Like Water and Other Stories

by Olga Zilberbourg

Fiction. California Interest. Short Stories. With settings that range from the Cuban Missile Crisis and Soviet-era Perestroika to present-day San Francisco, LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES, the first English-language collection from Leningrad-born author Olga Zilberbourg, looks at family and childrearing in ways both unsettling and tender, and characters who grapple with complicated legacies--of state, parentage, displacement, and identity. LIKE WATER is a unique portrayal of motherhood, of immigration and adaptation, and an inside account of life in the Soviet Union and its dissolution. Zilberbourg's stories investigate how motherhood reshapes the sense of self--and in ways that are often bewildering--against an uncharted landscape of American culture. In "Dandelion," a child turns into a novel and is shipped off to an agent in New York. In "Doctor Sveta," a young Soviet woman finds herself on a ship bound for Cuba at the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In "Companionship," a young boy decides to return to his mother's uterus. Anthony Marra calls LIKE WATER "A book of succinct abundance, dazzling in its particulars, expansive in its scope," and of these stories, Karen E. Bender says, they "cast a clear, illuminating light on topics ranging from motherhood, the workplace, birth, death, ambition, and immigration, all explored through exquisitely wrought characters in Russia and the United States. Olga Zilberbourg is a writer to read right now."

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Russia

184 pages, Paperback

Published September 5, 2019

About the author

Olga Zilberbourg is the author of LIKE WATER & OTHER STORIES, forthcoming from WTAW Press, and three Russian-language story collections, the most recent of which was published in Moscow in 2016. Her English- language fiction and criticism have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Narrative Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Common, and Electric Literature. Born in Leningrad, USSR, she came of age during the country’s disintegration, when the fall of the Iron Curtain created unprecedented travel and educational opportunities. Among the first in a wave of post-Soviet youth to study abroad and in the United States, Zilberbourg attended the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Goethe Institute in Germany, and the San Francisco State University, where she earned an M.A. in Comparative Literature. She has worked as an associate editor at Narrative Magazine and currently lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children.

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Russian-born Olga Zilberbourg, writing her short stories for the first time in English, has amassed a collection imbued with humor and wit, even in stories of grim circumstances. Some of the stories are very short; none are too long. (I’m pleased that I “got” all of her flash pieces, and that’s not something I can always say about flash.) Some may seem to be based on her own life (I only know the bare bones of her biography), but telling details let me know she’s inhabiting a character, exploring what it’s like to be someone else, and she does it so well. The title story is about that very thing, imagining how life could’ve been different if you’d known of something suppressed, wondering if you dare act on it now.

The story “Doctor Sveta” is of an older woman, a doctor, who’s telling the narrator about the time she was ordered to a cargo ship and ended up taking care of two pregnant women who also didn’t know why they were there. The ordeal these three women undergo is scarily pertinent to what’s being debated in the U.S. right now.

“We Were Geniuses” is probably my favorite of the bunch. In only three pages (looking back, I’m surprised to see it’s that short as it holds so much) it tells the story of Russian teenagers in the ‘90s who are expected and expect to be geniuses. The way their genius is proved at the end is both fun and funny, even while pointing at harsher truths.

It’d be uncharacteristic of me not to mention Zilberbourg’s references to the Beatles in a few of her stories. We speak the same language.

[Evelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We were geniuses. It was our birthright. Our parents were geniuses and, in many cases, our grandparents and our siblings. They worked in the areas of functional analysis, algebra, topology, group and probability theories, solved Poincaré conjectures and Hilbert problems, named countless theorems after themselves, and won chess championships. We were destined to follow in their footsteps. So what if we weren't geniuses in mathematics? By the age of fourteen or fifteen, it was clear that we were deficient in that department. We simply had to apply ourselves to other disciplines. As we went from physics to programming to chemistry to biology to history to language and literature to geography, we watched each other for the signs of the budding genius. We knew exactly what it would look like."

Olga Zilberbourg's voice is singular but never pat or predictable. Another reviewer commented on what she does with endings. It's difficult to articulate, but the final line both confirms and up-ends what has come thus far so that the story leaps off the page to enter the reader's physical space. Every piece in this book is original, unflinching, funny and humane. To paraphrase the blurb from Peter Orner: LIKE WATER makes a good case that the distinction between a traditional story and flash fiction is a false distinction-- at least, it certainly is in Olga's hands. Encountering so much of Olga's best work in a single volume drives home the scope of her achievement and the promise of work to come.

