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What Isn't Remembered: Stories
Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the stories in What Isn’t Remembered explore the burden, the power, and the nature of love between people who often feel misplaced and estranged from their deepest selves and the world, where they cannot find a home. The characters yearn not only to redefine themselves and rebuild their relationships but also to recover lost loves—a parent, a child, a friend, a spouse, a partner.
A young man longs for his mother’s love while grieving the loss of his older brother. A mother’s affair sabotages her relationship with her daughter, causing a lifelong feud between the two. A divorced man struggles to come to terms with his failed marriage and his family’s genocidal past while trying to persuade his father to start cancer treatments. A high school girl feels responsible for the death of her best friend, and the guilt continues to haunt her decades later.
Evocative and lyrical, the tales in What Isn’t Remembered uncover complex events and emotions, as well as the unpredictable ways in which people adapt to what happens in their lives, finding solace from the most surprising and unexpected sources.
A young man longs for his mother’s love while grieving the loss of his older brother. A mother’s affair sabotages her relationship with her daughter, causing a lifelong feud between the two. A divorced man struggles to come to terms with his failed marriage and his family’s genocidal past while trying to persuade his father to start cancer treatments. A high school girl feels responsible for the death of her best friend, and the guilt continues to haunt her decades later.
Evocative and lyrical, the tales in What Isn’t Remembered uncover complex events and emotions, as well as the unpredictable ways in which people adapt to what happens in their lives, finding solace from the most surprising and unexpected sources.
- GenresShort Stories
262 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2021
12 people are currently reading
229 people want to read
About the author
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
3 books60 followersKristina 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.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
June 23, 2021
In a Nutshell: I think this might be a great book for its right target reader but that right target reader wasn't me.
I had requested this book for its gorgeous cover and the fact that it’s an anthology, a genre I relish. However, as vivid and striking as the cover is, the stories inside are as dark and depressing. This is an anthology of 16 stories, all of which are about the Russian/Armenian life in their native land or in America.
The stories are mostly slice of life narratives, focusing on the darker thoughts and experiences of humans. Each story has broken characters, searching for ways to mend themselves, sometimes unsuccessfully. Some of the stories are written in distinct styles such as in second person, or in present tense, or in the stream of consciousness technique, or in staccato sentences. These varied approaches make for a unique reading experience.
This doesn’t mean that I enjoyed the reading experience. As I said, I probably was the wrong target reader for this. So, this is where the book and I failed to match our wavelengths.
- The endings aren't your typical happy or "everything is resolved" kind of a finish. They are quite abrupt and even open-ended, so if you like your short stories to tie everything neatly together, this isn't your kind of book. I don’t mind open endings but I hate abrupt or illogical endings. An open ending must leave you stunned in wonder, not stumped in bewilderment.
- I don't like vulgar sexual content in my books unless the story demands it. Here, a few of the stories contain multiple references to penises and pussies and masturbation and so on without any story requiring this content for its plot. That's a deal-breaker for me.
- I felt like the author was trying too hard to work on the slice of life factor, which ended making the flow of the stories pretty haphazard and the writing, very stilted. Some of the stories were written very well but in most cases, I was left with a sense of disappointment. Slice of life works best when it sounds natural and realistic, not esoteric or forced.
A few of the stories that I found good were Boys on the Moskva River, Simple Song #9, Beloveds, The Suicide Note (the most brilliant story in the book by far!), Second Person, Gene Therapy, No Other Love, and Champions of the World. But most of these were still 4 star stories for me. I didn't find any story, except for "The Suicide Note", worth rating 5 stars. And in many of these cases, it was because of the lacklustre ending that simply didn’t do justice to the rest of the story. The second half of the book has much better tales than the initial half, but it’s a little too late by then to resurrect the good vibes generated by that cover.
If you are a literary fiction fan with a better appreciation of the journey than the destination (and a greater tolerance for gratuitous adult content and ad hoc plot climaxes) OR if you like books focussing more on despondent emotional regressions than progressions, you might enjoy this book. It wasn’t my cup of tea because I like the destination as much as the journey, and I like my stories to move ahead in some manner or direction, not to be stuck in a quagmire of darkness.
Thank you, NetGalley and University of Nebraska Press, for the DRC of the book in exchange for an honest review.
***********************
Join me on the Facebook group, Readers Forever! , for more reviews, book-related discussions and fun.
Follow me on Instagram: RoshReviews
I had requested this book for its gorgeous cover and the fact that it’s an anthology, a genre I relish. However, as vivid and striking as the cover is, the stories inside are as dark and depressing. This is an anthology of 16 stories, all of which are about the Russian/Armenian life in their native land or in America.
The stories are mostly slice of life narratives, focusing on the darker thoughts and experiences of humans. Each story has broken characters, searching for ways to mend themselves, sometimes unsuccessfully. Some of the stories are written in distinct styles such as in second person, or in present tense, or in the stream of consciousness technique, or in staccato sentences. These varied approaches make for a unique reading experience.
This doesn’t mean that I enjoyed the reading experience. As I said, I probably was the wrong target reader for this. So, this is where the book and I failed to match our wavelengths.
