Natasha and Other Stories Part 9

Award Distinctions for Natasha 2005 Winner, Commonwealth Writers' Prize for First Book (Caribbean and Canada region) 2005 Winner, Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize for Fiction (UK) 2005 Winner, Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction (The Martin and Beatrice Fischer Award) 2005 Finalist, National Magazine Awards, for "Natasha"-Fiction (US) 2005 Finalist, LA Times Arthur Seidenbaum First Fiction Award 2005 Finalist, Canadian Booksellers Libris Award for Fiction 2005 Finalist, Danuta Gleed Literary Award 2004 Winner, Reform Judaism Prize for Jewish Fiction 2004 Winner, National Magazine Awards Silver Prize for "Minyan"-Fiction (Canada) 2004 Finalist, Governor General's Award for Fiction 2004 Finalist, Guardian First Book Award (UK) 2004 Finalist, Borders Original Voices Award Other Distinctions for Natasha Best American Short Stories 2005 ("Natasha") A New York Times Notable Book of 2004 The New York Public Library "25 Books to Remember," 2004 LA Times 25 Best Books of the Year The Globe and Mail 100 Best Books of 2004 The Economist Best Books of 2004 Amazon.com Top 10 Books of 2004 The Independent Best of 2004 Chicago Tribune Best of 2004 Publishers Weekly Best of 2004

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Recommended by David Bezmozgis

Leonard Michaels.

If I have a literary mentor, someone whom I admire above all other writers, it is Leonard Michaels. I see his influence throughout Natasha and in most things I write. Michaels was known primarily as a short story writer. His first two books, Going Places and I Would Have Saved Them If I Could, were both collections of stories. He later wrote a fine novel, The Men's Club, which attracted a lot of attention and was made into a (disappointing) movie. His books are written with a combination of intelligence, humor, and a fascination with the cruelty and absurdity that underlies people's relations.h.i.+ps with each other. Of course, this can be said of any number of writers, but what sets Michaels apart is his attention to language and his ability to engage a reader and keep him engaged. Michaels's stories are never boring. Neither are they sensationalist or trendy. He is capable of advancing plot and delving into his characters' thoughts without ever bogging down. Not a word is wasted. His work has a tremendous energy and this energy does not come at the expense of real emotion. I have read all of his work, and I return to his collection I Would Have Saved Them If I Could often. I employ it as my textbook and bible.

Isaac Babel.

Babel needs no introduction from me. Anyone familiar with his work should also be able to see the way in which Natasha is indebted to his Odessa Stories. That Babel is widely regarded as one of the great short story writers is, to my mind, entirely deserved. His stories are intricately crafted. They are brief and powerful. They, like Michaels', demonstrate a supreme attentiveness to language. You will never find a cliche in a Babel story. The language he uses is simple-never convoluted-and his imagery is earthy, striking, and immediately accessible. Also, his stories manage to create a feeling that is remarkably lifelike. Often the plots are not linear; rather things happen in response to a curious, idiosyncratic logic which nevertheless makes perfect emotional sense. They feel like an imitation of life-how life feels-without feeling imitative. The cycle he wrote about his childhood and maturation in and around Odessa very much influenced Natasha in both mood and form.

Sergei Dovlatov.

Dovlatov began his career in the Soviet Union and ended it in New York in the 1990s. He came of age in the 1960s and wrote about the Soviet Union in its decline. More than Michaels and Babel, Dovlatov was a humorist if not an outright satirist. But his humor and satire were leavened with a deep sympathy for his characters and an identification with the strange forces that guided people's lives and fates. As far as I know-and I have read all of his books available in English translation-Dovlatov wrote about Dovlatov. Or, to put in another way, he wrote about a character based upon himself. Other characters in his stories are based upon his friends and family. Some would mistake this for autobiography, but it seems to me that he was simply satisfied with the material immediately at hand. His book Ours: A Russian Family Alb.u.m (which I was introduced to after Natasha was published) is a moving but very funny examination of one man's family. The book opens with "Dovlatov's" grandparents and takes as the subjects for its stories different members of his family. The narrator features in most, though not all, of the stories. In the end, a vibrant picture emerges of this family and the place and time that formed them. Also worth reading is The Compromise-billed as a novel but really a very clever cycle of stories about Dovlatov's journalistic career in Soviet Estonia.

PRAISE FOR NATASHA AND OTHER STORIES.

"What sets [Bezmozgis] apart ... is his quiet command of unadorned language, his wry humour and his keen understanding of the human heart."

-Winnipeg Free Press "Extraordinary.... [Recalls] the work of Babel, Roth, Saul Bellow, and so many others. Yet Bezmozgis makes these characters, and the state of marginality itself, uniquely his. This hysterical, merciless, yet open-hearted excavation of a Jewish family in the process of a.s.similating gives his literary predecessors a run for their money."

-Los Angeles Times Book Review "An authority one usually finds only in more seasoned writers."

-The New York Times Book Review "An effervescent debut.... A familiar tale of dislocation and a.s.similation with enough humor, honesty, and courage to make it new again.... If the last page of 'Tapka' doesn't stop your heart, maybe it was never really beating."

-O Magazine "Exquisitely crafted stories. A first collection that reads like the work of a past master."

-T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE, author of Drop City "[Bezmozgis] is expert at prodding forward his stories with unexpected exoticisms.... Pa.s.sionately full of life ... ebullient and warmly comic."

-London Review of Books "The hype is well-deserved.... All of these spare, expertly crafted, memorably moving tales about Jewish immigrant life in contemporary Toronto contain truths of which it is exhilarating to be reminded-about striving, living, and dying in a new free world that is as harsh and bewildering as it is beautiful and exciting."

-Elle Magazine "Here in Europe the talk this year has been all about the new writing coming out of Russia. David Bezmozgis shows that this energy extends to the Russian Diaspora as well. In Natasha and Other Stories Bezmozgis renders something of the clear-sighted melancholy a.s.sociated with Chekov or Babel into English prose and a North American context. With a maturity and control far beyond his years, Mr. Bezmozgis has produced a captivating and impressive debut. The t.i.tle story itself is one I will never forget."

-JEFFREY EUGENIDES, author of Middles.e.x "Scary good.... Not a line or note in the book rings false."

-Esquire.

"A latter-day Bernard Malamud.... It's astonis.h.i.+ng how Bezmozgis can summon up the emigre community with such clarity and economy. David Bezmozgis isn't almost there. He has arrived, fully mature and wise. These stories aren't just superbly crafted investigations of a particular people and place, but profound illuminations of what it means to grow up in an uncertain, ever-changing world."

-Newsday.

"A stunning first collection, characterized by a painful honesty and clarity of vision.... Like Gogol, Bezmozgis is acutely aware of his characters' shortcomings; as Gogol does, Bezmozgis writes with compa.s.sion, quietly reminding us of the hidden beauty within human imperfection."

-The Believer.

"Dazzling, hilarious and hugely compa.s.sionate narratives [written with] freshness and precision.... Readers will find themselves laughing out loud, then gasping as Bezmozgis brings these fictions to the searing, startling and perfectly pitched conclusions that remind us that, as Babel said, 'no iron can stab the heart so powerfully as a period put in exactly the right place.'"

-People.