The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

Rosa knows everything. She knows that her daughter is stupid and ugly and only has a husband thanks to her. She knows that her granddaughter is smart and pretty, thanks to her care. And she knows that without her, her family would be nothing. It′s hard being the only intelligent, beautiful person around, but Rosa bears the burden.

One day her daughter, Sulfia, tells her that she dreamt about a man and is now pregnant. Rosa believes her immediately, for what man would be attracted to her ugly, dim-witted daughter? But for as much as she derides her daughter, Rosa loves her granddaughter and takes over raising her. Aminat is not as easily cowed as her mother, however, and the three are entwined in a destructive, subversive embrace.

Rosa show more is one of the most detestable characters I′ve encountered in literature. She is self-aggrandizing, delusional, and cruel. She has perfected the use of emotional abuse to inflict pain while professing love. Yet despite this, the book is funny at times, and I found myself admiring Rosa′s spirit, almost, even as I deplored her actions. Like Baba Dunja′s Last Love, Bronsky′s writing is crisp and acerbic with a strong female protagonist. But whereas Baba Dunja′s love for her granddaughter is self-effacing and supportive, Rosa′s is greedy and domineering. Baba Dunja sacrifices herself for others; Rosa sacrifices others for herself. I don't know how to rate Hottest Dishes, because it is well-written, but repelling. show less

This book is mean and funny and horrifying and I love it. I've met a Rosa. Shit, I've talked politics with her and defended western bread and explained why I can't marry her grandson. I'm so glad to see her humanized but not excused. Definitely a fresh, unusual viewpoint, a great way to look into second world life without succumbing to the drearies.

I flew to the Soviet Union. On the plane (Aeroflot) the seat belt didn't work. I told the stewardess. She shrugged. There was a fly buzzing around in the plane. The airport we landed at looked like an army base but it's just that, as a Westerner, I expected airports to look fancy. The Soviet Union was no frills.

Rosalinda is a no frills soviet mother. If she seems harsh at times, it's because life is harsh if no attempt is made to dress it up. If she's cruel, it's because life is cruel. Why else would her daughter be born ugly and stupid?

Some readers would be quick to judge Rose, but she is our narrator and we can't continue without her. You may think she's incapable of self-reflection but when the granddaughter she worships suggests show more she's evil, she doesn't dismiss the thought out of hand. She asks her husband if it might be true. When he can no longer avoid answering he says "Of course not!". The next day he leaves her.

This isn't a story about good and evil. Rose believes in God, but the God she believes in is like an uncaring soviet bureaucrat. At one point she abandons Him as requiring too much of her.

We read this novel because we like seeing the world through Rose's eyes. It's new and unfamiliar. Plain old greed or cruelty or desperation would be boring. This book has taken me somewhere I've never been before. And how many of you have been to the Soviet Union? show less

Published in English, as The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

These days, most horrific parenting tales are told from the view of the victim. Just imagine the terrible things those poor kids have had to suffer! As soon as anyone even tries to give the parent's view a chance, people's minds just explode ... especially after reading a certain type of articles, in The Wall Street Journal.

Rosalinda Achmetovna is one such tyrannical mother, though obviously not from where she stands. After all when one's daughter gets impregnated by the tried and true method of "dreaming", she doesn't just idly stand by.

I knew that such cases existed. A virgin would have a dream, and nine months later she'd give birth to a child. Or worse: my cousin

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Rafaella had allegedly found her only daughter amongst the leaves of an unknown exotic house plant, whose seed she had gotten from somewhere in the south.

Rosa forces her daughter to go through several highly dangerous abortion methods, but 9 months later she still finds herself a grandmother of the "surprisingly" pretty Aminat. Our heroine, quickly gets over her disillusion, keen on raising her granddaughter the right way. You'd never believe how easy it is to bribe people to let them abduct a child. And when that fails, she can always resort to emotional blackmail.

Although there is no doubt in my mind that Rosa is the mother-in-law from Hell, I couldn't help but occasionally sympathize with her. Yeees, I would immediate take that back on the next page, where she would once again resort to another egregious method of child-rearing (eg: comparing Aminat to an animal) ... but at least her initial instincts were not entirely misplaced.

Score: 4/5 stars

A surprisingly easy and addictive read, in spite of Rosa's numerous horrifying schemes. And in the end, I couldn't help but admire the woman's ambition and resilience.

If you're the type to get horrified at the prospect of the hard life in communism, don't bother with this book. However if you can treat it as the train wreck that it is meant to showcase, by all means give it a chance. show less

This is Alina Bronsky's second novel, following the very successful Scherbenpark. The narrator is Rosalinda, a Russian lady who has become a grandmother very much against her wishes. Once she has seen her new granddaughter, Animat, she becomes possessed with the determination to do everything in her power to help the child (and keep control of her), to the detriment of her daughter Sulfia if necessary. Rosa is used to getting what she wants: armed with the strong conviction that she is always right, she deploys all the techniques at her disposal in the course of her campaign: bribery, physical coercion, deception, blackmail, psychological warfare, the giving and withdrawing of sexual favours, a fraudulent claim to knowing the secrets of show more Tartar folklore, even prayer (although she is cautious with this last: she's learnt that God has a tendency to overdo things). The unfortunate Sulfia is pushed into three marriages, with increasingly disastrous results, but Rosa does manage to get the family out of the chaos of post-Soviet Russia into Germany. And eventually, despite her own best efforts to mess things up, many things do work out for the best, although not at all in the way she intended.