[Irina Kopelevich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just inhaled this book. These stories are so different from anything I have read before. There was a Russian writer, Viktor Shklovskiy. I remember many years ago reading his prose for the first time with the same feeling: "I have never read anything like that before." Every word in Olga Zilberbourg’s writing is carefully chosen, but it does not have this careful feel, on the contrary, it's freely flowing! Even though “Like Water” is a collection of short, seemingly separated and not related stories, it's being perceived like something whole, part of one life, just traveling in time and places. I think Olga’s writing is crazy genius. She is not trying to make life in her stories beautiful, but her stories are! I want more!

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bite-sized, quirky, and insightful these stories are like bon bons. You think you're going to just eat one, then you want another, and another. Recommended for fans of Lydia Davis and people interested in Russian immigrant life.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills) · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is always with a little trepidation that one decides to read an author one knows through social media. It is probably a good thing to pick up a book feeling like this because then you can turn the pages and be totally blown away by the sheer talent and grit of someone trying to make a name and a career for herself. I was impressed! Way to go Olga!!!

Consider her: " I was fifteen when my parents brought me, against my will, to the Bronx. Most people are confused by the " against my will" part. They assume everyone wanted out of Russia. But how does one explain one's home? The only way I know is to tell the stories."

Olga Zilberbourg is quite the storyteller!!!

But first, listen to her here:

Russian-American writer, Olga Zilberbourg, talks about coming of age during the fall of the Soviet Union, moving to the United States at the age of 17, and how these extraordinary experiences have shaped her identity as an artist.
Olga has been up until now mostly a short story writer, and is currently working on her first novel. She has been published in both English and Russian, and has been deeply impacted by both of her two countries. She discusses how she reconciles these two vastly different cultures in both her life and in her art, not to mention the challenges she's faced learning to write in a foreign language.


https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

[Vishy · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Like Water and Other Stories' is a collection of fifty two short stories by Olga Zilberbourg. That sounds like a lot of stories, but it doesn't feel that way while reading the book, because the stories are of varied length – some of them are what used to be called short-shorts which run for a few pages, while others are just a paragraph long like a Lydia Davis story, something which is called micro fiction these days. There are some stories which are longer too.

There are two major types of stories in the book – the Russian stories and the American stories. Olga Zilberbourg is Russian-American and so she has given importance to both sides, though I would say that the book on the whole leans towards the Russian side. Many of the Russian stories explore the Russian-American experience. One of my favourites was a story called 'Sweet Porridge' in which a Russian mother and her American child read a Grimm fairytale together and how their interpretation of the story is totally different. Another of my favourites was 'Cream and Sugar' in which a Russian mother comes to America to visit her daughter and her family. What happens during that time and the gentle clash of cultures is beautifully depicted in the story. Another favourite was 'Doctor Sveta' in which the narrator travels to St.Petersburg to meet her family and during a formal dinner she is seated next to her aunt's best friend who is a doctor. The narrator and this doctor have a conversation and what happens after that is fascinating. The title story 'Like Water' was beautiful and was one of my favourites too. The narrator of the story discovers a secret about her past and it surprises her very much. I can't tell you anything more about it. You have to read the story and discover its pleasures for yourself. The last passage in the story –

"And most likely, it’s too late. My habits have been too firmly established. Water isn’t for me. But I’m staring at the mug—it’s right there in the middle of the table. I can’t forget that water is in there. I’ve grown used to something else by now, but what if I dared? What if I did what so many of my students do at eighteen or twenty? Namely, experiment. Try out a new identity. I’m terrified, but I also can’t pretend I don’t understand. Water is life."

– was one of the most beautiful passages in the book. I can't tell you, of course, what the water she has mentioned there means. You have to read the story and discover its pleasures and secrets for yourself.

Out of the American stories, one of my favourites was 'Helen More's Suicide'. It is about a literature professor called Helen More who is dynamic and fascinating, but for some unknown reason takes her own life one day. Her best friend and one of her younger friends meet one day and talk about this. It is a beautiful story which asks some big questions.

There are more stories in the book, of course, there are fifty-two in all. I loved most of them, but I'll stop with this sample. I enjoyed reading this collection. Olga Zilberbourg's first three short story collections were published in Russian. This is her English language debut. I hope her Russian collections get translated into English. I'd love to read them.

Have you read 'Like Water and Other Stories'? What do you think about it?

