Roman Senchin

Елтышевы is one of the saddest books I've read in years: it is an intimate chronicle of the decline of a Russian family that moves from a small city to a village. Alcohol, violence, bad decisions, and nature's cycles run through the novel, which was strangely suspenseful despite a pervasive feeling of doom that sets in in the first pages and never leaves. I couldn't put it down.

Senchin's examination of these characters and their degradation is particularly terrifying because his simple, direct writing tells stories rather than lecturing or commenting.… (more)

The Information is a first-person narrative told by yet another Russian Nameless Guy antihero: this guy's life goes from bad to worse when he finds out, by snooping on his wife's phone, that his wife is having an affair. Nameless Guy spends hundreds of pages drinking, visiting Dagestan on a work trip, trying to woo women, and telling why he's afraid for his life. Though I can't say I loved the book, it's another train accident of a novel that I couldn't stop reading, and I have to admit that the lumpy structure (which Nameless Guy explains) and language fit Senchin's purposes here.

(There's more about The Information on my blog, here.)… (more)