfather are mainly conspicuous by their absence. Anja & Milka share everything and spend their entire childhood and adolescence together - until the tragedy shortly before her graduation from school ... 20 years later, Anja returns to Russia and finds things different from her youth.

"For her [Anja's mother], love was a true feeling, hate an affect. Living without love was like living in a cave: One was always freezing and always in the dark." (p.89) [own translation]

The author is able to put into words the atmosphere and world view of that time and generation. The book is a very authentic and honest look at the Perestroika generation - probably not least because the author herself is one of them.

A captivating, bittersweet book with authentic and lovingly constructed characters. Absolutely recommended reading! ♥️

[Mark Zvonkovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnificent story about the desperate times of Generation Perestroika.

Two teenagers in 1980s Russia share a cigarette. The reckless one, Milka, has just jumped from a high flying swing but sustains only a minor cut, saying from her seated position in the snow, “Wouldn’t that be cool to die on the same day as our Communist Leader?” The cautious one, Anya, tells her she’s nuts, that “Death is nothingness.” These two attitudes accompany the friends throughout the story. Milka is a dreamer of far away and exotic places. Anya is too practical for that, and her friend’s dreams only invoke her insecurities. Anya’s family has a modest dacha in the countryside, on which is an apple orchard. Milka’s mother has nothing but an incorrigible second husband, but Milka accompanies Anya to the dacha as if she is Anya’s sister. The apple orchard is a bit of a nod to Chekov’s cherry orchard, but it’s a loose connection. Gorcheva-Newberry’s apple orchard doesn’t so much represent materialism as Chekhov’s did. It is instead a symbol of the fragility of life during Russia’s transformation between Stalin and Gorbachev.

Like many Russian novels, The Orchard is rich with imagery. After an argument between Milka and her mother, Anya observes Milka’s face: “Winter lived there, with its ferocious winds and dead ossified earth and hard frozen snow.” Gorcheva-Newberry brilliantly weaves these images into the personalities of the novel’s characters. As seasons change, so do the characters, who often interact with each other with as much drama as a storm accompanying a passing cold front. In the end, a reader cannot know one character without the other three. Anya may be the narrator of the story, but the story is nothing without the others. It is reminiscent of Dostoevsky.
Can The Orchard be categorized as a coming-of-age novel? There are many elements that suggest it can be. At one point Milka states that she doesn’t want to grow up, “Because then you can’t blame anyone else for the shit that’s happening. It’s your own responsibility.” The cynicism appearing in many of Milka’s observations is also expressed by the girls’ two boyfriends, Lopatin and Trifonov. The author cleverly uses the personalities of the four characters to make pictures of angst and happiness, defeatism and hopefulness, and, finally, at the end of the novel, long after two of them have come of age, a mournful loss of resilience. Of course, there is a political backdrop to the story, much as there was in 1960s America for stories about those years. In Russia the times were much more sinister, where “We knew we had a fate, a destiny, designated by the Communist Party, and it was as irrevocable as the stars or the moon, as life itself.” There was some optimism, nevertheless, for a new Generation Perestroika when Anya and her friends were seventeen. But the optimism is fleeting for three of them.

Part Two of the novel begins in 1988, not in Russia but in America, where Anya marries while she is a foreign exchange student. Decades pass without her returning to Russia, and the reader sees her cautious personality bloom in her marriage. She says about her husband, “We rarely argued or disagreed or had long passionate conversations, and sometimes I thought of us as two pet fish in our aquarium, navigating through tall wavering weeds or hibernating inside a plastic castle, or hiding under a rock, ostracized by the glass.” But like so many Russian novels, trouble creeps into Anya’s life when she learns that a developer in Russia is badgering her parents to sell the dacha and its apple orchard. She must make a trip home. The weather imagery returns in a fashion similar to that used in Russia during Part One of the book. While driving her to the airport, her husband’s “face was a fall day—eyes clouded with thoughts, lips curled, folded at the corners like dry leaves.” Clearly, Anya’s life in America hasn’t been as harsh as it was in her coming of age years. Does the toned down imagery mean that the reader can expect a more optimistic end to Anya’s story than the endings in Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, or Chekhov? That’s for the reader to decide. For Anya’s family and friends, who’d not gone to America, the bleakness remains. Anya looks at her mother and notes that the “joy had been washed from her eyes; they were no longer blue but a dark, morose gray.”

Anya looks for closure during her visit to Russia, going to Milka’s house to confront her stepfather and visiting old places. The imagery returns to that of her teenage years, “a sunless frostbitten dawn, the air so white, as though sewn from snowflakes.” Worse, there was no snow, “the landscape grim, barren. It seemed as though nature wasn’t hibernating but dying.” And, of course, Lopatin shows up as the developer who wants the dacha and the orchard. He describes himself as an “old Russian with new money,” as well as bad news, of course. Anya and Lopatin go to the dacha, where they drunkenly try to make sense of life and then, with a nod to Chekov, chop down an apple tree, after which there is an orgy of self-reconciliation of a sort involving a chainsaw, a visit to cemeteries, a reckoning for Milka’s stepfather, and, sometime later, the planting of apple trees in Virginia. The timing of the action as well as the prose associated with all of these events is well done.