- The endings aren't your typical happy or "everything is resolved" kind of a finish. They are quite abrupt and even open-ended, so if you like your short stories to tie everything neatly together, this isn't your kind of book. I don’t mind open endings but I hate abrupt or illogical endings. An open ending must leave you stunned in wonder, not stumped in bewilderment.
- I don't like vulgar sexual content in my books unless the story demands it. Here, a few of the stories contain multiple references to penises and pussies and masturbation and so on without any story requiring this content for its plot. That's a deal-breaker for me.
- I felt like the author was trying too hard to work on the slice of life factor, which ended making the flow of the stories pretty haphazard and the writing, very stilted. Some of the stories were written very well but in most cases, I was left with a sense of disappointment. Slice of life works best when it sounds natural and realistic, not esoteric or forced.
A few of the stories that I found good were Boys on the Moskva River, Simple Song #9, Beloveds, The Suicide Note (the most brilliant story in the book by far!), Second Person, Gene Therapy, No Other Love, and Champions of the World. But most of these were still 4 star stories for me. I didn't find any story, except for "The Suicide Note", worth rating 5 stars. And in many of these cases, it was because of the lacklustre ending that simply didn’t do justice to the rest of the story. The second half of the book has much better tales than the initial half, but it’s a little too late by then to resurrect the good vibes generated by that cover.
If you are a literary fiction fan with a better appreciation of the journey than the destination (and a greater tolerance for gratuitous adult content and ad hoc plot climaxes) OR if you like books focussing more on despondent emotional regressions than progressions, you might enjoy this book. It wasn’t my cup of tea because I like the destination as much as the journey, and I like my stories to move ahead in some manner or direction, not to be stuck in a quagmire of darkness.
Thank you, NetGalley and University of Nebraska Press, for the DRC of the book in exchange for an honest review.
***********************
Join me on the Facebook group, Readers Forever! , for more reviews, book-related discussions and fun.
Follow me on Instagram: RoshReviews
July 8, 2021
I found these stories to be rich and involving, each one could be the springboard for a longer work. No wonder that she's won awards. Calling on material from her Russian heritage and in places from Armenian history, she creates characters and situations that are at once lyric and lusty, hilarious and heartbreaking. Usually short fiction tends to be circumspect in its content, but Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry doesn't shy away. She is a fearless writer, employing the male voice as often as the female, and I look forward to a possible novel from this writer.
dnfs
May 14, 2022DNF at 38%/100 pages
My thoughts on this collection are...complicated. What Isn't Remembered does a lot of things well, but also misses the mark in so many ways for me. It's a tricky book to review because so often what it does well is also what it doesn't do well. Take the writing, for example: at times, it's really well-executed, painting a vivid picture of the settings and environments of its short stories. For instance, this opening paragraph from the first short story, "Boys on the Moskva River,"
Such a compelling beginning. The imagery--"with stripes of gauze," "like a puncture wound"--immediately gives you a sense of what kind of story we're getting here (and, coincidentally enough, this story was my favourite of the stories that I read before I DNFd this). All of this is to say, Gorcheva-Newberry's writing is often immersive and evocative (especially when it comes to descriptions of natural settings).
I wish I could leave it at that, but unfortunately it doesn't stop there. Because while Gorcheva-Newberry's writing can be lovely at times, it is also very stilted and offputting at others. I found this to be the case especially when it came to some of the characters' inner thoughts and, even more so, their dialogue. Some--I'd even venture to say, most--of the dialogue in this collection is very weird. It wasn't organic at all, the kind of dialogue that feels like the product of literary fiction that's trying too hard to be deep or edgy. It just didn't work. Also, this book talks about sex in such an uncomfortable way; its descriptions of sex feel almost purposefully lewd, as though they were written with the sole purpose of getting a reaction out of you. They were really uncomfortable to read, and also just very cringe-inducing.
I struggled with this collection's narratives for the same reasons that I struggled with its writing; namely, that what it does well ends up being overshadowed by what it does poorly. The stories that I read had a lot of potential; they had a strong sense of interiority, and were very much character-focused, which I love. They focused on complicated, often dysfunctional, families and family relationships, which I also love. Where I run into problems is that, as narratives, these stories didn't go anywhere. Slice-of-life stories are tricky because what you don't give the reader in terms of narrative structure or closure you have to make up for in terms of character. If the story is not that plot-focused, then I expect that it's going to put in the work to spotlight its characters. And it's not that Gorcheva-Newberry's stories don't spotlight character, it's that they don't spotlight character enough. I just didn't find that their character work was strong enough to sustain their otherwise loosely plotted, open-ended narratives.
I read six stories before I DNFd this collection, and I either felt mediocre about, or actively disliked, all of them. The first story, "Boys on the Moskva River," I sort of liked--it was around a 3.5 stars, if I had to give it a rating--but all the rest were either 3 or 2 stars. "All of Me" I didn't like at all, "Heroes of Our Time" felt pointless, and "Simple Song" was just overwhelmingly cheesy. "Heart of Things" and "A Lullaby for My Father" were fine, but that's the most I can really say about them.
