[F8H]⇒ Read Free The Slynx Tatiana Tolstaia Jamey Gambrell 9780618124978 Books

The Slynx Tatiana Tolstaia Jamey Gambrell 9780618124978 Books

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The Slynx Tatiana Tolstaia Jamey Gambrell 9780618124978 Books

Dystopian post-apocalyptic fiction is not a genre I would normally read, but I read this book as an assigned book group selection. It is very dark and very funny and very disturbing. One of the reasons I have always loved Russian literature is because it celebrates the resilience and beauty of the human spirit. This has elements of that celebration but also commemorates the scalier side of human nature ( that's a joke you will understand if you read the book). The redemptive message of the sustaining value of art keeps the reader afloat, barely, through an astonishing portrayal of life after the Blast.


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The Slynx Tatiana Tolstaia Jamey Gambrell 9780618124978 Books Reviews

Slow to start the plot, this novel is occasionally confusing, and probably 100 pages too long. The post apocalyptic tableau is misleading; this is an overwrought Russian fable. It's best classified in the post-modernist, semi-fabulist genre. I suspect some of its appeal was lost in translation, but I also suspect the Translator may have saved the book by her superb rendering of Russian colloquialisms into English. The ending is a disappointment.
There are some redeeming qualities. Several laugh out loud moments of Russian humor and irony. I liked the novel plot device of "Olden-Timers" who survived "The Blast", were mutated and apparently immortalized. The descriptions of "golubchiks" muddling through winter hardship were simultaneously comical and horrendous.
Other NYRB books I have read have been outstanding. This book was mediocre.
This is a witty story in spite of its dark theme, but you really need to have a good background knowledge of Russian lit, history, and politics to get the jokes/references. I usually pass on the books I enjoy to friends, but I fear that few of them would see the humor here.
Tolstaya is an amazing novelist. I've never read any of her poetry, but I want to after reading this. I hope she writes more novels in the future. The vocabulary she creates is interesting and hilarious. This book gives insight to the origins of politics and art. It is profoundly thought provoking and enlightening. You owe it to yourself to read this book.
An excellent commentary on both Soviet socialism, as well as human nature as a whole. Tolstaya writes with a unique perspective, and creates a believable and often comical world. The Slynx is inside each of us..
The review from Publishers Weekly is wrong saying that the world described in The Slynx is the world of permanent winter. The reviewer obviously have not read the book.

The book is a masterpiece of Russian language. I suppose it is equally hard to translate to English as to translate Shakespeare from English. Tolstaya's language is not a simple Russian, it is a colorful, rich literature language. Note that the book is written as if on behalf of Benedikt. And Tolstaya in a masterly fashion gives the prose a rural and still noble shade of Russia primordial. It's really enjoying.
I read this book as a possible addition to a college course I'll be teaching soon. I really tried to give it a chance, but it's just a really boring . . . I can't say story because there is none. It's like sitting on a log with some old geezer while he tells you random anecdotes about an otherwise forgettable person in his village. The allure (I suppose) is that it takes place in a dystopian world sometime after "the blast," an apocalyptic event. Unfortunately, the world Tolstaya describes is pretty unimaginative. A little bit of Zamyatin-like narration in "We", presenting a fragmentary picture, and a lot of Gogolesque narrative unreliability, but not very well done.
By page fifty I was so bored I had to put the book down. It was as if grandma was telling me a very long, boring story about everyone in the village. She jumped from one thing to another and repeated herself constantly. And just like grandma’s neighbors, nothing happens to draw me in. This “literary masterpiece” makes real masterpieces seem written in gold. I think this got published because of who Tatyana’s relative was.
Dystopian post-apocalyptic fiction is not a genre I would normally read, but I read this book as an assigned book group selection. It is very dark and very funny and very disturbing. One of the reasons I have always loved Russian literature is because it celebrates the resilience and beauty of the human spirit. This has elements of that celebration but also commemorates the scalier side of human nature ( that's a joke you will understand if you read the book). The redemptive message of the sustaining value of art keeps the reader afloat, barely, through an astonishing portrayal of life after the Blast.