The Great Glass Sea

May 26, 2014
Twin brothers find themselves on opposite sides of an ideological divide in this ambitious debut novel from the author of the novella collection The New Valley. Yarik and Dima grew up together in Russia, thick as thieves. As adults, they work at the Oranzheria, a massive greenhouse in the town of Petroplavilsk, which is bathed in perpetual daylight by space mirrors. Under the mirrors, the town becomes ceaselessly productive, a place where “sleep was freed from nature’s hours, breakfast was what happened before work,” and “stores never closed.” Longing for more time with his brother, Dima becomes increasingly disenchanted with this new, overly productive society, while an encounter between Yarik and Russian billionaire Boris Bazarov—the oligarch behind the Oranzheria—leads to the Yarik’s ascension through the ranks. A well-timed dystopian tale, the novel beautifully details both the politics of this hypothetical Russia—“oligarchs bred beneath the clamp of communism let loose upon loot-fueled dreams”—and its impact on one small family. Agent: P.J. Mark, Janklow & Nesbit.

May 15, 2014

Twin brothers Yarik and Dima spent their childhood at their uncle's countryside farm, helping in the fields and listening to his folktales at night. Years later, the brothers are grown, living in the city of Petroplavilsk. Vast glass panels form a ceiling, the Oranzheria, over the city, and night is replaced by mirrors floating like satellites in the sky, reflecting light. Yarik has a wife and children and is determined to make a good life for them at any cost. Dima, the nostalgic dreamer, lives with their mother and a rooster in her apartment. When Dima quits his job, causing social and political upheaval, and Yarik encounters the billionaire oligarch who controls Petroplavilsk, irrevocable change enters their lives. VERDICT After winning several literary awards for a trio of novellas titled The New Valley, Weil creates a tale of longing and sadness, threaded by Russian folklore and heavy with the weight of love, in his first novel. Facing 400 pages, the reader will trudge through some redundant detailing but will be rewarded by a deep emotional bond with the characters and immersion in a landscape and story line full of natural beauty, resplendent and incandescent. [See Prepub Alert, 1/10/14.]--Shannon Greene, Greenville Technical Coll. Lib., SC

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2014
In his debut novel, Weil, author of the award-winning collection The New Valley (2009), employs intriguing tropestwins, science fictionto tell a complex story of brotherly love and capitalism. Set in Russia, this is a folklore-drenched alternative history, and the glass sea of the title the book's finest conceit; it's actually a giant greenhouse illuminated by sheets of Kevlar. These space mirrors, rising each night, prevent night from ever falling on the company town of Petroplavisk, turning the White Nights of Russian summers into a perpetual nightmare. Inseparable from birth and products of a broken Soviet home, twin brothers Dima and Yarik idolize their uncle's farm, where they lived after their mother's institutionalization and their father's death. Like everyone else in the region, they take jobs on the glass sea. A chance encounter with the oligarch owner of everythingknown as the She Bear, he is a caricature and a narrative red herringchanges their lives irrevocably. The plot's romance element is pat, but Weil does a fantastic job of creating and detailing the novel's marvelously imagined world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)