Invitation to a Bonfire

April 2, 2018
Celt’s disquieting second novel (following The Daughters) is set in an America distrustful of the newly formed U.S.S.R. Unfolding via an assortment of unreliable documents, it is the story of Zoya Andropova, a young Soviet refugee orphaned under grim circumstances in the late 1920s, who is placed on a transport ship full of children bound for America and given a scholarship to a private girls’ school in New Jersey. In spite of mental and physical abuse by her snobbish classmates, Zoya graduates and takes a job in the school’s greenhouse. She begins a torrid affair with a fellow Russian émigré, the well-known writer Lev Orlov, who has come with his wife, Vera, to teach at the school. In this dangerous trio, Orlov and Vera resemble the Nabokovs. Here, Vera exerts a powerful and erotic sway over Orlov, and later Zoya, as well. When Orlov embarks on a futile trip to Russia to recover a lost manuscript, both he and Vera ask Zoya to commit unconscionable acts in the name of love. Though the ending is implausible, it’s nonetheless cleverly twisted. This is an incendiary and provocative novel about obsession.

Starred review from March 1, 2018

In the mid-1920s, 16-year-old orphaned refugee Zoya Andropova begins a new life at a posh East Coast boarding school, far from her Moscow roots. It is a rocky start, given fading memories of her parents and homeland and persistent bullying from mean classmates. After graduation, she puts her green thumb to use as the school's new manager of hothouse plants. Another addition to staff that semester is fellow Russian 'migr' Leo Orlov, arriving with his enigmatic wife, Vera. Leo happens to be Zoya's favorite author, and her excitement about his presence at the school soon sparks a relationship between them. But Vera proves to be a formidable complication, and twists and turns abound as Zoya must decide where her allegiances can intersect with her best chance at lasting happiness. Award-winning novelist (The Daughters)and cartoonist Celt (LoveAmongtheLampreys.com) blends an intricate and engrossing tale of a young woman's awakening sexuality with a look at the political realism of a young Soviet Union, the class and social conflicts of elite educational institutions, and a dash of horticulture. VERDICT At once a taut psychological thriller and a sensitive character study; fans of each should rejoice.--Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2018

In the mid-1920s, 16-year-old orphaned refugee Zoya Andropova begins a new life at a posh East Coast boarding school, far from her Moscow roots. It is a rocky start, given fading memories of her parents and homeland and persistent bullying from mean classmates. After graduation, she puts her green thumb to use as the school's new manager of hothouse plants. Another addition to staff that semester is fellow Russian 'migr' Leo Orlov, arriving with his enigmatic wife, Vera. Leo happens to be Zoya's favorite author, and her excitement about his presence at the school soon sparks a relationship between them. But Vera proves to be a formidable complication, and twists and turns abound as Zoya must decide where her allegiances can intersect with her best chance at lasting happiness. Award-winning novelist (The Daughters)and cartoonist Celt (LoveAmongtheLampreys.com) blends an intricate and engrossing tale of a young woman's awakening sexuality with a look at the political realism of a young Soviet Union, the class and social conflicts of elite educational institutions, and a dash of horticulture. VERDICT At once a taut psychological thriller and a sensitive character study; fans of each should rejoice.--Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2018
Trembling with atmosphere, Celt's (The Daughters, 2015) second novel follows a young Russian émigré as she becomes embroiled in a sinister love triangle with a brilliant novelist and his exceptional wife.Constructed as a "collection of papers" bequeathed by one Vera Orlov to the posh girls' boarding school where her husband taught before his untimely death, the book begins with the end. Leo "Lev" Orlov was murdered in 1931, according to the opening "note on the text"; the same year, a young Donne School employee, Zoe "Zoya" Andropov, "died under hotly debated circumstances." The story--primarily told through Zoya's supposed diary entries and Lev's letters--is about everything that happened before. The child of political dissidents, Zoya arrives in New Jersey on a ship of orphans and finds herself an out-of-place charity case at the Donne School, a dark outcast amid shiny American wealth. But while the other girls move on to college or marriage or secretarial jobs after graduation, Zoya stays on, tending the school's greenhouse under the tutelage of the kindly gardener and obsessing, in her spare hours, over the otherworldly novels of the great Leo Orlov. And then, outside her greenhouse window in New Jersey, there he is: Lev Orlov. Encouraged by his beautiful, ice-cold wife--the engine of his career--he's teaching at the school. Immediately, he and Zoya, fellow Russians with upbringings on opposite sides of a vast cultural divide--she's a peasant, he's the son of White Russian wealth--fall into a passionate affair. But as Zoya becomes increasingly involved with the Orlovs, she begins to understand that their relationship is darker and more tangled than she'd bargained for, and she finds herself a half-witting pawn for them both. An ominous snowball of a novel (very) loosely based on the Nabokov marriage, with a slow-burning first half and a second half that hurtles toward inevitable catastrophe, it's a book that requires some patience, but that patience--carefully calculated--pays off in spades.Rich and moody.

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