Customer Reviews

One More Year: Stories

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One More Year is a collection of short stories that explore the lives of people from the former Soviet Union. Some have immigrated to the United States and others still live or have returned to Russia. The collection explores all sorts of relationships, from care takers, to husband and wife, to uncle and niece. Many different parts of life are captures as snapshots.

Some of my favorite stories include Asal, about a relationship not normally talked about, Better Half about a young couple that marries too soon so one can remain in the United States, and There Will Be No Fourth Rome about an aunt and her niece.

To me, the stories slowly reveal themselves like peeling back an onion. You know so little in the beginning and slowly more and more information is revealed. I really like this style of writing, it keeps you on your toes and you have to pay very close attention. It's not just laid out from page one.

It is a quiet sort of collection that explores everyday life, but not the life that I'm used to or the struggles I've had to face. For that, I really enjoy it. I feel like I learned things I hadn't really known or thought about much before. I can definitely understand the comparisons to Jhumpa Lahiri. I have read her novel The Namesake, which I also enjoyed.

One More Year: Stories by Sana Krasikov is a set of stories about Eastern Europeans. Most of the characters are living in the United States and trying to get by in this country that is so foreign to them. Each of the stories has a message; while I did have personal favorites, objectively speaking, they are all equally good. They are well-written and easy to read.

One thing that impressed me greatly about One More Year: Stories is the character development. Generally, I don't read short stories very often, unless they are by a favorite author or they are a trademark of the author (such as David Sedaris). One of the main aspects I enjoy about books is witnessing character development and watching characters grow before the reader's eyes. Short stories are too short to be able to have significant character development. However, somehow, Krasikov manages to pull it off. In each of her stories, the reader is immersed in the character; though we spend a very short time with each character, the reader gets to know him or her well and watches them grow. It's quite the feat for a debut author; I look forward to seeing what she can do with characters in a novel.

However, there is one thing I didn't like about One More Year: Stories: the lack of variation in the stories. Each of the stories is about betrayal, lies, not being appreciated, etc. By the end of the collection, I felt like each story was more of the same. I gave a short story collection a five star review not to long ago (In the Convent of Little Flowers by Indu Sundaresan [review]) and it was because each story was so different. All of the characters in the stories were Indian, yes, but some were in America, some were in India, some were old, some were young. Some of the stories ended happily, others were tragic; the point is that while the stories did have a common theme, they were each very different. I didn't get that sense with One More Year: Stories. The stories were simply too similar in nature.

I do look forward to seeing what Sana Krasikov does in the future. She's obviously a talented author with a lot of potential!

One More Year, a debut collection of short stories by Sana Krasikov, really surprised me. Due to inherent space limitation in the short story format, it can be quite difficult to build fully-realized human characters. So as I read I was quite delighted by the vast variety of personalities and individual quirks of Krasiknov's cast. With a delicate prose and crisp dialogue, grandmothers, fathers, husbands and children are brought to active, animated life.

Most of the people populating the stories are Russian immigrants living in America. Some have been here a long time, escaping during the rise of Communism; others are new and have only been in the United States a few years. Frequently, characters fly back and forth between America and the "mother country" as relationships shatter or kindle anew. Krasikov is drawing on her own experiences; she was born in Ukraine while there was still a Soviet Republic and now lives in New York City.

These aren't happy fairy tale stories with happy endings. There's no magic, just gritty realism. Yet, despite my preference for fantasy I really dig this book. The situations for most of these people are far from ideal, or even desirable. Many of the women have cheating lovers or husbands, who may have a second wife "back home." One woman works as a caregiver for a wealthy woman in New York City while her son lives on the other side of the world; on his rare visits he doesn't seem happy to see her, only interested in finding out what she can buy for him. An illegal immigrant is afraid to go out in case he is carded, so he lives an empty life going only to work and home. Others get trapped in dead-end jobs because their employer keeps their paperwork inaccessible. These are the real tales of immigrants in the US, recorded by a talented new author.

The stories are deceptively spare, but have an emotional depth and complexity that stays with you for a long while. I thoroughly enjoyed this book -- one of the best collection of modern short stories I've read, and an interesting glimpse into the lives of the Slavic/post-Soviet Union collapse diaspora.

I was hooked immediately by the first story and entranced by the evocative descriptions. She's really an extremely talented author. With that said, by the end of the book of short stories, i found the repetitive theme of uncaring lout husbands/boyfriends, 1st and 2nd wives/girlfriends and the dismal at times lives of the protagonists to simply be wearing. I look forward to more works by this author to see if she can sing another song.

"At one in the morning, Maia awakens to a deep winter chill, sits up, and pulls a scratchy wool blanket over her comforter. In another two hours, she knows, she'll wake up again, this time damp in her flannel gown as the radiator blasts hot air."

("One More Year" pg 30*)

I've never been a fan of short stories. I've tried to read a few, including some that are praised continuously- such as those by Flannery O'Conner. I could never get into them! There are only a few short pages for the audience to get to know the characters, and it never seems like enough time for me. So even before picking up this book, I was already thinking negatively about it, and I was sure I wasn't going to like it. This was just another collection of short stories that would leave me wondering why I read it in the first place. Well, "One More Year" happily proved me wrong.

