From Library Journal
An emigre screenwriter from the Soviet Union supplements his pay as a Radio Liberty commentator by learning to drive a cab. This nonsensically titled book is being serialized by two magazines in Moscow, whose readers must have an indiscriminate appetite for anything savoring of America. For most folks over here, this overlong chronicle of life behind the wheel will probably just bring back a lot of bad memories of New York as it was ten years ago, while providing few insights into the local Russian community from which Lobas seems more or less alienated. Asides on the author's life in Russia and on the dissident Ghely Snegirev are so confusing as to be unreadable. Not recommended.
- Robert Decker, Los Angeles
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
- Robert Decker, Los Angeles
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
Unique and sparkling memoir of a Russian Jewish immigrant to New York. Lobas, a writer in the Soviet Union, not even considered a Russian (``Under the heading NATIONALITY in our passports was written the word JEW''), eagerly leaves for the US at the first opportunity. After a few years of hiding out in the Russian ghetto of Brighton Beach, he plunges into the city he is growing to love. Answering an ad--``If you don't have a hack license we help you get it in three days. Don't pass up a chance to earn $600 per week!''--he signs up and sails through the system and into a cab: The Russian sophistication in greasing the palm puts New Yorkers in grade school. Only problem is, Lobas doesn't know how to drive a car. On the road, angling to get ``a LaGuardia,'' he thinks of his old friend Ghely, jailed by the KGB for anti- Soviet writings, almost perishing on a hunger strike, released after seven years and dying within a month. He rages: ``Why did they put a bullet in the back of the head of the most virtuoso stylist of Russian prose?....Long live communism, the radiant future of all mankind! Amen.'' And Lobas's lowdown, grime-under- the-fingernails, boulevard drama continues. His first day on the street, he decides to be a gentleman and refuse tips, a courtesy singularly unappreciated by New Yorkers. Taking a fare to Harlem, he gets wise in a hurry. A gang of 12-year-olds mobs the cab, snatching the sunglasses off his face, his receipt book, his cigarettes. He floors it, they shoot the right front tire, and he gets away on three wheels and a rim. Finely and directly written with a uniquely Russian sensibility holding the tragic and the absurd. Somewhere, Gogol is smiling. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
