Roseanne

“It was the militsionery guarding him who were frightening. Slava had expected them to be young, crisp, and clean-skinned, but they were heavy men with slow, drunk eyes ringed by ripples of fat.”
― Boris Fishman, A Replacement Life

“Leaving Russia or not, it seemed heretical to visit the capital without visiting Grandfather Lenin, and only Slava’s grandfather resented having to waste time on “that dead dick.”
― Boris Fishman, A Replacement Life

“Her eyes blazed; she looked as if she wanted to strike him. He wished she would. Instead, a gust of something corrective swept her face clean, and again she looked loving.”
― Boris Fishman, A Replacement Life

“But if Slava wished to become an American, to strip from his writing the pollution that refilled it every time he returned to the swamp broth of Soviet Brooklyn, if Slava Gelman—immigrant, baby barbarian, the forking road spread-eagled before him—wished to write for Century, he would have to get away. Dialyze himself, like Grandmother’s kidneys.”
― Boris Fishman, A Replacement Life