A Terrible Country

April 15, 2018
A man returns to Moscow to care for his grandmother and learns much about Putin's Russia, its new prosperity and old problems.Gessen (All the Sad Young Literary Men, 2008) opens his second novel where his first ended, in 2008. The new work's central figure, Andrei Kaplan, recalls the feckless, at times unlikable young men of Gessen's debut. After eight years of grad school and a Ph.D. in Russian literature and "modernity," Andrei, at 33, is struggling to live in New York on a meager salary from online teaching. So when his older brother calls to say he must leave Moscow--his business schemes have brought legal woes--and asks Andrei to come care for their grandmother, it seems like a promising alternative that might even bolster his resume. Grandma Seva is 89 and physically healthy but suffering "medium-stage dementia." As Andrei settles in to a daily routine, he comes to know her past and the new Moscow, a place he left at age 6 with his parents and brother. He's accepted by a group of socialists who show him the pricey city's cheaper side while they discuss Putin's form of capitalism, the "dictatorship of the market." They stage political demonstrations and share a strange sort of nostalgia for Soviet times. Small crises arise, but nothing like the chilling developments of the last 30 pages. Gessen's prose is generally unembellished and lends itself to deadpan humor, though it can be repetitious. The plain style does suit the muted action of Andrei's mostly mundane existence, and understatement helps to highlight the real hardship and peril that other lives confront.The themes are timely and engaging, and Moscow-born Gessen displays an affecting sympathy for the smaller players on history's stage.

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Starred review from May 28, 2018
In Gessen’s exceptional and trenchant novel, floundering 30-something professor Andrei Kaplan flees from New York to Russia, the country of his birth, to reassess his future and take care of his ailing grandmother. Called abroad by his enterprising older brother, Dima, Andrei arrives in Moscow to find the city of his memory surreally changed, his 89-year-old grandmother’s apartment one of the few spaces exempt from a partial Westernization. Andrei’s early attempts to reorient himself to post-Soviet Russian society bring about considerable insight and humor—getting rebuffed by a men’s adult hockey league, getting pistol-whipped outside a nightclub—leading him back to watching old Russian films with his grandmother. Eventually, though, Andrei carves out a place for himself among a group of leftists known as October, whose ranks include Yulia, a devout radical with whom Andrei embarks on a romantic relationship. Gessen (All the Sad Young Literary Men) meticulously forges these bonds before casting them in doubt, as Andrei’s involvement in a protest complicates the new life he has built. While poised to critique Putin’s Russia, this sharp, stellar novel becomes, by virtue of Andrei’s ultimate self-interest, a subtle and incisive indictment of the American character. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, the Wylie Agency

June 1, 2018
A decade after his debut, All the Sad Young Literary Men (2008), n+1 cofounder Gessen's new novel follows Andrei Kaplan, a Russian American struggling as an online adjunct professor in New York. When Andrei's brother asks him to temporarily move back to Moscow to look after their ailing grandmother, Andrei agrees. In Moscow, not much happens, though Gessen does offer an eerily timely portrait of Putin's Russia after the 2008 financial crisis. It is fascinating to see Andrei grapple with how Russia is simultaneously gentrifying and modernizing while it remains violent, corrupt, and indelibly scarred by the Soviet era. Caring for his grandma as she struggles with dementia and the traumas of her life, Andrei gradually builds his own life in Moscow; drinking overpriced coffee, finding a place to play ice hockey, and joining a Marxist activist group. With a realistic approach that nods to William Dean Howells and Tolstoy in equal measure, and like the fiction of his n+1 cohorts Chad Harbach and Benjamin Kunkel, Gessen presents a measured, socially engaged novel that is moving, often funny, and deeply thought-provoking.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from May 1, 2018

In his debut novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men, Gessen (journalism, Columbia Univ.) penned a passing nod to F. Scott Fitzgerald with an autobiographical tale of three writers struggling to turn their literary ambitions into a lasting legacy. Similar themes from Gessen's life emerge here, as the author ruminates on the complexities of his homeland from the perspective of floundering academic and Russian expat Andrei Kaplan. With few job prospects and the high cost of living in New York City, Andrei returns to Moscow, his birthplace, to care for his grandmother, improve his hockey skills, and decide whether the academic life is worth the trouble. Navigating Russian culture as he moves between his grandmother's recollections of the USSR and his newfound revolutionary friends, he is caught between the ideologies of Putin's Russia and the Western liberalism that underpinned both his upbringing and his education. When the possibility of a romantic relationship presents itself, Andrei discovers his own narrative paralleling that of Mother Russia: cling to a past that is gone or strive for a future that may never materialize? VERDICT With wit and humor, Gessen delivers a heartwarming novel about the multitudinous winding roads that lead us home. [See Prepub Alert, 1/22/18.]--Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018

In 2008, with girlfriend, job prospects, and funds all missing in action, Brooklyn-based Andrei Kaplan agrees to travel to his native Moscow to care for his ailing grandmother. Even as he becomes involved with activist Yulia, Andrei realizes that neither Russia nor America is really home. The first novel in a decade from n+1 founding editor Gessen, author of All the Sad Young Literary Men.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.