Alexei Slapovsky (1957–2023)

Made me laugh hysterically twice (maybe because I was in a plane and was nervous) - a) the biography of a guy who used to settle the beef between various mafia groups; more precisely, the ailments of his father (the hernia) and b) what the TV that the lottery guy won said before it exploded ("тывая доминирующие тенде").
The mere fact that I could read it almost in one sitting (2-3 hours) undermines its significance (for me), but I did find some passages intriguing and show more worth a second reading. It also made the author interesting, and I will definitely return to his books. show less

2.3 stars. Money's Day/A Day for Money combines elements of folktale and picaresque to tell the story of three guys from Saratov who find a lot of money then can't quite figure out what to do with it after buying some vodka, cigarettes, and snacks. Unfortunately, Slapovskii tries too hard to be funny and the novel ends up feeling like a period piece from nineties Russia, when it was written.

(There's more on my blog, here.)

This book is just plain boring: what could (and should) have been an sharp, relevant social novel about life in contemporary Russia is so overloaded with back story and extraneous details that the book has no narrative momentum or shape. I read more than 200 of about 600 pages and gave up from lack of interest.

"Datafiction" about 1917-2017 told through diaries, transcripts, a letter, and other stuff... the book loses its momentum about halfway through with a huge chunk of stories. An uneven book that rehashes and comes up very short on new insights into the period.