A couple of days ago I read Tom Bissell's recently published collection of short stories, God Lives in St Petersburg. This is a book that you have to read if you've spent any amount of time in the post-Soviet region in the past 15 years, and the writing is so good that it may be equally appreciated by people who have never left the North American land mass.
Earlier I posted about a review of this book, and now that I've read it I can confirm that the critical acclaim it's received is deserved. This is the kind of short story collection where you reach the end and wish there were more stories.
My only beef with the book, and it's a pretty minor one and something that my guess is the author had nothing to do with, is that the title on the cover is written out as "GOD LIVES IИ ST. PETERSBЦRG." Why it was necessary to "exoticize" the title by adding nonsense Cyrillic characters is beyond me; this is something I would expect to see in a James Bond film, not on a serious work of literature. At least they didn't substitute a "Я" for one of the R's.
1 comment:
Oh, ick. The worst offense is using capital "ya" as a backwards, "exotic" R. They never consider what (admittedly very briefly) disorienting effect this has on people who actually read Cyrillic!
Thanks for recommendation. Book sounds interesting, might give it a go, can't believe I'm going to be allowed to choose my own reading material from now on!
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