A review by mjpatton
The Big Green Tent by

3.0

Maybe it is one of those lost-in-translation things, but I had some problems with the narrative voice - heavy reliance on formulated expressions and cliches. Not likely due to the translation, however, but also having to do with the style of The Big Green Tent, I found the narrator's tendency to announce conclusions of storylines before telling the story annoying, telling us someone dies and then backing up to lead into the death, for example. Speaking of death, Ulitskaya uses it too conveniently to spark a shift in direction. Perfectly, healthy people suddenly die, which, of course, then changes the lives of those friends, spouses, children left behind. Without the deaths, the story would simply have meandered around. It felt sort of like, "Hmm, where can I go from here? Life is just going to go on tediously, but, wait, what if _____ dies! Ah, yes, off we go." This can work occasionally, after all healthy people do sometimes die unexpectedly, but Ulitskaya leans on this crutch a bit too often. I had much higher hopes when I began reading this novel.