Customer Reviews

Petropolis

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is great! It is beautifully written and the plot moves right along, sucking you in and never letting go. While I wouldn't call Petropolis a comedy--the book is filled with serious subjects such as longing for one's parents, child, and home--it is certainly a very funny book, with many moments of side-splitting laughing-out-loud humor. And it's filled with wit and satire that is as precise and almost surgical as the rest of the book's language.

The book's plot takes you to five major cities (and a few smaller ones) on two continents while following the main character on her journey from Siberia to the United States. You would think there's too much plot to fit in one novel, yet the book doesn't feel like it's bursting at the seams. You really get to know the characters and the places, to the point where if you've never been to Russia, you really get a feeling for the place, the pace of life there, etc (and if you've never been to the US, you do for it as well.)

Anya,

I just finished Petropolis.

I think this is the first book that I've read so far that truly captures the post- soviet childhood /immigration/ Russian Jewish/ experience. I think all of us have some interesting "Russian Immigrant" stories, but this is the first work that truly describes what it was like in the end, when there was no more ideology and everything was in decay.

I think I was mostly impressed with how well you summed up perceptions --- the way philanthropic Americans see Jewish refugees, how some Russians play up to the stereotype, how the intelligentsia view themselves, the type of life that a Russian "solider" has, the family bond (or a lack-there-of), the acceptance of prejudice, the way a Russian immigrant sees an American, the hopelessness that sometimes sets in (especially due to culture shock) etc etc.

I immigrated when I was fairly young, but for some reason I perfectly remember our Kiev communal apartment, our loving yet constantly drunk neighbors, and my art class at the local Pioneers Club with all of my brutally totalitarian, yet excellent teachers.

I also remember how haggled my parents looked after the flight from Sheremetivo II to NY, how polite my dad was when a Rabbi from a local Yeshiva forced my dad to recite "Shema" in Hebrew (my dad is Orthodox Christian), and how much we all struggled with the language, mannerisms and constant American optimism (be it fake or real).

Overall Petropolis is a realistic account of what it's like....

I would love to find a Russian translation to give to my parents.

Thank you for writing this.

Natasha

your brother, Petropolis, is dying." Osip Mandelstam

It is more than a bit ironic that some of the best "Russian" literature created in recent years has been written in English. The Diaspora that followed the fall of the Soviet Union has borne a great deal of literary fruit produced by writers such as Gary Shteyngart (Absurdistan), Lara Vapnyar (Memoirs of a Muse), and Olga Grushin (Dream Life of Sukhanov). The original, entertaining "Petropolis" by first-time novelist Anya Ulinich is a fine addition to this body of work.

"Petropolis" (the title is taken from a poem by Osip Mandelstam) tells the story of Sasha Goldberg. An adolescent, Sasha is young, overweight, ungainly, and part-black and Jewish in a world in which just one of those attributes is enough to mark you as an outsider. We first meet Sasha in her Siberian hometown, Asbestos2. Asbestos2, as the name suggests, is a city created during Stalin's reign in power to support the mining of asbestos. The fall of the USSR and the depletion of the mine have turned Asbestos2 into a bleak, post-apocalyptic city rapidly on its way to becoming a ghost-town. Sasha's father left the family for the United States when she was an infant.

Petropolis is the story of a journey, or series of journeys, something of a later-day Russian Ulysses. It takes Sasha from Asbestos2 to Moscow, from Moscow to Phoenix (where she is to be a mail order bride), from Phoenix to Michigan, and from Michigan to Brooklyn where she finds the father who deserted her as a child. The story also takes us back to Asbestos2 where Sasha's journey finds some sense of closure and reunites her with the child she left behind (like father like daughter) along the way.

In the hands of Ulinich, Sasha's journey is more than a mere screenplay for a coming-of-age road movie. Sasha's character is very well developed. Ulinich also has a keen eye for satire and a sharp sense of the foibles one sees in people in the US and in Russia, particularly those who, like Sasha (and presumably Ulinich), have become a part of the post-Soviet Diaspora.

Petropolis is a multi-layered story that is both entertaining and thoughtful.

Highly reccomended (4.5 stars). L. Fleisig

Petropolis is a must read, especially if your family didn't arrive in the US on the Mayflower. Come to think of it, it's a must read even if they did.

Petropolis by Anya Ulinich is one of those books that just does not fit the mold. It is an entity unto itself in a class of satire that is funny, achingly sad and ultimately satisfying. The main character,Sasha,is a misfit from a decaying town in Siberia . The novel is the story of her struggle to fit in, the angst of maternal domination,the need for love,the heartache of first love and the search for a new start and assimilation into a new culture and life. The ups and downs of Sasha's journey to find her father and ultimately find herself is a great experience for the reader. Anyone who has ever felt different....who has been on the outside looking in, who has floundered finding their way .........will relate to Sasha and Petropolis.