[Blackwell Boyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this collection of stories. I found them to be insightful, ironic (sometimes ruefully so), crafted with a delicate hand. Often a story (for example, 'The Swallow'), would contain several seemingly-disparate elements, and as you read you would be turned gently to face the right direction for connecting these, but you were never-ever - thank God! - escorted directly to some blazing explanation. This is what good fiction is all about, of course.

The stories are populated by characters (exclusively women) who tend to be not entirely sure of themselves, who are wondering if they are really living the life that is right for them - in multiple cases a legacy of the fact that they are immigrants from Russia, from Soviet Russia, which is patently a very different place from the 21st-century US. Not unsurprisingly, the theme of transition (its difficulties, its possibilities) is one that is frequently explored - and not just external transition, but that from girlhood to womanhood, to motherhood, to old age, or to another job, or even from one sexual orientation to another.

Magic realism, which I am a big fan of when it is done well, features in a few of the pieces - the fine opening story 'Rubicon', and 'Evasion', 'Dandelion'. In the delightfully-titled 'Dandelion' the idea that the book you have written is your ‘baby’ is flipped on its head - the narrator, not having anything to give a publisher, instead sends her young child.

Longer stories with more of a narrative element loosely alternate with much shorter pieces, which are really observations/reflections rather than stories in the traditional sense and bring to mind the writings of Lydia Davis.

The final and title story describes a scene, in a theater, where the seat that the narrator’s friend is sitting in collapses; it reminded me vividly of a similar incident in my own life, which happened in the same part of the world, and during the same perestroika period. My wife - who was Russian - and I were in Estonia and we decided to visit an island in the Baltic Sea. To get to this island we had to fly in an old Soviet biplane. Just as the plane was taking off from the airfield there was a clatter inside the cabin - causing a moment of panic among the handful of passengers before we realized it was one of the fold-down seats (my wife’s) collapsing and not the plane itself breaking apart.

More than a few of the pieces in "Like Water and Other Stories" end on an abrupt note: the perfect final note.

[Elise Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The personal is political” is a slogan I remember from the feminism of the 1960s. As a college student when I first heard this, I completely bought into the connections between personal experience and the massive control of our lives by political and social structures and mores. Olga Zilberbourg's “Like Water and Other Stories” fits into this intersection, and always in the messy, surprising and unpredictable ways that liberate her reader’s perspectives. Her incredible imagination and facility with this, her first English language fiction collection, offers up revelations about family life, parenting, friendship, workplace dynamics, Including academic workplace foibles, and all of those sneaky social and political structures often overriding our best efforts. With settings from the former Soviet Union and present-day Russia, to the east and west coasts of America over the past 30 years, she has plenty of political range to work with. And here is the best part: Zilberbourg knows what she’s talking about. She is intimately familiar with all of these worlds. Her characters and their personal experiences occur and evolve organically within their realities, while inventiveness is spent on characters, imagery, language, situations, with a few symbolic fantasies. Among my favorites, The Broken Violin and My Sister’s Game mark the moment in youngster’s lives when they are forced by the thoughtlessness or cruelty of peers to decide who the truly are. And other favs, where a character walks a line between two cultures, such as Sweet Porridge, in which a mother must raise her own pampered child under completely different conditions from her Russian childhood. Whether a fully developed short story or a one line or one paragraph condensed idea, this collection will make you think, discuss, and reevaluate the sources and inevitability of your own personal experience. Bravo to this brilliant author on a stunning literary debut.

[Misty · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful, impressive collection. The stories are so varied in length, from very short pieces that blow open a new world in a single paragraph to what might be called the more traditional short stories with several intertwining subplots. From Soviet-era Russia to modern-day California, these stories burrow into the human experience of childhood, immigration, motherhood, professions, relationship, and--most predominately, it seems--alienation, that sense of being present in, but now quite entirely OF a place, or an environment, or an event.

Zilberbourg's voice is wonderfully compelling, and her prose is precise and brilliant and engaging in every line, a true joy to read. She can pull out an entire backdrop, even a character's entire history, in just a phrase or two. What stuck with me most was her facility with metaphor. In my favorite story, "Ada at Twelve and a Half," Ada is walking to school without her uniform. "The regulation white button-down is in the laundry basket, and there was some argument this morning about whose fault it was, Ada's or her mother's, that the shirt remained unwashed." How much this tells us in a single sentence of that relationship, Ada's life, and her feelings about both!