It is difficult to make sense of the ending of The Orchard, except perhaps by a tortured interpretation that the novel’s character’s lives served a purpose. But that wouldn’t be in line with Russian fatalism, certainly, and it would be out of line with the novel’s predominant imagery, which suggests that life “is just weather, wind and rain, spurts of blinding snow.” If there is closure in the novel, it occurs for Anya in Virginia, not in Russia. Gorcheva-Newberry’s novel is a tour de force regarding the indelible marks written on young lives during desperate social and political times. And it is hard to say that the novel’s characters ever come of age. There is no profound passage into adulthood, only a capitulation to the reality that nothing better is on the horizon.

Mark Zvonkovic, Reviewer and Author

[Eva Van · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eindelijk uit! Dit boek heeft best wel een leesdip veroorzaakt omdat het behoorlijk lang is voor de hoeveelheid gebeurtenissen. De beschrijving van de vriendschap tussen de meisjes vond ik mooi, die met de jongens raar en de beschouwingen op de Sovjet-Unie hadden op een subtielere manier in het verhaal verwerkt kunnen worden.

[Deborah Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this coming of age novel set in the 1980s in the Soviet Union. Gorcheva-Newberry really captures both the universality of the teenage experience and the particularities of the setting. Anya's parents can't tell her anything, she has to experience everything herself, like every teenager everywhere, but her parents' work lives and political views, and especially her grandmother's survival of war and famine are specific to the location.

I wonder if reading Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard first would have deepened my reading of this novel?

The present day story line felt a bit rushed to me and the characters less developed, but that's a small quibble with an enjoyable novel.

It was a slow read for me, maybe because of the sadness woven throughout. I found the setting really atmospheric and memorable; I will remember the batches of apple jam cooked in the small dacha set in the orchard!

[Bettina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Viel erg tegen. Ik had gehoopt op een goede historische roman, maar hier ging het vooral om de opgroeiende pubers en wat die allemaal voelen en beleven, en die zijn maar heel matig interessant. De historische context van het leven in de laatste jaren van de Sovjet Unie had een paar interessante details, maar was te weinig uitgewerkt voor mij.

Een uitgebreidere bespreking waarin ik uitleg waarom dit boek me tegenviel, is hier te vinden: https://bettinaschrijft.blogspot.com/...

[ROBYN MARKOW · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anya & Milka are teenage girls and best friends growing up in the Soviet Union in the waning days of it's existence. They're typical girls in many ways ; with talk about boys, clothes , music and how they can't wait to graduate from High School. However, They're constantly reminded daily of their country's tragic past from their parents and grandparents and while they get tired of hearing about it,it's always there; hovering on the edges of their subconscious. Both girls haven't any siblings but their home lives couldn't be more different ; Anya lives with her parents and grandmother, while Milka lives with her mother and an abusive , alcoholic Stepfather. Milka is the "fun" one though,and has a sense of adventure and humor to match,she's also highly intelligent and often seems older than her years ( we later find our why..) Due to her unhappy home life,Milka spends alot of time with Anya and her family; accompanying them to their small Dacha( Summer Home) every summer . The Dacha has an apple orchard which is the pride and joy of Anya's family and the girls spend many happy hours playing in it and picking apples which Anya's grandmother teaches them how to make jam,etc out of.

As they get older,Milka decides that they need boyfriends so she asks two male classmates , Lopatin & Litronov ( they're refered to by their surnames throughout the book) to go out with her and Anya. Lopatin, the good-looking athlete (and mediocre student) ends up with Milka and the intellectual,frail, asthmatic Litronov, w/Anya. They have some fun times together(which the author beautifully depicts) but Lopatin,whose father works for the government, is a dedicated Communist while Litronov isn't and the two often argue and on New Year's Eve,while driving to the Dacha on impulse even though it's the middle of winter ,Lopatin beats up Litronov so badly that he needs to go to the hospital. After that, the foursome rarely hang out together. Then Milka tells Anya she's pregnant, but the father isn't Lopatin but her Stepfather. She doesn't want the child and since she's too young to get an abortion, she takes some herbal "remedies ' she bought from a woman who deals in them for a living. Things go horribly wrong and a distraught Anya grieves the loss of her friend .Due to glasnost she is able to leave Russia and attend college in America.

The book then picks up 25 yrs later ;Anya is living in Virginia,married to an American and is a professor. She gets a call from her mom about someone wanting to buy the apple orchard. They don't want to sell it and need Anya to back them up, so she flies back to her family and native country, neither which she's seen in decades. Once there , she sees the changes in Russia since her absence , then finds out that Lopatin,now a slick businessman, is the one who wants to buy her family's orchard.

Loosely based on the classic play "The Cherry Orchard"This book was sad, to say the least, yet, the author describes Soviet-era Russia so vividly that you feel like you're there with with the characters. It also perfectly captures the sense of loss over a time that can never be re-captured.

[onukbubuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

FAVOURITE BOOK I’VE READ THIS YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!