I don't know, I feel like I could've really loved this collection, and there were some elements of it that I was drawn to, but on the whole there were just too many things I didn't like that I couldn't keep reading it anymore.
Thanks so much to University of Nebraska Press for sending me a copy of this in exchange for an honest review!
My thoughts on this collection are...complicated. What Isn't Remembered does a lot of things well, but also misses the mark in so many ways for me. It's a tricky book to review because so often what it does well is also what it doesn't do well. Take the writing, for example: at times, it's really well-executed, painting a vivid picture of the settings and environments of its short stories. For instance, this opening paragraph from the first short story, "Boys on the Moskva River,"
"When my brother died in the winter of 1998, the snow fell at night and all day and all the following week, so they didn't find him right away, the contour of his body barely delineated but otherwise indistinguishable from the shrouded, ice-etched forms. Out the window of my brother's luxurious apartment, the Moskva River appeared frozen, layered in white as though bandaged with strips of gauze. But if you stared at it long enough, if you let your eyes adjust to the ossifying whiteness all around, you could see the river tremble and shift underneath the snow, wet and sunken and hollow in the middle, like a puncture wound."
Such a compelling beginning. The imagery--"with stripes of gauze," "like a puncture wound"--immediately gives you a sense of what kind of story we're getting here (and, coincidentally enough, this story was my favourite of the stories that I read before I DNFd this). All of this is to say, Gorcheva-Newberry's writing is often immersive and evocative (especially when it comes to descriptions of natural settings).
I wish I could leave it at that, but unfortunately it doesn't stop there. Because while Gorcheva-Newberry's writing can be lovely at times, it is also very stilted and offputting at others. I found this to be the case especially when it came to some of the characters' inner thoughts and, even more so, their dialogue. Some--I'd even venture to say, most--of the dialogue in this collection is very weird. It wasn't organic at all, the kind of dialogue that feels like the product of literary fiction that's trying too hard to be deep or edgy. It just didn't work. Also, this book talks about sex in such an uncomfortable way; its descriptions of sex feel almost purposefully lewd, as though they were written with the sole purpose of getting a reaction out of you. They were really uncomfortable to read, and also just very cringe-inducing.
I struggled with this collection's narratives for the same reasons that I struggled with its writing; namely, that what it does well ends up being overshadowed by what it does poorly. The stories that I read had a lot of potential; they had a strong sense of interiority, and were very much character-focused, which I love. They focused on complicated, often dysfunctional, families and family relationships, which I also love. Where I run into problems is that, as narratives, these stories didn't go anywhere. Slice-of-life stories are tricky because what you don't give the reader in terms of narrative structure or closure you have to make up for in terms of character. If the story is not that plot-focused, then I expect that it's going to put in the work to spotlight its characters. And it's not that Gorcheva-Newberry's stories don't spotlight character, it's that they don't spotlight character enough. I just didn't find that their character work was strong enough to sustain their otherwise loosely plotted, open-ended narratives.
I read six stories before I DNFd this collection, and I either felt mediocre about, or actively disliked, all of them. The first story, "Boys on the Moskva River," I sort of liked--it was around a 3.5 stars, if I had to give it a rating--but all the rest were either 3 or 2 stars. "All of Me" I didn't like at all, "Heroes of Our Time" felt pointless, and "Simple Song" was just overwhelmingly cheesy. "Heart of Things" and "A Lullaby for My Father" were fine, but that's the most I can really say about them.
I don't know, I feel like I could've really loved this collection, and there were some elements of it that I was drawn to, but on the whole there were just too many things I didn't like that I couldn't keep reading it anymore.
Thanks so much to University of Nebraska Press for sending me a copy of this in exchange for an honest review!
September 8, 2021
via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐚𝐱𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐮𝐦𝐛 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫’𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬.
This is a gorgeous collection, some stories sink in your gut and claw their way up to your heart, forcing you to attend to sorrow. Her sentences shook my shoulders, highlighting moving passages, grieving for lost innocence and the death of hope. I had a strange moment when I thought ‘wait, this book isn’t out yet, why do I remember this story’- only to realize I had read it in a collection of authors and had loved it, even though the deep sadness was a shock to the system. I also just finished Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s forthcoming novel The Orchard (coming March 2022), just as engaging as her short story collection. The characters are fleshy to the point they could be sitting next to you in a bar, reminiscing with others who have emigrated from Russia about their homeland, trying to define the lives they are now living. Stuck in between places and identities, neither whole in one country or the other forced to confront not just assimilation into a new culture but resentment by family left behind for being ‘too American’. There are still others in their homeland, burying a son, brother- discovering that no matter how voracious one’s appetite for life, how hard they fight for themselves, there is cruelty lurking, ready to snuff out the fiery of us all. Yet, even the dead have their mysteries, ‘little’ surprises, they leave behind- a breath of life for a grieving mother who couldn’t get close enough to her son in life.
