Status Updates From Moscow But Dreaming

This is very good and highly depressing

Finished "Zombie Lenin", a story about a girl haunted by either her own mine or the ever-following body of the former Soviet chairman. It's a dense story about death, about chthonic gods and their bargains, and about one's isolation. Needless to say, I liked it; I've always been a sucker for this type of story and I really was fascinated by this one. Not my favorite thus far - that's still Citizen Komarova, but good.

Finished "you dream." 2nd person narration, my love! This is the story of a girl, haunted by both her past sexual assault and a boy who showed her kindness and has died/somehow/someway. This isn't my favorite story in this collection; I love 2nd person but felt this was kinda confusing. It's a fine line between "too vague to really do much" and "vague enough to make the details scary" and this landed on the former.

Finished "One, Two, Three." A childless couple adopt a slavic folktale, the kikimora. The kikimora doesn't respond well to human life, and it slowly but surely begins to divide the couple apart.

This one was just sad. The kikimora's human struggles are heavily suggestive of autism, and it struck a bit of a nerve. Good story, but personally not one of my favorites.

Finished "Tin Cans"; simple, elegant, spooky. A driver for an awful soviet pedophile/sadist is haunted by ghosts of girls his boss has killed.

This has a really strong character voice and it's so strong and so good. The ghosts are elegiac and haunting, especially in their sheer multitude. I particularly like how it denies any personal relationship here - everyone is isolated. Really good.

"Citizen Komarova Finds Love " put its hooks in me and I'm not quite sure why. It's bleak but it never feels quite so bleak until the end, until the main character makes her choice and I just went "Ohh."

And then the post-script, her with the soldiers, and the Mediterranean holiday that never ends -- I got misty. Lovely use of mythology buried in here.

Second story is "Citizen Komarova Finds Love" which I really liked, even though it's very bleakly Russian. A former noble becomes a peasant seller of luxury goods, but every year less and less people can afford her goods, and more and more everyone starves. From time to time, a soldier comes by, and when she finds out he's using the money from selling things to her to buy coins for his fallen comrades, she helps.

Cool- a community of deaders who use ice to delay decay

P140, this book just gets better and better as I read through the stories. It's described as magical realism; straight-up really good ghost stories for 8 of the 9 I've read so far. I wish it was a stormy night.

Straight-up ghost story #3 Tin Cans, very good
#2 was very good as well

Just as I was getting bored with gritty Moscow, the naked girl appeared p42.

Hah. Mention of Rusalki.