Buddha's Little Finger by Victor Pelevin  (11)
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Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin (26)
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A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories by Victor Pelevin  (6)
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Yellow Arrow (New Directions Paperbook, 845) by Victor Pelevin (10)
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Victor Pelevin has the sort of unbridled comedic imagination that can make most writers seem insipid by comparison. Born in 1962, the Russian writer has already published three story collections as well as a splendidly funny take on the Soviet space program, Omon Ra. From time to time his effects lurch out of control, yet Pelevin's manic level of invention tends to carry us along until he regains his equipoise. Certainly this is the case with The Life of Insects. This time, Pelevin sets his story in a sleazy Crimean resort town, where his characters eat, drink, make merry, make love... and turn into insects. This is no soft-focus allegory: the author is superbly specific about his entomological creations. "Arthur and Arnold had turned into small mosquitoes," he writes, "of that miserable hue of gray familiar from prerevolutionary village huts, a color that in its time had reduced many a Russian poet to tears." The sex scenes are a mite (as it were) much, though nothing more gruesome than you'd see in your average PBS documentary. Still, Pelevin's best trick is to makes his six-legged protagonists appear all too human. A self-doubting cicada, for example, finds himself envying the relative ease of an ant's life: "But he never dwelt on such comparisons, aware that once he stopped and began to compare himself with others, it would begin to seem that he had already achieved a great deal, and he would lose the sense of resentment toward life that was essential to continue his struggle." The Life of Insects is a black-comic Metamorphosis for the 1990s, minus Kafka's gravity and with an extra dose of Slavic neurosis. --William Davies
From Library Journal
Pelevin has a genuine gift for transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. In his previous novel, Omen Ra (LJ 6/1/96), the young author travestied the Soviet space program, suggesting that the entire project existed only on paper and in the depths of the Moscow subway system. His most recent satire is set in contemporary Russia at an ailing Black Sea resort inhabited by characters who appear to be insects invested with human personalities. The three main characters include two Russians and a visiting American, blood-suckers all, who are actually mosquitoes. As they fly about the resort bickering, preying, and eluding their predators, they encounter other insects who struggle with challenges both sacred and profane: building a burrow, raising a child as a single parent, finding the meaning of life. Viewed from Pelevin's unique, bug-eyed perspective, these conventional activities emerge as delightfully imaginative phenomena, humorous yet melancholy. Vivid description, a sure sense of irony, and inventive prose add up to an excellent parody of life in Russia today. Recommended for all literary collections.
-?Sister M. Anna Falbo, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
Victor Pelevin has the sort of unbridled comedic imagination that can make most writers seem insipid by comparison. Born in 1962, the Russian writer has already published three story collections as well as a splendidly funny take on the Soviet space program, Omon Ra. From time to time his effects lurch out of control, yet Pelevin's manic level of invention tends to carry us along until he regains his equipoise. Certainly this is the case with The Life of Insects. This time, Pelevin sets his story in a sleazy Crimean resort town, where his characters eat, drink, make merry, make love... and turn into insects. This is no soft-focus allegory: the author is superbly specific about his entomological creations. "Arthur and Arnold had turned into small mosquitoes," he writes, "of that miserable hue of gray familiar from prerevolutionary village huts, a color that in its time had reduced many a Russian poet to tears." The sex scenes are a mite (as it were) much, though nothing more gruesome than you'd see in your average PBS documentary. Still, Pelevin's best trick is to makes his six-legged protagonists appear all too human. A self-doubting cicada, for example, finds himself envying the relative ease of an ant's life: "But he never dwelt on such comparisons, aware that once he stopped and began to compare himself with others, it would begin to seem that he had already achieved a great deal, and he would lose the sense of resentment toward life that was essential to continue his struggle." The Life of Insects is a black-comic Metamorphosis for the 1990s, minus Kafka's gravity and with an extra dose of Slavic neurosis. --William Davies
From Library Journal
Pelevin has a genuine gift for transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. In his previous novel, Omen Ra (LJ 6/1/96), the young author travestied the Soviet space program, suggesting that the entire project existed only on paper and in the depths of the Moscow subway system. His most recent satire is set in contemporary Russia at an ailing Black Sea resort inhabited by characters who appear to be insects invested with human personalities. The three main characters include two Russians and a visiting American, blood-suckers all, who are actually mosquitoes. As they fly about the resort bickering, preying, and eluding their predators, they encounter other insects who struggle with challenges both sacred and profane: building a burrow, raising a child as a single parent, finding the meaning of life. Viewed from Pelevin's unique, bug-eyed perspective, these conventional activities emerge as delightfully imaginative phenomena, humorous yet melancholy. Vivid description, a sure sense of irony, and inventive prose add up to an excellent parody of life in Russia today. Recommended for all literary collections.
-?Sister M. Anna Falbo, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
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