It’s a push and pull for better a better existence, but often it’s acceptance that you are nothing but a fossil already, trapped by the choices others have made or worse, by those that govern your country. Countries where ‘suffering overrules pleasures’ which is gold for literary classics (especially Russian) but hell on the actual living citizens. It is learning that even friendship has its deceptions, not all secrets can be told, and the dead don’t talk- all the little slips, the alarming truths you failed to act upon will travel with you forever. That when you could have been salvation for your dearest friend you instead became worse than the enemy and landed far more brutal blows than the abuser. Not everyone gets out alive, gets to grow up and realize their dreams. What about those that do? Well, they aren’t always fully living in the present, marked as they are by shame and guilt unable to comprehend their own stories nor the losses. There are many aches of betrayal, but when it’s between friends, our sounding boards, champions, those who often sustain us, it too is a death. The structure of a life can change with one act, even messy mistakes.
Roots pulling us back or being severed, the passage of time on body and mind, the struggles of acculturation, the horror and beauty of putting the dead to rest and returning, always returning to the people and land we left behind. The language of our ancestors, their merciless past, is one that must never be forgotten. How hard it is to embrace our father/mother’s sorrows, how impossible to ignore. Perestroika is mentioned in this author’s work, a generation grew up during the political movement, and I understand more about it now that I’ve read her writing therefore, the tale Heroes of Our Time really brings home the generational differences of suffering. The desires aren’t really much different, though the burdens cannot be measured, everyone wants to cling to life, to find some joy and pleasure to the very end. It’s a charming tale, the entire collection is not all misery, some of the telling is bittersweet. I adore this line, while a young man is on the hunt to fulfill the last wish of sorts for his dying grandfather, he says “𝘐 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘮, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘱𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴.” It tickled me, his idea that an old person’s desires are ridiculous- ah the blindness of youth.
Of course, every story was glorious to me, because Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s sentences truly are lyrical and swept me away into the lives that are the heart of the collection.“𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴, 𝘎𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴” in Simple Song #9 and it’s true of this book too. Sometimes we find a writer that just flows perfectly with what moves us. I don’t know if it’s the influences over my life (my father and grandparents emigrated from Hungary) having felt, though American born, split between cultures but I know for a fact that there is displacement when you start a life elsewhere. That you are always living with pieces of yourself scattered, that you cannot replace your history no matter where you land. Your children will carry it in their blood, that thing that sets you apart. It’s about culture and displacement but so much more. Courage, fragility, loyalty, perception, fight, surrender… what a writer! I can’t even express how much the stories made my heart ache, how much I loved the people, even those who seem bitter or lost. They are all walking contradictions, most people are. Neither completely good/bad, just stumbling like we all do in the fog of life. Yes, read this author!
Published September 1, 2021
University of Nebraska Press
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐚𝐱𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐮𝐦𝐛 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫’𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬.
This is a gorgeous collection, some stories sink in your gut and claw their way up to your heart, forcing you to attend to sorrow. Her sentences shook my shoulders, highlighting moving passages, grieving for lost innocence and the death of hope. I had a strange moment when I thought ‘wait, this book isn’t out yet, why do I remember this story’- only to realize I had read it in a collection of authors and had loved it, even though the deep sadness was a shock to the system. I also just finished Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s forthcoming novel The Orchard (coming March 2022), just as engaging as her short story collection. The characters are fleshy to the point they could be sitting next to you in a bar, reminiscing with others who have emigrated from Russia about their homeland, trying to define the lives they are now living. Stuck in between places and identities, neither whole in one country or the other forced to confront not just assimilation into a new culture but resentment by family left behind for being ‘too American’. There are still others in their homeland, burying a son, brother- discovering that no matter how voracious one’s appetite for life, how hard they fight for themselves, there is cruelty lurking, ready to snuff out the fiery of us all. Yet, even the dead have their mysteries, ‘little’ surprises, they leave behind- a breath of life for a grieving mother who couldn’t get close enough to her son in life.
It’s a push and pull for better a better existence, but often it’s acceptance that you are nothing but a fossil already, trapped by the choices others have made or worse, by those that govern your country. Countries where ‘suffering overrules pleasures’ which is gold for literary classics (especially Russian) but hell on the actual living citizens. It is learning that even friendship has its deceptions, not all secrets can be told, and the dead don’t talk- all the little slips, the alarming truths you failed to act upon will travel with you forever. That when you could have been salvation for your dearest friend you instead became worse than the enemy and landed far more brutal blows than the abuser. Not everyone gets out alive, gets to grow up and realize their dreams. What about those that do? Well, they aren’t always fully living in the present, marked as they are by shame and guilt unable to comprehend their own stories nor the losses. There are many aches of betrayal, but when it’s between friends, our sounding boards, champions, those who often sustain us, it too is a death. The structure of a life can change with one act, even messy mistakes.
