Everything is Normal:
The Life and Times of a Soviet Kid
by Sergey Grechishkin
&
On the Eve
by Ivan Turgenev
Wednesday, September 8, 2021, at 5:00 pm
OPEN TO MEMBERS & GUESTS - FREE
Stay for dinner after the meeting!
In September we will travel to Russia to compare and contrast two books, both are "coming of age" novels in different centuries. Everything is Normal: The Life and Times of a Soviet Kid by Sergey Grechishkin, and On the Eve by Ivan Turgenev.
Grechishkin's novel is well-reviewed and described by Goodreads: "This book is both a memoir and a social history". On one hand, it is a light-hearted worm’s-eye-view of the USSR through one middle-class Soviet childhood in the 1970s - 1980s. On the other hand, it is a reflection on the mundane deprivations and existential terrors of day-to-day life in Leningrad in the decades preceding the collapse of the USSR.
Vanity Fair describes Turgenev's novel thus: This 1860 novel about educated youth coming of age in Russia just before the Crimean War is about global and personal politics as well as love and society—and it’s also very funny. Criticized at the time for not going far enough (read: being heavy-handed) in its leftist politics, it now comes off as more audacious (and honest in its limitations) than more celebrated political novels.
Copies of the book are available at DC Public Library.
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