A review by abookolive
The Orchard by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry

Soon after becoming General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev famously rebranded two Russian words: glasnost and perestroika, meaning openness and restructuring, respectively. With these words he ushered in a new era for the USSR, one in which citizens had more freedoms and economic options. It was a period of change unlike anything the nation had yet witnessed, and, for Soviet youth, it meant hope for the future. This was “Generation Perestroika,” as author Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry calls it in her debut novel The Orchard, a coming-of-age tale loosely inspired by Anton Chekhov’s final play, The Cherry Orchard.

Click here to read the rest of my review in the Harvard Review!