Roots pulling us back or being severed, the passage of time on body and mind, the struggles of acculturation, the horror and beauty of putting the dead to rest and returning, always returning to the people and land we left behind. The language of our ancestors, their merciless past, is one that must never be forgotten. How hard it is to embrace our father/mother’s sorrows, how impossible to ignore. Perestroika is mentioned in this author’s work, a generation grew up during the political movement, and I understand more about it now that I’ve read her writing therefore, the tale Heroes of Our Time really brings home the generational differences of suffering. The desires aren’t really much different, though the burdens cannot be measured, everyone wants to cling to life, to find some joy and pleasure to the very end. It’s a charming tale, the entire collection is not all misery, some of the telling is bittersweet. I adore this line, while a young man is on the hunt to fulfill the last wish of sorts for his dying grandfather, he says “𝘐 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘮, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘱𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴.” It tickled me, his idea that an old person’s desires are ridiculous- ah the blindness of youth.
Of course, every story was glorious to me, because Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s sentences truly are lyrical and swept me away into the lives that are the heart of the collection.“𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴, 𝘎𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴” in Simple Song #9 and it’s true of this book too. Sometimes we find a writer that just flows perfectly with what moves us. I don’t know if it’s the influences over my life (my father and grandparents emigrated from Hungary) having felt, though American born, split between cultures but I know for a fact that there is displacement when you start a life elsewhere. That you are always living with pieces of yourself scattered, that you cannot replace your history no matter where you land. Your children will carry it in their blood, that thing that sets you apart. It’s about culture and displacement but so much more. Courage, fragility, loyalty, perception, fight, surrender… what a writer! I can’t even express how much the stories made my heart ache, how much I loved the people, even those who seem bitter or lost. They are all walking contradictions, most people are. Neither completely good/bad, just stumbling like we all do in the fog of life. Yes, read this author!
Published September 1, 2021
University of Nebraska Press
January 5, 2022
I'll be honest: I sought this out after coming across its truly stunning cover, and it proved to be an instance where judging a book for that paid off in spades. This was an excellent read to begin 2022 with. The writing is masterful; Gorcheva-Newberry is evocative and creative in her language without ever feeling flowery, deftly scattering each story with symbols that result in such a rich reading experience. I also noticed numerous times over how skilled she was at describing ordinary observations in ways that felt so mundane in their truth yet were being phrased with an awed precision. Honestly, I think the writing itself even more than the characters or themes was the highlight here, it was truly that good.
As for the characters and themes, there's a lot of overlap from story to story. Nearly all of them focus on a Russian (or Russian-Armenian), either in the motherland or after they've immigrated to the States. Many take place on the heels of the perestroika, which seems to functions simultaneously as a moment of death and rebirth, grief and hope for the Russian imagination. I'm pretty unfamiliar with Russian history and culture, and haven't read the classics that are referenced in a number of these stories, so Gorcheva-Newberry was my ambassador of sorts into the particularities of Russian personality and outlook. In the second story, a character jokes that "A Russian can never be happy unless she's absolutely miserable," and that proved to set the tone for the collection as a whole. That's to say, it is pervasively melancholy, at times grim and at others even sorrowful, but there's something wry to it as well, and it manages to avoid feeling despairing because you have a sense that the characters are drawing purpose, if not some hint of pleasure, from their plights. In the story "Heroes of Our Time," another character muses: "Because what good is beauty without horror and suffering?" which also seems to encapsulate the collection as a whole.
I found the stories growing stronger as they went on, and am excited that "Champions of the World," my favorite (and arguably the most disturbing), seems to have a second life in the writer's upcoming novel, The Orchard. Three stories stood out because of their experimental nature, with "Simple Song #9" being a kind of fable retelling of a couple's relationship, "Beloveds" telling the plural story of girls in a Russian orphanage using the collective first-person narrative with a powerful, haunting effect, and "Second Person" describing a break-up written in second-person. I thought "Nepenthe" and "No Other Love" were almost twins of each other; in both a woman (a foreign exchange in the former, a grandmother in the latter) enters into a family's life as an almost mystical presence that dazzles the others while driving the mother to derangement. "The Suicide Note" was definitely one of my other favorites, and somehow felt like one of the saddest and most redemptive stories. There are many lost loves that stay lost, estranged family members that remain unreconciled, and characters who drift wayward and seem to be stuck where they've landed. The narratives rarely offer a happy ending, or even a resolved one, but they feel so true to life in that way. My primary critique arises out of my prudishness –– a number of the sex scenes (of which there were an even larger number) felt gratuitous, like a "literary fiction" box being unnecessarily ticked. But that's a minor setback to this melancholy gem (plus, wow, what a cover!).
As for the characters and themes, there's a lot of overlap from story to story. Nearly all of them focus on a Russian (or Russian-Armenian), either in the motherland or after they've immigrated to the States. Many take place on the heels of the perestroika, which seems to functions simultaneously as a moment of death and rebirth, grief and hope for the Russian imagination. I'm pretty unfamiliar with Russian history and culture, and haven't read the classics that are referenced in a number of these stories, so Gorcheva-Newberry was my ambassador of sorts into the particularities of Russian personality and outlook. In the second story, a character jokes that "A Russian can never be happy unless she's absolutely miserable," and that proved to set the tone for the collection as a whole. That's to say, it is pervasively melancholy, at times grim and at others even sorrowful, but there's something wry to it as well, and it manages to avoid feeling despairing because you have a sense that the characters are drawing purpose, if not some hint of pleasure, from their plights. In the story "Heroes of Our Time," another character muses: "Because what good is beauty without horror and suffering?" which also seems to encapsulate the collection as a whole.