I cannot hold my enthusiastic desire to share with you my marveling over this wonderful book I have been reading. It's by Anya Ulinich "Petropolis".
A story told by Anya Ulinch, who herself immigrated to USA from Moscow with her parents when she was 17, lived in Chicago and studied at the Art Institute. So she seems to know all ins and outs of what a typical teenager would know going to a mid-town high school or intricacies of Russian immigrant community, that we experienced first hand over the last 20 years. The weird and mesmerizing thing is that all of this is seen and told from the viewpoint of Ulinich's heroine, Sasha Goldberg, who as a 16-yesr old girl, half Russian, half Negro and also Jewish, born and raised in a murky Siberian ghost town Asbestos-2 and then makes a trans-Atlantic jump as a mail-in bride from Repin Lyceums in Moscow to America and settles in one of the North Shore multimillion mansions as a no-visa home maid.
Anya Ulinich's is great in her satirical, beneath-the-skin, and somewhat nostalgic description of Sasha growing up in Asbestos-2 in the post-perestroika years of complete nihilism and degradation. It gave me a very new look at the different Russia, which neither of us, thanks God, ever experienced. Here Ulinich heavily uses Russian idiomatic expressions, like "all the way up to devil's horns" when she wants to literally convey expression "' ''''' '' '''''". She is not translating; she writes in great English, but one needs to feel Russian language to read and enjoy every line of this book. Ulinich is great in dialogues; she is even better in her description and utter sarcasm of today's Russia.
But just wait until you get to page 101, when Sasha Goldberg finally arrives to America. Nobody can spot her here as a Russian Jew, as she is transparently seen as pretty fat 16-year old black girl. This allows Ulinich to set Sasha on a such an independent and sardonical outlook that would make you take a new look at our society in general and at the Russian community in particular. And ...if you have not smoked weed, have not had a teen girl attending Art Institute of Chicago, never really mixed up with the taxi-driver type of the Chicago Russians, you would certainly replenish you life knowledge.
This is a book of a gifted and brave author; she is on par or maybe better than her peers. The book may make you both re-think and re-feel of our own long journey from there to where you are today.

The above reviews would give you the feeling that this is just an immigrant novel though a very good one. It is and a lot more.

It is a stupendously well written weave of character, plot and some of the best descriptive metaphors strung like pearls paragraph after paragraph. I am astounded.
Disclaimer: I have an semi-Jewish immigrant wife and know dinner table Russian which makes the book even more enjoyable. But it is not just an "insiders" book.

Petropolis is a fine work, with a style that ranges from subtle to direct, and from funny to quite serious. I am neither Russian nor Jewish, and thus fall a bit outside her primary target, where many of the stories, phrases, and attitudes may strike close to home. You don't need to have experienced a dismal life in a nearly-abandoned town in Siberia, the culture shock in America, or a strange longing for "home" to appreciate this original spin on the coming-of-age and fish-out-of-water concepts. As a regular American, I must compliment the author for her insightful and amusing observations of Americans.

The main character, Sasha, is herself relatively uninteresting as a kid in Asbestos 2, a bi-racial, chubby, non-practicing Jew with no particular talents. While Sasha is still in Russia, the novel to me is merely ok, with the action a bit slight as the focus is on the interactions of the characters within their dreary lives, often with resignation and cynicism. Except for the bi-racial Jew and art school angles, this didn't seem particularly fresh.

When Sasha gets the idea to become a mail-order bride in order to get to America to find her father, the action perks up. From then on, as Sasha goes from Arizona to Chicago and New York and a pass through Russia, her character gradually develops more sophistication (after all, she's still a teenager) and likability. Each new stop provides the author with a fresh opportunity to make sharp comments or show some wry humor. To me, the idea of a "pet Jew" was brand new, for sure.

As with Olga Grushin's novel, I can barely comprehend how a new novelist can write so well in a second language. Ulinich also made the highly appropriate choice to sprinkle in many Russian terms and phrases, naturally almost none of which I knew, rather than using English translations. One of my favorites was this excerpt: "Ponayehali...," sighs the grandma. On her way to the poseyolok, Sasha tries to translate the old woman's lament into English. The single word ponayehali means 'they arrived over a period of time, in large enough masses to become an annoyance.' O, the great and mighty Russian language! thinks Sasha. Here abuse is compact and efficient; two prefixes do the job of a sentence. Suddenly Sasha finds herself missing Brooklyn, where people simply call each other (a word you can imagine that starts with m)." That's nice.

Just finished Petropolis in one sitting. It's more than just a piece of fiction about Russian Jewish immigrants in the US. Above all, it's a touching story that evokes laughter, tears, and existential thoughts about the meaning of your own life. Ulinich did an incredible job conveying the personalities of the characters, and the depth of their more tragic than happy life experiences.

I discovered this book last year and am I ever glad I did! I can read this book over and over and I love it more and more every time. Not only am I blown away by the fact that this is written in Ulinich's second language, but I am blown away by the strength of the characters. I found myself missing Sasha Goldberg when I had finished the book, and wanted to read more about her! Check out this book because you won't be disappointed!