In other places, a small dash of magical realism delivers the emotional punch. In "Rubicon," an old flame suddenly shows up in the author's path, as his old self, in a shiny red Jeep. In "Dandelion," an author sends her child to an agent in New York who tries shopping it without success to various publishers and, failing at this, sends it back home frightened and fragile. In "Priorities," a stressed Dawn gets therapy in a flotation pod. (Ok, maybe those really exist--but they sounded magical to me.)

You'll want to read quickly, rushing through the shorter pieces, like eating an entire box of chocolates at once where each has a slightly different texture and taste, but all deliver that same tangy, luscious surprise. But I advise you to read slowly and savor. Go to fast and you'll miss the sly, salient details that Zilberbourg has planted throughout. This is an author whose consciousness holds multitudes. It's worth taking the time to explore.

I've posted a fuller review at femmeliterate

[Barbara Barrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Water is a riveting collection of stories that takes on themes of immigration, life in the former Soviet Union, parenting, academia, aging, family conflict, storytelling, childhood, electronic communication, even AI! I flew threw it. Some stories, like “Infestation” and “Her Left Side,” are about the strangeness of pregnancy; many others, like “Helen More’s Suicide” and “Doctor Sveta,” bring together women of different generations dealing with both professional and personal struggles. All of the stories are moving; many of them are darkly funny as well, with a hint of the strange absurdity lurking beneath the everyday that reminds me a bit of Shirley Jackson, but Zilberbourg’s voice is distinctive in its own right. She has a special gift for capturing the cadences of storytellers at family dinners and gatherings, the strange poetry of everyday speech. I noticed this especially in stories like “The Swallow,” where a man named Stepan monopolizes a big family dinner with a story about all the things he burned in his wood stove to make it through a freezing winter in Yerevan. A fantastic, absorbing book.

[Karen Garber · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in “Like Water” are beautiful threads of life. The writing is like water – clear, fluid, nourishing, and you keep needing more. The author manages to draw you into the worlds of these characters with such economy. I did long for some of them to continue, to find out more about what happened. There is more than one novel in this collection! Olga Zilberbourg is a marvel.

[Laird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Like Water and Other Stories is like eating a bowl of trail mix. Some stories fill your head with sweetness. There are moments of tenderness and, rarely, bitterness. Some are tiny. Some unfold over many pages. But everything comes with many grains of salt, and before you know it, the book is done. Thematically, Olga Zilberbourg focuses on the experiences of Russians transplanted to America -- particularly those old enough to have grown up in the Soviet Union -- and of mothers and daughters, using wry humor to pry open the meaning behind experiences of confused identity, loss and discovery. A pregnant mother wakens in bed to ponder conflicting Russian and American health recommendations. A humanities professor dies at her desk and isn't missed for days. The color of a baby stroller evokes memories of rape. Some stories hew strictly to a realist path. In others magic enters, allowing people grow to the size of trees or a childhood friend to escape the passage of time. Few, if any, characters reappear from one story to the next. But they overlap sufficiently to unfurl a life story, a kind of shadow memoir you won't want to miss.

[Justine Badimon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Olga Zilberbourg's, Like Water and Other Stories, is a mesmerizing collection of short stories that you will want to reread over again. Every chapter gives a unique, intriguing yet familiar point of view via its characters that are in Russia and/or the United States. I've never read anything quite like this book, and I was excited to read each new story, unsure of what to expect. The stories give vignettes into the lives of mothers, immigrants, and children and weave in clever bits of welcome humor and history. I am grateful to have found this wonderful book.

[Giovanna Montenegro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not just giving it five stars because my friend wrote it. But seriously awesome short stories that investigate motherhood, immigration, academia, diaspora, and loneliness.

[Kevin Tole · Rating 3 out of 5]

”...to sit here and stare at the churning engine of history.”

Ms Zilberbourg was born in 1979 in Leningrad and emigrated along with her parents to the USA at the age of 17. By the age of 40 she has published several anthologies of prose stories. Published in 2019, this is the latest and falls into the category beloved of all writing and reading groups, the short shorts. Some might say that this category offers the chance to say a lot in a very short space and therefore is the epitome of good writing and the delineation of the prowess of the writer. They are the smallest of units to get across ideas and literary pretensions. Others would disagree opting for the line that it never offers enough space to fully develop characterisation or ideas to their fullest extent and as such is a waste of time and effort suitable for only the most self-preening of performers. There is something to be said for both opinions and these stories back that up. Some of them lay out their nuggets like giblets from a dispatched chicken which you follow till you come to the corpse – strung out, sectioned to become surreal – as in ‘beyond real’ – poetic, achieving more through less; somehow haunting. Others require the intervention of the reader to recognise or identify with the little turn or vignette which makes sense of the preceding ‘x’ number of sentences and thus form a bond between reader and writer. The hope for the writer is that the story fulfils something within the reader, that this connection is made. The connection is the key to the story in the mind of the writer. If that does not happen then the disparate sentences get left in a void however smart they may be. The search is for the conjunction in thought between the reader and the writer in order to form a conveyance of communication making the reader and the writer fellow travellers and establishing a bond.

