Oksana, Behave!

January 15, 2019
Uprooted at age 7 from her home in the Ukraine as her family immigrates to the U.S. and a new life, Oksana Konnikova grows up permanently seeking her place in the world.Tragicomic and bittersweet, Kuznetsova's debut treads the not-unfamiliar ground of immigrant alienation. Oksana's biography from infanthood to her 30s, delivered in snapshot chapters that can seem like short stories, is the tale of a smart, rebellious outsider for whom family is the only constant. Oksana's first American home, which she shares with her mother, father, and cougar grandmother, is a crummy apartment in Florida where she begins both the business of assimilation and a habit of impulsive, questionable behavior. From here on, the story is dotted with relationships explored, boundaries tested, and a roller-coaster home life, all infused with Ukrainian and Russian culture that Oksana has scarcely known firsthand. Girlfriends, boyfriends, college, work, relocation from New York to the West Coast follow, and all the while Oksana--the darkly comic outsider with an urge to write--is yearning: "I wrote about how much my grandmother loved returning to the Motherland, how I wished there was a place, or maybe a person, that could make me feel at peace like that." Eventually such a person does enter her life, although inevitably accompanied by complications, leading to the book's standout section, "The Yalta Conference," in which Kuznetsova achieves her best synthesis of the novel's touchstones: European literature and history; Oksana's emotional quest; her unpredictability and sense of humor; and her love for her inexhaustibly lusty grandmother. At last, the "poor futureless child," so labeled because a Jersey Shore fortuneteller could see nothing for young Oksana in her crystal ball, finds her identity and her future.An immigrant's coming-of-age tale done with brio.

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Starred review from February 1, 2019
Oksana Konnikova is only seven when she moves from Kiev with her parents and flamboyant grandmother to Gainsville, Florida, in the early 1990s. A quirky child with an unfortunate mullet and a propensity for standing up to bullies, Oksana is constantly stepping out of line, committing transgressions such as calling 911 to (falsely) claim her grandmother is trying to kill her and attempting to blackmail her high-school principal in order to influence a school election, breaking up a marriage in the process. The death of her father while Oksana is in high school brings her deep-seated fear of loss to the forefront, which seeps into the poetry she writes. College doesn't prove any easier to navigate for Oksana when she falls hard for a player who will sleep with just about any girl but her. Oksana gets older and perhaps wiser, but her choices don't necessarily improve. And yet despite this, she is an utterly compelling, deeply flawed, and completely endearing character. I was nobody's first choice, the Ross Perot of real life, she laments in high school. Kuznetsova has created a heroine for the ages in her sparkling, piercingly insightful debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)