This is a bit of a one-joke book: much of the point relies on Rosa's conviction that she is always acting for the best, whilst inadvertently allowing the reader to see the damage she is doing by constantly seeking to retain control of her daughter's and granddaughter's life. And that can get a bit wearing after a while. But it's also clearly a book about emigration, and about how people who live in hard times have to develop sharp elbows, and how much of a luxury it is to be able to retain liberal moral values. Rosa — like Frau Brücker in Die Entdeckung der Currywurst — is someone who has simply decided that in the present circumstances, conventional moral standards don't apply. Unlike Frau Brücker, she has innocent victims around her who get hurt, however. They are both caricatures, of course, but the point of caricatures is that they have recognisable characteristics. There's a lot in both of them that reminds me of people I've met: relatives who lived through the last war, people who have emigrated from countries in a chaotic state.

BTW: just to be clear, this isn't a book about cooking. The title is yet another fraudulent stratagem out of Rosa's arsenal. She's been brought up in the monoculture of Stalin's Soviet Union, and knows next to nothing about the culture of her Tartar ancestors. But she discovers later in life that there's a market for ethnic folklore... show less

I definitely preferred this one over Bronsky's debut novel, Broken Glass Park. Why? I like the fictional memoir approach to the story and I really, really like our snarky/sneering narrator,Rosalinda! Crazy, I know, especially given the character's rather disturbing cynical narcissistic personality - one reviewer has described Rosalinda as the "Tartar babushka from hell" - which should be an immediate turn off. Okay, she is not quite that bad - from hell, that is - but boy, does Rose have quite the interesting tunnel vision focus when it comes to her family and the world around her. Think Hyacinth Bucket (Keeping Up Appearances) meets Joan Crawford (Mommie Dearest) and you get the general idea. Thrown into the mix is a really fascinating show more portrayal of a Tartar who, on one hand, will do whatever it takes to fit into the Russian mold "to get ahead" while at the time, has an internal struggle about losing her Tartar roots. Rose has a lot of common sense ideas that, in principle, are jewels of wisdom so it is pretty easy to start to see things from her point of view (always a slippery slope!). It is Rose's determination to get out of Russia - the economy is collapsing after all - that we really get to see just how ruthless Rose can be. Of course, I am saddened at the state of the family dynamics but I love how each character - from down-trodden on the surface, mousy Sulfia to loud, energized Aminat - add life to what could have been a rather antagonistic story. End result: Bronsky proves once again that she has a gift for constructing compelling narrators. You don't have to like Rose to appreciate Bronsky's keen eye for observation and captivating wit. show less

Rosalinda Achmetowna only wants the best for the people she loves. Really, everything that she does so well is all for the benefit of her "ugly" daughter, Sulfia, her hapless husband, Kalganow, and her beloved, willful granddaughter Aminat. She is determined to find her daughter a husband, whatever the cost, and she knows she must rescue her granddaughter from Sulfia's "incompetent" parenting.

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is Rosa's story as told by Rosa herself. Her ill-conceived helpfulness is something that her family members hope only to escape. Readers will cringe and occasionally laugh at Rosa's twisted idea of benevolence as she tries to woo perspective husbands to her perpetually cowed daughter with everything from show more extravagant dinners, small briberies, and forceful threats. Readers will be appalled but absorbed in the telling as Rosa uses her cleverness and wiles to escape the Soviet Union when she extorts sponsorship for she, Sulfia, and Aminat from a German man visiting to collect recipes for a cookbook about Tartar cuisine. Rosa's games are dangerous and self-serving indeed, though it will take dreadful outcomes to make her see the cruel realities of her actions.

Bronsky's got an incredible talent for telling a story from a totally believable point of view of an extremely vivid, if bizarre and eye-poppingly self-deceived, narrator. Rosalinda is a domineering mother of epic proportions, a woman who "selflessly" afflicts all her loved ones with her inflated ego and with those things that she thinks are best, that to most people with sense, are completely crazy and undeniably reckless. She is a terribly unreliable narrator, but an incredibly unique one that makes for a cleverly told story. Despite her behavior, which is sometimes utterly repellent, readers will be loathe to look away from a story rife with personality and dark humor.

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is not going to be a book for everyone. Bronsky is an undeniable talent, but the brutal honesty of her stories can be something of an acquired taste. It's easy to be appalled at the many terrible things Rosa does in her quest to do "the best things for everyone," and really, it seems as if that is, in fact, the point. At the same time, though, readers might find Rosa to be, despite all odds, a sympathetic character. On the whole, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is a disturbing tale told in the cleverest way with a unique narrator whose compelling voice will help you forgive a multitude of sins. show less