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A review by irena_smith
Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel: A Graphic Novel by Anya Ulinich
5.0
Lena Finkle is a Soviet Jewish emigre who keeps explaining to bewildered Americans that she is Jewish, not Russian, even though she was born and raised in Moscow (a distinction instantly recognizable to Soviet Jews and meaningless to everyone else). And, as a Soviet Jew transplanted first to Arizona (where her family was sponsored by a family of Hassidic Jews and where she marries a 7-11 store clerk in order to escape an arranged marriage to much older Hassidic man) and then to New York City, where she is raising two daughters from her (also failed) second marriage, she has enough neuroses, compulsions, insecurities, and anxieties to fill a book. Which she does.
Among other things, Lena has published a successful first novel and now teaches a novel-writing course at the Writing Place she fears is a sham. Each eight-week session, the students vary—"the brilliant, the insane, the illiterate, the angry and ambitious, and the jerk-off" (there's one in each class, it's always a man, and he always writes rape porn disguised as a mystery, sci-fi, or historical fiction). And in her spare time, she explores the surreal terrain of online dating, which yields its own revelations: "It's sad and amazing," she reflects, "how many over-educated, canvas-bag-toting, Bon Iver-listening Jewish hipsters are would-be eugenicists...How many cute doctors would take away preschools and food stamps from the poor... How many rugged war photographers would faint at the sight of a fat lady."
And then she meets someone—on a bus, not online—and, well, at the risk of spoiling the second half of the book, stuff happens. A lot of stuff. Alternately hilarious and heartbreaking stuff.
It's entirely possible that this book resonated so deeply because like Lena (and like the author) I also come from the Soviet Union, but I suspect that the reason I loved it so much was the ambitious, audacious prose that jibes effortlessly from the soaringly lyrical to the deadpan, the brooding illustrations, and the whip-smart, keenly observant voice in every single frame. And because somehow, Ulinich manages to take her character's entirely singular and idiosyncratic life and, through some strange alchemy of word and image and genius, to make it stunningly, amazingly, and—yes, magically—universal.
Among other things, Lena has published a successful first novel and now teaches a novel-writing course at the Writing Place she fears is a sham. Each eight-week session, the students vary—"the brilliant, the insane, the illiterate, the angry and ambitious, and the jerk-off" (there's one in each class, it's always a man, and he always writes rape porn disguised as a mystery, sci-fi, or historical fiction). And in her spare time, she explores the surreal terrain of online dating, which yields its own revelations: "It's sad and amazing," she reflects, "how many over-educated, canvas-bag-toting, Bon Iver-listening Jewish hipsters are would-be eugenicists...How many cute doctors would take away preschools and food stamps from the poor... How many rugged war photographers would faint at the sight of a fat lady."
And then she meets someone—on a bus, not online—and, well, at the risk of spoiling the second half of the book, stuff happens. A lot of stuff. Alternately hilarious and heartbreaking stuff.
It's entirely possible that this book resonated so deeply because like Lena (and like the author) I also come from the Soviet Union, but I suspect that the reason I loved it so much was the ambitious, audacious prose that jibes effortlessly from the soaringly lyrical to the deadpan, the brooding illustrations, and the whip-smart, keenly observant voice in every single frame. And because somehow, Ulinich manages to take her character's entirely singular and idiosyncratic life and, through some strange alchemy of word and image and genius, to make it stunningly, amazingly, and—yes, magically—universal.