Most of the shorts here contain similar themes. The big one that stands out head and shoulders is anxiety – anxiety about parenting, careers, or even just life in general. It is remarkable how ‘anxious’ Ms Zilberbourg seems in all of these stories. That comes from the status of being an immigrant to the USA from Soviet Russia carrying a traditional past laden with a ‘Russian-ness’ in the land of unfettered capitalism, a land which Ms Z. Sees as the ‘land of equal opportunities for all’. Another common theme is maternity and babies. All the shorts seem highly personal, almost blatantly so, to seem autobiographical without having a sense of the ‘auteur’, the going beyond the personal to make a creative statement which has a commonality – unless that is to reinforce a view that life alone is anxious. Whoop-de-doo!!!

Don’t get me wrong. There IS good writing here and it sits like little crystal shards – neat turns of phrases which indicate a shared sense of meaning and an elucidation of a human state. The killer last paragraph that pulls it all together like a haiku was, however, for me absent in many of these shorts. I could not identify with the thoughts within them. In a way that is not surprising as these are all pretty intensively female. Which of course leads you into the question of what makes male and female writing different? Now there’s a can of worms to get tore into which I am just going to sidestep.

This sense of migrancy and the mind of the immigrant lingers in many of the shorts and leaves you pondering on the nature of immigration, the nature of the mind of the displaced. After we have bombed the shite out of another person’s homeland we then have the temerity to label them ‘economic migrants’ for wanting to escape the chaos to the land that inflicted chaos upon them, to ‘better’ themselves and their future prospects.

Any example of Russian contemporary literature is welcome on my shelf but this one is a little different, being so intensely female, anxious and immigrantly personal to the extent that it feels American rather than Russian (though it’s ‘Russian-ness’ cannot be denied as that is per se there in the status of immigrant). I wonder how her work would be viewed by Sergei Dovlatov, another Russian émigré writer to the USA. I found myself comparing this book to the short stories of Helen Garner unfortunately to Ms Z’s detriment. I would like to read something longer and hope that it does not descend into the usual chick-lit of late (actually – that’s not fair as Ms. Z’s writing is infinitely better than chick-lit.) Perhaps I am missing something and the fault in reading these shorts is all mine. I confess I am not a great lover of this genre and I have not experienced the ‘joys’ of pregnancy and parenthood. But being a foreigner in a foreign land is something I have had a lot of experience of.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories that will be very interesting to read for any Russian immigrant in the US, or any person who is interested in Russian culture and how the background of being born and raised in Russia affects the everyday life of American Russians.

It is an attentive and sharp investigation of bicultural identity, but also I really liked the concise and subtle language of the stories, and how vivid and distinctive all characters are.

My favorite stories in the collection are “Janik’s Score” and "Broken Violin". The first one is a heartbreaking story about relationships across the generations, and the second one was to me a great illustration of how painful and wrong can personal growth feel at times.

[Marianne Villanueva · Rating 5 out of 5]

So different, and so compelling. The stories have such specificity, the voice is quiet -- but each one packs a punch, even the stories that are only one paragraph.

Most of all, I loved the way each story ends -- they end on a very unexpected beat. Only a very, very sure hand can craft stories that end that way.

A marvelous collection. One to re-read.

Publisher is a small, independent press: Why There Are Words (WTAW). I'll be looking out for more of their books.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Like Water and Other Stories" is a sublime collection filled with stories so condensed that they come out in just a few sentences, to longer tales about seemingly endless journeys at sea and conversations that never leave a room. It's about Russians and Americans and Russian-Americans. I felt grounded, yet the prose let me escape.

[Harriet Rohmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating insider's view of what life was like for a mother and her child in the last, disintegrating days of the Soviet Union--and how they managed to get to the United States and to survive in a puzzling, sometimes funny, often incomprehensible new world.

Olga Zilberbourg has embraced the English language and her new home with style and delight. What a pleasure to welcome a major new writer!

