Lara Vapnyar, Author . Pantheon $22.95 (212p) ISBN 978-0-375-42296-6
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Reviewed by Caryn James
What kind of person writes a thesis about makeup in 19th-century Russia? Tatiana Rumer, a would-be historian from the collapsing Soviet Union, wants to know where people from the past dumped their garbage, "w
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Lara Vapnyar, Author . Pantheon $20 (148p) ISBN 978-0-375-42487-8
The third book from Vapnyar (following There Are Jews in My House
and Memoirs of a Muse
) links food to lonely, loveless dating among recent Russian immigrants over six tales. The opening “A Bunch of Broccoli on the Third Shelf” follows
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Lara Vapnyar. Simon & Schuster, $25 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4767-1262-8
Vapnyar (Memoirs of a Muse) delivers an awkward mix of angst and absurdity in her sophomore novel. Lena, a morose adjunct professor of film studies, catches a train out of N.Y.C.’s Penn Station for Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where she is scheduled to...
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Lara Vapnyar. Random/Hogarth, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-1-101-90552-4
When Vica, a Russian immigrant, brings her son to take an entrance exam for an elite Manhattan high school, she observes the other parents: “You could easily divide them into two categories: Susan Sontag types and Outer Borough types.” Such...
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Laura Vapnyar, Author, Lara Vapnyar, Author . Pantheon $19.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-375-42250-8
Whether set in Vapnyar's native Russia or in her adopted New York, the six understated stories in this debut collection are beautifully crafted and unswerving in their exploration of human frailty. Friendship shades into resentment and then...
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Lara Vapnyar. Tin House, $24.95 (360p) ISBN 978-1-947793-42-2
Vapnyar bottles a profound sense of discontent in her tragicomic novel (Still Here), chronicling the life and loves of Katya Geller, an immigrant to Staten Island from Soviet-era Russia. Framed by the death of her beloved but difficult mother, a...
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