Sana Krasikov's book contains eight stories, many of which involve characters from the former Soviet Union, Russia, and/or Georgia. It's oddly fitting that I began to read this book at the same time that Russia invaded Georgia. I was unable to shake that information as I read, and couldn't help but feel an even deeper connection to Krasikov's characters. Krasikov herself grew up in the former of Soviet Republic of Georgia, and I'm sure she wasn't expecting these events to unfold right as her book went on sale.

One of my favorite stories is "Maia in Yonkers" which tells the story of a woman and her son who comes to visit her. To me it starts slow and doesn't really evolve until the son actually arrives, but the interaction between mother and son is fantastic. The ending is perfect, and I wish I could write more about it, but I'll stop now so I don't spoil those who haven't yet read this book.

I would definitely recommend this book. Once a short story hater, I have now been converted! Sana Krasikov's stories draw you in. You feel for her characters, which to me proves that Krasikov has succeeded where many have failed. Pick this one up today!

*these lines may change in the final publication of the book

(Originally reviewed for "Kathleen's Book Reviews")

I've always enjoyed reading short stories, but it's not often that I come across a writer who has the ability to hold my attention with every story.

Sana Krasikov's One More Year comprises stories either with Russian/Ukranian characters and their relationship to each other and to assimilating in America.

While the characters seemed almost unrelentingly depressing, I still found myself looking forward to the next story. I found that I was not reading for the character development, but instead for the sheer enjoyment of Ms. Krasikov's written word.

Also, I enjoyed that though the theme was consistent throughout the stories, each one still stood out as a small universe in itself.

RATING: 5 out of 5

I must preface my review with the fact that I rarely read short stories collections because I always seem to be left wanting more. I think the last collection I read and really enjoyed was The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabel Allende.

This book was meant for me to read. The day I received it I was so drawn that I put my other books down and started in on it immediately. By early evening, I was about half way through, and I noticed my husband had tuned into a documentary on LINK TV. It was about the effort by AES to bring new electrical service to the people of the Georgia Republic and more specifically the town of Tbilisi. It felt like destiny to be exposed to the trials that so many Soviet citizens have had to endure since the dawning of their democracy.

It is the simple stories of individuals that stick with you. The way that the trials of these people make or break them, divide and conquer relationships and families, is brought to the forefront by these stories. Ms. Krasikov has put three-dimension to her characters so you feel like you know them, they live in your town and are the person that you encountered at the doctor's office or the cab driver you had. Each story gives us all a moment's pause to have a little more understanding of the sacrifices that many are willing to make to experience what we take for granted, Freedom. Be it, religious, ethnic, political or simply economic, it is the driving force and the risk that many take every day to have a better life. Thank you to Ms. Krasikov for saying it so eloquently.

Like its author, One More Year has roots in both Russia and America, relying on the histories and idiosyncrasies of both parts of the world to tell its stories. This is a book of the immigrant experience, but its characters are so well written that it becomes also, much to Krasikov's credit, a book of compelling stories about compelling women.

Sana Krasikov has created characters that try to fit into a new place after leaving an old one, but who find that it requires not only great acts of courage, but also the humblest and most necessary things of daily life as well: friendship, resiliency, love.

Although the women whose voices populate these stories vary considerably, from a middle-aged wife trying to face her husband's infidelity to a young woman forced to take out a restraining order against her own husband, they share desires common not only to the immigrant experience-the search for a new identity to match new surroundings, a longing for home-but also desires common to all people at some point in their lives.

America has, of course, a rich immigrant history, and there have therefore been countless stories and novels written about the experience. Krasikov does something interesting in One More Year. In several of the stories, she turns the expectations upside down. In "Maia in Yonkers," for example, instead of a son coming to America to find his fortune, leaving the older generation behind, the mother comes instead to work minimum wage jobs to support her son left behind in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. When he comes to America to visit her, she doesn't recognize who he has become. "The Repatriats" begins in America, but soon moves to Moscow when a husband decides he must return to chase his dreams. His wife, disappointed with having to leave America after creating a nice life for herself, must grapple with the meaning of her life and her place in a crumbling marriage.

These stories are beautifully crafted, and though desolate and full of struggles, manage to contain enough hope to break your heart.

Armchair Interviews says: Thoughtful stories make up this collection.

Sana Krasikov's One More Year is a collection of eight stories about the immigrant experience. Krasikov's protagonists are outsiders (primarily from the former Soviet Union) who approach America with a fresh, and often revealing, perspective. In one story, a recent immigrant from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia describes two American girls as "not fat" but "large in that full-scale American way, filling out the last corner of their natural dimensions." In another story, a woman thinks of "guests removing their shoes before entering a house" in response to a description of Fire Island as an island where "everybody leaves their cars on the dock and takes the ferry." Many of these protagonists view marriage as a way to obtain legal status in the U.S. long before considering the American ideal of a love match. These unfamiliar perspectives challenge our embedded assumptions about life in America.

In addition to the unique viewpoints offered in One More Year, these stories are fulfilling reading for another reason: they are literary puzzles. Krasikov begins her stories by jumping right into the middle of the action, revealing only oblique glimpses of characters and relationships. Over time, more details and connections are exposed, ultimately creating a complete picture for the patient reader. This intelligent style results in an active and rewarding reading experience. Highly recommended.