A review by lorraine19
I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country by Elena Kostyuchenko

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.5

The stories in this book were very interesting. Topics from prostitution to disabilities to environment to war are covered. The stories are all very personal and there's a wide variety of people interviewed. 

However, I feel like the formatting was completely distracting and inconsistent. There were also points it was difficult to follow the stories or it seemed like transitions were missing. It's hard to say how much of this was the writer vs the translators though. (Leaning towards it being translation as there are 2 distinct styles and I have previously read articles by this author.) 

Overall, I felt like having the book formatted as short stories or a collection of interviews/articles rather than a novel would have made it much easier to follow. But it does not take away from the importance of topics discussed and the very real, yet dystopian, stories of people living in Russia. 
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