Harriet Rohmer
Author of Heroes of the Environment, Chronicle Books
Founding Publisher of Children's Book Press

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This eclectic collection is tied together thematically. Almost all the stories are about some aspect of family, whether ancestors or progeny. I have heard Zilberbourg read and present; at one event, she apologized for her accented English. Her original language is Russian and she has published several books in Russia. Well, she has nothing to apologize for. Her writing in English is spare but rich. The stories range from flash fiction to longer pieces and from realistic to more surreal. One of my favorites imagined a writer "submitting" her child to a publisher. Many deal with the clash of cultures between parents/grandparents living in Russia and children in the United States.

[Sue]

Just re-read this fantastic collection!

[yana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book of short stories, given it's written by a Russian immigrant close to my age -- but I was fully prepared to be disappointed (as I often am). I was not -- this collection was lovely. I loved the voice, style, and variety. It had a lot of personality and smarts and the right kind of melancholy. I have a feeling we'll be seeing more from Olga Zilberbourg and I look forward to that day.

[Graham Oliver]

Really enjoyed this collection - especially the tempo. A light barrage of little thoughtful slices of stories. Zilberbourg is at her best when sketching the intricacies of family, but this collection does so in a way that doesn't become repetitive.

[Leslie (updates on SG) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection of stories. I enjoyed the variety of topics and styles, but the endings rarely worked for me. My favorite stories are "Dandelion," "Email," and "Like Water."

[Mike Karpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am developing a taste for short-story collections that mix traditional length stories with flash fiction and microfiction (and in this case, a story of a sentence that's barely a full line). It really makes for a pleasurable read, because you get to slip into something new and stay there to the memorable conclusion ("Jannik's Score") and then do a quick, thoughtful in-and-out ("Email" and "One's Share," which are back to back) to freshen up the brain. Then again, we have artifacts from the non-fictive world like "How to Deliver a Genius" (I really don't think that was made up) that provide another very different type of grounding. Grounded is a good word in general for this collection, because it moves without disorientation for the reader between countries and cultures, Leningrad to California to graduate school. ("Graduate School" really felt like it needed a visa to get in to, and maybe a break through a barbed wire fence to get out of, though that may be me projecting.) I'm ready for more!

[Katya Cengel · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories offer a window into other worlds, while still highlighting the issues of this one. Time and place change, sometimes in ways that don't seem possible, but the characters confront the same problems we all do with families, careers and just day to day living. Deep insights end with the limitations of reality, be it the reality of the cost of transportation or the reality of others and our own shortcomings. Poetic, surreal, funny and tragic the stories in this collection offer an escape that reminds us of the absurdity and beauty of living. A favorite of mine was the baby that becomes a novel only to be rejected by the agent and returned. As crazy as it sounds, Olga makes it work and leaves you laughing and crying at the same time.

[Robin Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zilberbourg's attention to details (even those from the magical imagination) and precise word choice bring this beautifully choreographed collection of stories to life for a reader. Dog eared pages:
About work: "Legacy."
About family: "One's Share."

A bit of magic, from "Dandelion": "Oz had no novel, but she did have a nineteen month old. 'He's very much like a novel,' she told the agent. 'Can I ship him to you?'"

Hilarious, if you have a mother: "Therapy. Or something."

About mix tapes, and young love, and being a girl, and babies, and work, and motherhood and spousehood and sexuality and cultural divides and creativity and other universals in intensely personal packages.

[Eamurray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd given up on short stories and when my friend gave me her stack of old NYers I'd gave a skip to the fiction pages even when the bylines carried enticing names of big deal novelists. Turns out I was wrong or had been wrong for the dozen years I favored novels over reading short fiction and stories. Or rather Like Water and Other Stories showed me a beautifully entrancing circuitous route to story. Olga Zilberbourg weaves a magic spell in the accretion of characters and pace and tone and circumstance. Her stories go everywhere. And I submitted willingly. Trust her voice. Go, get this book!

[Masha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly tender, inspiring and honest collection of stories. Topics range from immigration and class disparities to glimpses of family life and trauma in the Soviet Union, to American parenting, and so much more. Olga manages to distill so much beauty and punch from life's universal moments big and small. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and the settings and still think about them months after reading.

[Marie Houzelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

LIKE WATER is full of surprises and delights. Between Russia and San Francisco, these stories--long or minimal, realistic or chimerical-- take you into appealing, unsettling inner worlds, with exuberant voices, ambiguous dialogue, daring trains of thoughts. The humour, all along, is unique, never ebullient or quite dark but consistently, subtly contemplative.