Something Unbelievable

April 1, 2021

Thirtysomething Natasha struggles with exhaustion and boredom at home with a new baby in New York City, feeling alienated from her formerly glamorous and slightly louche life as an actress/bartender. To engage her, Natasha's world-weary 90-year-old Russian grandmother, Larissa, agrees to tell her beloved American granddaughter the story of her own complicated, unhappy family and their survival during World War II. (They talk via Skype.) Along with her parents and her self-absorbed sister and grandmother, Larissa had been forced to relocate to freezing Siberia, where her engineer father worked on weapons for the war effort and the family nearly starved to death. Certain plot points of the family saga, like Larissa's feelings for the two brothers next door, mirror elements of the Russian novels loved by the protagonists. Kuznetsova (Oksana, Behave!) alternates Larissa's story with Natasha's; both women have distinctive points of view. The same tension between the practical and the artistic temperament runs through the generations, and Natasha seems to be repeating some of the life choices made by her grandmother, for better or worse. VERDICT A moving intergenerational story with an unforgettable wartime narrative steeped in literature.--Lauren Gilbert, Ctr. for Jewish History, New York

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2021
Present and past mirror each other as an aged Russian woman tells her American granddaughter the story of their family's struggles to survive the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. Kiev-born Kuznetsova begins her novel with a knowing nod to Russian literature: a formal character list that pointedly includes pet cats and gives clues to the plot ahead. The opening scene reads like a traditional framing device when Natasha, a Russian born, American-raised actress Skyping with her almost 90-year-old Baba Larissa in Kiev, asks for the full story behind how Larissa's grandmother Tonya died in WWII. And at first, new mother Natasha's typical millennial ambivalence toward domesticity seems less important than Larissa's story. In a tough, cynical voice devoid of sentimentality, Larissa describes how, in 1940, after a life of coddled comfort lasting through Communist rule, her suddenly penniless grandmother Tonya moved in with her engineer son, Fyodor, Larissa's father. Soon Germany's invasion forced Fyodor and family to evacuate Kiev to Lower Turinsk, accompanied by the Orlovs, a fellow engineer's family. Tonya favored Larissa's younger sister, Polya, whom the bookish 13-year-old Larissa considered a frivolous "lobotomized swan." But family roles began to change as survival required increasingly difficult sacrifices and ethical choices. While Larissa discovered complicated romantic feelings toward the two Orlov brothers, Polya turned inward and Tonya grew pathetically demented. Meanwhile, the original framing device begins to dissolve as the secrets Larissa reveals (or keeps hidden) about herself and Tonya parallel the crises Natasha faces--loving her (unbelievably understanding) husband and infant daughter while becoming dangerously attracted to her husband's friend Stas, who represents the free-spirited independence she craves. In shifting first-person narratives in which they analyze each other with assumptions that may or may not be accurate, Natasha and Larissa build a portrait of family love in all its variations. Most compelling when history intersects with the emotions of women figuring out their lives today.

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March 15, 2021
Kuznetsova follows up her dazzling debut, Oksana, Behave! (2019), with another lively tale of a grandmother and her granddaughter. As Larissa approaches her ninetieth year, her beloved granddaughter Natasha, an actor and new mother living in New York City, begs Larissa to recount in detail the story of her family's plight during WWII, when Larissa's own flamboyant grandmother Antonina lost her life. Over a series of Skype calls, Larissa grants Natasha's request, sharing the story of her family's flight from Kiev to the mountain town of Turinsk when she was a teenager. Unsentimental Larissa thought herself immune to the flights of fancy that her younger, more delicate sister Polina was subject to, but as the family faced hardship and food shortages, she found herself drawn into romantic intrigue with the two handsome Orlov brothers, one of whom she'd eventually marry, while facing unimaginable grief over a sudden devastating loss. As Natasha grapples with postpartum depression, Larissa realizes that her granddaughter is on the brink of a potential misstep that could upend her life and agrees to a visit to see Natasha's one-act play and meet her baby. An introspective look at the stages of life and what means the most at each phase, Kuznetsova's second outing is an emotional powerhouse.

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