I found the stories growing stronger as they went on, and am excited that "Champions of the World," my favorite (and arguably the most disturbing), seems to have a second life in the writer's upcoming novel, The Orchard. Three stories stood out because of their experimental nature, with "Simple Song #9" being a kind of fable retelling of a couple's relationship, "Beloveds" telling the plural story of girls in a Russian orphanage using the collective first-person narrative with a powerful, haunting effect, and "Second Person" describing a break-up written in second-person. I thought "Nepenthe" and "No Other Love" were almost twins of each other; in both a woman (a foreign exchange in the former, a grandmother in the latter) enters into a family's life as an almost mystical presence that dazzles the others while driving the mother to derangement. "The Suicide Note" was definitely one of my other favorites, and somehow felt like one of the saddest and most redemptive stories. There are many lost loves that stay lost, estranged family members that remain unreconciled, and characters who drift wayward and seem to be stuck where they've landed. The narratives rarely offer a happy ending, or even a resolved one, but they feel so true to life in that way. My primary critique arises out of my prudishness –– a number of the sex scenes (of which there were an even larger number) felt gratuitous, like a "literary fiction" box being unnecessarily ticked. But that's a minor setback to this melancholy gem (plus, wow, what a cover!).
Read
June 17, 2021This is a powerful collection of short stories. The author does an impressive job of vividly portraying varied scenes and characters, always keeping the stakes and tension high. I requested this book for the gorgeous cover, but the work inside kept me reading. Looking forward to more from this author.
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley.
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley.
May 12, 2022
Yes read, 5 stars
Read
March 31, 2022I keep thinking about this short story collection and i need a physical copy to re-read.
September 4, 2021
Winner of the The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s short story collection, What Isn’t Remembered, is packed with striking prose depicting the complexities of loss and self-discovery. In these sixteen stories, we often find characters at their worst. They’re at the peak of grief or the precipice of change, and Gorcheva-Newberry captures the characters’ journey to self-discovery through their reflections of the past and longing for a better future in ways that feel universally human.
Whether through death or separated families, the characters grieve for the loss of loved ones as well as their own past life. While the loss is felt, the stories never feel tragic as the author gives us a sense that there is always more waiting for the characters. The death of a parent, sibling, or friend is often the inciting action that moves the plot, but we also see things in the aftermath as the characters move on with their own lives. In the opening story, “Boys of Moskva River,” we meet Leova who is grieving after the murder of his older brother. Far from his mother’s favorite, Leova reckons with his identity as he reflects on his father who abandoned the family before he was born and his brother whose shoes he’s been left to fill. He describes falling into his brother’s inherited lifestyle as putting on an “ill-fitted glove.” It’s clear that as he compares himself to his brother and looked up to him as a child, but Leova must come to grips with his disillusionment to pursue his own goals and care for the family his father and brother abandoned. This story sets the tone and theme for the collection as it depicts some of the ways that identity can be influenced by family and situation, but through growth and self-discovery Gorcheva-Newberry shows how these characters can forge their own path.
While death has a sense of finality and form, the author also explores the complexities of lost desire. We see characters falling in and out of love and losing desire for things that were once pillars of their lives. Although they grieve for what was lost, they struggle to reshape themselves. In “Lullaby for My Father,” a man feels disconnected from his culture and family and struggles to find belonging. After two years of being divorced, his wife has remarried and his children have found happiness without him. Although he feels like an outsider, there is no bitterness in this story and he says he’s “...happy and heartbroken, which was like unrequited love – a confluence of pain and desire.” This gives the story a sense of loneliness as we see how these unrequited feelings are less directed towards people but for the person he could never be for them and the life he could never have.
While connected by Russian heritage and immigration, the characters often feel rootless in the way that they have little desire to identify with their new home, while also acknowledging that they have no desire to return to their home country. This lack of grounding is also reflected in the characters’ personal lives as they struggle with the abandonment or separation of parents or spouses. Rather than beginning these stories at the moment of separation, Gorcheva-Newberry introduces us to the aftermath to show how the wounds never quite heal and the hole left in their lives cannot be filled. After her estranged mother’s return in “No Other Love,” Helen can’t help but feel the same anger and betrayal towards her mother that she did when she was a child. While her mother steps into the role of a grandmother seamlessly, Helen becomes jealous and threatened by the bond her mother forms with her daughter. As she reflects on her childhood, Helen becomes disconnected from her own life and acts in ways that seem self-sabotaging until she ultimately follows in her mother’s footsteps.
Packed with vibrant imagery and style, Gorcheva-Newberry structures the emotional complexities of these narratives in ways that linger with the reader. Throughout the collection the author illustrates the nuances of self-discovery through melancholic and often frustrating characters. Readers will find familiarity in these stories as the collection brilliantly captures how identities and desires develop and shift and how the pangs of grief linger with us over time.
