Status Updates From The Line

When I was a girl, I read old-fashioned novels and believed in love and happiness. But life is not about happiness, nor is it about love, or at least not the kind of love they write about in novels.

wondered whether that might not have been his happiest day ever, the last, perfect day swelling with the immensity of his secret intent, secret creation—the day before everything changed—the day before he realized, for the first time, yet with absolute finality, just how small his private immensity really was when measured against that other vast, dark, impersonal immensity, call it God, or history, or simply life.

The evenings of early summer were filled with lucid light, the day's soft lingering. "Days in June have double bottoms... have you noticed? Just when you think it's over, another, secret drawer full of light slides open."

In the last few days, a new sonorousness had spread through the air, as it did for a short time every April; her steps rang with a small crystal sound as if she were walking on a sheet of glass. He imagined the glass to be deep blue in color, vibrating lightly just beneath the veneer of the city.

This is my favorite contemporary novel based in the USSR. I have read it several times but it’s been awhile ago. Lately I’ve been draw to think of Russia once more (I have read a lot about and lived in Russia for a short time) and this is a good place to start.