HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir by Elena…
Loading...

A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir (edition 2011)

by Elena Gorokhova

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
4222559,090 (3.8)33
Elena Gorokhova grows up in 1960's Leningrad where she discovers that beauty and passion can be found in unexpected places in Soviet Russia.
Member:rachbxl
Title:A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir
Authors:Elena Gorokhova
Info:Simon & Schuster (2011), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 336 pages
Collections:non-fiction, Your library
Rating:
Tags:Read in 2011, non-fiction, Russia

Work Information

A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir by Elena Gorokhova

Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 33 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 25 (next | show all)
Good book. Eland lived in Russia and made it to US. Memoir. ( )
  shazjhb | Jun 2, 2022 |
This wonderful memoir full of humor, wit, and wisdom is set in the Soviet Union during the 1950's and 1960's. Decades of rule by a repressive state led to form of governance in which the people and the rulers acted as if all was well, while knowing that their rigid ideological system had failed. Yet rich individual and family lives carried on. Gorokhova combines good writing with refreshing honesty. ( )
1 vote bkinetic | Feb 25, 2017 |
A memoir of childhood in the Soviet Union from the perspective of 30 years as an emigré in the USA. Starts of well but soon descends into syrupy sentimentality and imagined set pieces designed to illustrate aspects of Soviet life. Far from the Turgenev she felt forced to read. ( )
  Steve38 | Dec 1, 2016 |
This book was even better than I'd expected. Elena Gorokhova writes about her life in this book, about how it was growing up in Russia during the 60's and 70's. She starts by telling a little about her grandparents, uncles and other relatives, and then introduces her self as a baby, as a child unwanted at first by her father.

The imagery is powerful. She describes her apartment and other surroundings, a small 2 room place with cement floors, halls stinking of urine, and bland, plain food. Even though her mother is highly educated, an anatomy professor, this is how they live. And how most others live as well. Long lines of people stand waiting for rolls of toilet paper and bread. There are only 2 kinds of nail polish available anywhere. Anything above and beyond one's basic needs is evil, capitalist, materialist, Western.... and prohibited. Citizens are not allowed to even carry foreign currency. If they are caught carrying foreign money they are arrested. Many books are banned. And new buildings are rickety, w/doorknobs missing and elevators that barely work.

One of my favorite parts of the book was in the beginning , when Lena is taking English lessons. Both Lena and her tutor are baffled by the word "privacy" . They look it up in the dictionary and find synonyms, such as 'isolation', but still the meaning of it eludes them. The concept is not a Russian one. And it is many years before she learns what the meaning and value of it is.

I loved Elena's writing style too. And it was fascinating to me to get an insider's Russian view of America. ( )
  homeschoolmimzi | Nov 28, 2016 |
This was a tender insightful memoir of Elena Gorokhova growing up in 1960's Leningrad. ( )
  pennsylady | Jan 25, 2016 |
Showing 1-5 of 25 (next | show all)
“A Mountain of Crumbs” has enough insight and wistful comedy to keep you turning the pages, but I wanted more from it — more incident, more drama, more straight talk. Its details might have formed the background of a delicious, and more robust, novel. Sometimes memoir can only take you so far.
 
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
For my mother, Galina Konstantinovna Maltseva
First words
I wish my mother had come from Leningrad, from the world of Pushkin and the tsars, of granite embankments and lack ironwork, of pearly domes buttressing the low sky.
Quotations
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

Elena Gorokhova grows up in 1960's Leningrad where she discovers that beauty and passion can be found in unexpected places in Soviet Russia.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
A Mountain of Crumbs is the moving story of a young Soviet girl's discovery of the hidden truths of adulthood and her country's profound political deception.

Elena, born with a desire to explore the world beyond her borders, finds her passion in the complexity of the English language - but in the Soviet Union of the 1960s, such a passion verges on the subversive. Elena's home is no longer the majestic Russia of literature or the tsars. Instead, it is a nation humiliated by its first faltering steps after World War II, putting up appearances for the sake of its regime and fighting to retain its pride.

In this deeply affecting memoir, Elena re-creates the world that both oppressed and inspired her. She recounts stories passed down to her about the horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution and probes the daily deprivations and small joys of her family's bunkerlike existence. Through Elena's captivating voice, we learn not only the personal story of Russia in the second half of the twentieth century, but also the story of one rebellious citizen whose love of a foreign language finally transports her to a new world.
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.8)
0.5
1
1.5
2 6
2.5 1
3 20
3.5 7
4 42
4.5 5
5 15

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,238,602 books! | Top bar: Always visible