Whether through death or separated families, the characters grieve for the loss of loved ones as well as their own past life. While the loss is felt, the stories never feel tragic as the author gives us a sense that there is always more waiting for the characters. The death of a parent, sibling, or friend is often the inciting action that moves the plot, but we also see things in the aftermath as the characters move on with their own lives. In the opening story, “Boys of Moskva River,” we meet Leova who is grieving after the murder of his older brother. Far from his mother’s favorite, Leova reckons with his identity as he reflects on his father who abandoned the family before he was born and his brother whose shoes he’s been left to fill. He describes falling into his brother’s inherited lifestyle as putting on an “ill-fitted glove.” It’s clear that as he compares himself to his brother and looked up to him as a child, but Leova must come to grips with his disillusionment to pursue his own goals and care for the family his father and brother abandoned. This story sets the tone and theme for the collection as it depicts some of the ways that identity can be influenced by family and situation, but through growth and self-discovery Gorcheva-Newberry shows how these characters can forge their own path.
While death has a sense of finality and form, the author also explores the complexities of lost desire. We see characters falling in and out of love and losing desire for things that were once pillars of their lives. Although they grieve for what was lost, they struggle to reshape themselves. In “Lullaby for My Father,” a man feels disconnected from his culture and family and struggles to find belonging. After two years of being divorced, his wife has remarried and his children have found happiness without him. Although he feels like an outsider, there is no bitterness in this story and he says he’s “...happy and heartbroken, which was like unrequited love – a confluence of pain and desire.” This gives the story a sense of loneliness as we see how these unrequited feelings are less directed towards people but for the person he could never be for them and the life he could never have.
While connected by Russian heritage and immigration, the characters often feel rootless in the way that they have little desire to identify with their new home, while also acknowledging that they have no desire to return to their home country. This lack of grounding is also reflected in the characters’ personal lives as they struggle with the abandonment or separation of parents or spouses. Rather than beginning these stories at the moment of separation, Gorcheva-Newberry introduces us to the aftermath to show how the wounds never quite heal and the hole left in their lives cannot be filled. After her estranged mother’s return in “No Other Love,” Helen can’t help but feel the same anger and betrayal towards her mother that she did when she was a child. While her mother steps into the role of a grandmother seamlessly, Helen becomes jealous and threatened by the bond her mother forms with her daughter. As she reflects on her childhood, Helen becomes disconnected from her own life and acts in ways that seem self-sabotaging until she ultimately follows in her mother’s footsteps.
Packed with vibrant imagery and style, Gorcheva-Newberry structures the emotional complexities of these narratives in ways that linger with the reader. Throughout the collection the author illustrates the nuances of self-discovery through melancholic and often frustrating characters. Readers will find familiarity in these stories as the collection brilliantly captures how identities and desires develop and shift and how the pangs of grief linger with us over time.
June 15, 2021
This debut book from Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry grabs you in the first story and doesn't let go until the end. No matter which story you're reading, you are quickly enveloped in the world she creates, invested in the characters you just met. Many stories touch on the experience of Russian immigrants who came of age around the end of the Soviet Union. These aren't happy stories but I wouldn't necessarily call them sad either. Death is here, with divorce, displacement, and trauma nearby. But so is love. And sex. And beauty. And Art. And acceptance. Like life, she continuously mixes the sensual with the depression, the desire with the pain.
The collection ends with my two favorite stories. 'Champion of the World' follows a girl in high school and her as a woman twenty years later. The trauma of her childhood reverberates into her adulthood and marriage. Not in a shocking way or with a slap in the face, but subtly, comprehensively. 'What Isn't Remembered' intertwines pieces from Rachmaninoff and Chopin within a story of a woman's yearning for...something more. It's beautiful.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing me this book to review.
The collection ends with my two favorite stories. 'Champion of the World' follows a girl in high school and her as a woman twenty years later. The trauma of her childhood reverberates into her adulthood and marriage. Not in a shocking way or with a slap in the face, but subtly, comprehensively. 'What Isn't Remembered' intertwines pieces from Rachmaninoff and Chopin within a story of a woman's yearning for...something more. It's beautiful.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing me this book to review.
July 5, 2021
When my daughter was a pre-teen, we saw a commercial for Cirque de Soleil, and she asked if I "liked " it. I told her that I "liked " it as an art form, that I understood the talent and work that went into it all, but it was not "my thing" or something I'd pay money to see. "Oohh," she said, "you appreciate what it is and the people who CAN do it. It's just not something you'd enjoy attending."
That's how I feel about this collection of stories. They are certainly well done, the author shows great skill at crafting sentences and using striking imagery. But these stories are exceedingly dark and depressing, and they are in places quite explicit, which I don't mind if germane to the story. Here, though, it seemed gratuitous.
There's an audience for this book, but I'm not it. However, the author shows skill at language and plotting.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
That's how I feel about this collection of stories. They are certainly well done, the author shows great skill at crafting sentences and using striking imagery. But these stories are exceedingly dark and depressing, and they are in places quite explicit, which I don't mind if germane to the story. Here, though, it seemed gratuitous.
