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A review by korrick
Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
3.0
2.5/5
I've written in previous reviews about the stale feel certain works of historical fiction have, as if the author played Russian (ha) Roulette with a world history encyclopedia and chose the first topic the pen dropped upon a flung open page. Soviet Russian ballet isn't all that esoteric if you've read a 600+ page compendium on ballet history within the last six months as I have, so what novelty couldn't carry quality writing, pinpoint research, and other ephemeral fictoneering qualities would have to make up for. Alas, while research was certainly gratuitous, lackluster writing and some really nasty moments involving women of color made 400+ pages breeze by in a most unimpressive fashion. I'll give it two stars for the complexity and the few brief moments of well worded pathos that I hadn't predicted 100-200 pages previous and a final half star and round up because I'm feeling generous, but I can't wait until I sludge my way through the rest of the works that I've obviously left on my to be read shelf for far too long. Not every work ages as well as [b:Wild Swans|1848|Wild Swans Three Daughters of China|Jung Chang|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440643710s/1848.jpg|2969000], or proves as necessary regardless of time or place of one's engagement.
About three quarters of the way through this work, I had chalked it up as a decent attempt at historical fiction that paled in comparison to all of the greats and some of the mediocres. However, two nasty scenes, one involving an Asian woman at the last quarter mark and the other involving a black woman near the very end gave the narrative an unnecessarily petty feel that severely undercut the tragic redemption pathos it was attempting to build. The fact that the white dude, whose head the reader is in during both incidents, felt the need to first slut shame his colleague and then stereotype a perfect stranger would have been less of a surprise if the character had been anything more than a mopey academic who is borderline cipher in his interiority, but alas. Most of the characters, despite how much time one spends in their heads, are little more than ciphers themselves, so it's hard to take the author's critique of antisemitism seriously when the strongest characteristic they can attribute to one of their main characters is racial misogyny. If the story had been stronger, I wouldn't care as much, but making such a big deal about multiculturalism during the 80s on the US east coast is so boring. The pseudo auction block descriptions that introduced each chapter were cute and all, but superficiality doesn't often make a reader care.
I've been diving into my first class for my Masters in information and Library Science for the past week. It's been a fast paced balancing experience, to say the least, but my ability to speed through the modules has made the online way of doing things very favorable to my preferred style of learning. I still have a number of books to get through for my challenge, and I hope that more, rather than less, of the remaining are more interesting and/or more successful than this one. I do mourn in advance the reading time I'll have to sacrifice for the sake of eventually putting more money in the bank and more food in the table, but ah well. It's worth knowing that the less reading I'm doing now, the more reading I, and myriad others, will be able to do in the future.
I've written in previous reviews about the stale feel certain works of historical fiction have, as if the author played Russian (ha) Roulette with a world history encyclopedia and chose the first topic the pen dropped upon a flung open page. Soviet Russian ballet isn't all that esoteric if you've read a 600+ page compendium on ballet history within the last six months as I have, so what novelty couldn't carry quality writing, pinpoint research, and other ephemeral fictoneering qualities would have to make up for. Alas, while research was certainly gratuitous, lackluster writing and some really nasty moments involving women of color made 400+ pages breeze by in a most unimpressive fashion. I'll give it two stars for the complexity and the few brief moments of well worded pathos that I hadn't predicted 100-200 pages previous and a final half star and round up because I'm feeling generous, but I can't wait until I sludge my way through the rest of the works that I've obviously left on my to be read shelf for far too long. Not every work ages as well as [b:Wild Swans|1848|Wild Swans Three Daughters of China|Jung Chang|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440643710s/1848.jpg|2969000], or proves as necessary regardless of time or place of one's engagement.
About three quarters of the way through this work, I had chalked it up as a decent attempt at historical fiction that paled in comparison to all of the greats and some of the mediocres. However, two nasty scenes, one involving an Asian woman at the last quarter mark and the other involving a black woman near the very end gave the narrative an unnecessarily petty feel that severely undercut the tragic redemption pathos it was attempting to build. The fact that the white
Spoiler
(later revealed to be ethnically Jewish)I've been diving into my first class for my Masters in information and Library Science for the past week. It's been a fast paced balancing experience, to say the least, but my ability to speed through the modules has made the online way of doing things very favorable to my preferred style of learning. I still have a number of books to get through for my challenge, and I hope that more, rather than less, of the remaining are more interesting and/or more successful than this one. I do mourn in advance the reading time I'll have to sacrifice for the sake of eventually putting more money in the bank and more food in the table, but ah well. It's worth knowing that the less reading I'm doing now, the more reading I, and myriad others, will be able to do in the future.
But isn't it funny, that in some ways the price one pays for freedom of speech is...a kind of indifference.