There's an audience for this book, but I'm not it. However, the author shows skill at language and plotting.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
July 26, 2021
Short story collections are so intriguing to find the invisible links between each one. In this case, there's the echoes of identity, loss, and love. Some feel like natural extensions of each other, while others are more disparate. Despite this, it's a surprisingly cohesive collection for short stories.
The stories are relatively short, which I do prefer. But I must admit, a few left me wanting a bit more. Additionally, their length means there's a large variety in voice and storytelling style, which was very enjoyable. This collection truly showcases the breadth of the medium and utilizes its potential.
Some personal favorites include The Suicide Note, as well as Simple Song #9 and Beloveds, the latter of which fall into a more experimental way of telling a short story.
Some of the content I enjoyed and some I knew I wasn't quite the desired audience for. However, it was all rather well done.
Thank you to the publisher for the ARC I received through NetGalley.
The stories are relatively short, which I do prefer. But I must admit, a few left me wanting a bit more. Additionally, their length means there's a large variety in voice and storytelling style, which was very enjoyable. This collection truly showcases the breadth of the medium and utilizes its potential.
Some personal favorites include The Suicide Note, as well as Simple Song #9 and Beloveds, the latter of which fall into a more experimental way of telling a short story.
Some of the content I enjoyed and some I knew I wasn't quite the desired audience for. However, it was all rather well done.
Thank you to the publisher for the ARC I received through NetGalley.
November 12, 2022
Fantastic, beautiful, carefully honed, authentic, diverse. Feel sorry for people who didn't make it to the end, because the last two stories were the best and just floored me. But then, it may be that the cheesy title and the pretty cover made some people think these are romance-y, or the dumbed-down stuff that gets in the NYT bestseller list. It's not. Going to look for her novel The Orchard tomorrow....
July 23, 2021
I'm not sure if I liked the solid writing is more than the plots and characters here. But the author has talent. I liked many of the stories, but most don't have satisfying endings and are a bit dark overall. That's not a bad thing if that is what you're seeking. Probably best for literary fiction fans.
Thanks very much for the free review copy!!
Thanks very much for the free review copy!!
December 27, 2021
This is one of the best short story collections I’ve ever read. Many of the stories are set in Russia which gave me insight into a world I hadn’t known before. But more than the fascinating location and unique characters in this collection, the author first and foremost knows how to tell a story. Each one is a page-turner. If you buy only one short story collection in 2022, this is it.
March 19, 2022
There's something hypnotic about Kristina Gocheva-Newberry's writing that caused me to slow down and savor the stories in What Isn't Remembered, some undertow of deep patience and wisdom, tempered with the kind of cynicism that comes from fraught political history. The author is equally as adept embodying the voice of a young man in perestroika-era Russia as that of an older woman in contemporary America. The messiness of relationships, and of history pressing on relationships, marks many of these stories, and the book is populated by characters from Russia, Ukraine, America, and Armenia. What captivated me again and again was Gorcheva-Newberry's natural and unflinching storytelling. Her characters and settings come alive and stay with you. I'm looking forward to reading her new novel next.
July 7, 2022
I wish I could give this book 6 stars or more! I absolutely loved it. I rarely read a book of any kind with such drive and unrelenting interest but especially short stories where you are constantly interrupted by the end of one narrative and thrust into another. But What Isn’t Remembered had such a clear voice and each story grabbed me right away. I can’t recommend this book enough.
September 30, 2024
(9.28.24) i appreciated reading the author's short stories centering ukrainian and armenian refugees; i found it a great opportunity to read up more about the history of the armenian genocide during WWI. that being said, some of the stories i enjoyed more than others; oftentimes they ended with little to no resolution. i'm not sure this short story genre is my cup of tea, but nonetheless, i'd be interested in reading more full-fledged stories from this author.
December 30, 2021
A wonderful collection of short stories with many revolving around American life with past roots in Russia life and tradition. Very interesting comparisons of cultures especially on the Russian history and the suffering associated with it.
January 24, 2022
The beauty and poignant passion of classic Russian literature with contemporary sensibilities. "Words, like sounds, accumulate someplace hidden and untouchable. If one could only weigh the words one knows, take them in one's arms and turn them into food, or medicine, or water." The best book I have read in a very, very long time.
Want to read
August 3, 2021Russian Armenian short story collection
June 8, 2022
While I was very intrigued by this book, I only made it about half-way through. I think each story was well written but, because this is something I don't typically read, it was hard to get into.
September 22, 2022
Interesting, unique, descriptive. Provocative and dark but also distinctly human.
June 8, 2023
Might be a good read for the right person, but just wasn’t feeling this one.
March 13, 2025
Oh life so tragic
September 30, 2025
a sad book filled with sad stories
May 25, 2022
This book of short stories fits the mood of 2022. Depressing, Russian, and with endings that are somewhat ambiguous. Several of the stories were ones that haunted my thoughts days later.
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