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商品の説明
Amazon.com
David Bezmozgis became an overnight star when he published stories in the holy trinity of American magazines for fiction lovers: The New Yorker, Harper's, and Zoetrope. With the publication of his first book, Natasha, he has been compared to Chekhov and Philip Roth, and the comparison is more than just promotional copy. Natasha follows the experiences of a family of Russian Jews who settle in Toronto and set about reinventing themselves. The loosely connected stories are narrated by the son, Mark, who attempts to understand not only his new world but also his parents. As the book progresses, his growth into the frustrations of adolescence mirrors his family's disappointments as they attempt to escape their old lives in the immigrant ghetto and create new identities. Bezmozgis calls the stories "autobiographical fiction," as they are largely inspired by his own family's past, but make no mistake, these are fully realized works of literature, complete with an attention to language and an eye for detail that invoke the best of minimalist writing. Bezmozgis doesn't reinvent the form here--he sticks to traditional themes such as the search for self and cultural dislocation--but he tells his stories with a grace and quiet sensitivity that's so rare these days it's practically an endangered species.
And there are a couple of literary masterpieces in Natasha. The title story, which relates Mark's sexual experimentation with a cousin by marriage during a summer spent dealing drugs, manages to be both a touching coming-of-age tale and one of the freshest inversions of the suburban dream in years. "The Second Strongest Man," a story of the reunion of Mark's family with a Russian weightlifter, manages to conflate the decline of the Russia with the emptiness of North American life in its tale of aging men whose time has passed them by. Bezmozgis divides his time between Canada and the U.S., but Natasha is international in the scope of its subjects--modern Russia, Toronto's immigrant communities, Judaism, various translations of the American dream. It's the literature of globalization, and Bezmozgis has proven himself to be a global writer. --Peter Darbyshire, Amazon.ca
From Publishers Weekly
Like the author of this remarkable debut collection of seven linked stories, the protagonist, Mark Berman, emigrated with his parents from Latvia to Toronto in 1980. Bezmozgis writes with subtlety and control, moving from Mark's boyhood arrival in Canada to his adult reckoning with his grandparents' decline, rendering the immigrant experience with powerful specificity of character, place and history. "This was 1983, and as Russian Jews, recent immigrants, and political refugees, we were still a cause. We had good PR," he writes in "Roman Berman, Massage Therapist," about the humiliations of turning to well-meaning but condescending Canadian Jews for financial help. Bezmozgis also considers North American Jewish identity, as in "An Animal to the Memory," which interrogates the centrality of the Holocaust-and victimhood-to the Jewish sense of self. His stories are as compassionate as they are critical. In "Minyan," Mark attends synagogue with his grandfather: "Most of the old Jews came because they were drawn by the nostalgia for ancient cadences, I came because I was drawn by the nostalgia for old Jews. In each case, the motivation was not tradition but history." The collection's strength lies in how Bezmozgis layers the specifics of Russian-Jewish experience with universal childhood and adolescent dilemmas. The title story, about Mark's sexual escapades with his 14-year-old cousin by marriage, evokes both his stoner, suburban "subterranean life" and the numbing exigencies of Natasha's adolescence in Russia. In "Tapka," about the fate of a cosseted dog, Bezmozgis captures the insecurity and loneliness of recent immigrants while suggesting a child's guilty psychology with utter believability. These complex, evocative stories herald the arrival of a significant new voice.
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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カスタマーレビュー
最も参考になったカスタマーレビュー
1 人中、1人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
形式:ハードカバー
叔父の再婚相手がロシアから来た。その連れ子のナターシャと官能的な夏を過ごす表題作他、父の教え子のウェイトリフターとの交流を描く「The Second Strongest Man」、近所の犬の悲劇を描く「Tapka」など、自伝的短篇７篇を収録。
バルト海からカナダに幼少のころ移住した、ユダヤ系移民の作者による処女作品集で、自伝的なせいかルースにつながるオムニバスという趣きです。処女作というのは、作者がそれまで抱えていた問題意識や悩みや言いたかったことが、ざらっと剥きだしでぶつかってくるものだと思います。つまり書く理由が明確なわけです。この作品も、作者の生い立ちを追うような構成で、彼のもつ思いのようなものが、ごつごつと描写されていきます。それは、移民、ユダヤ人、という厳しい環境で育った彼としては、一度文章にして清算しなければならなかったものなのではないでしょうか？ カナダでは、この処女作で名を上げたようですが、そのあと作家としてやっていくためには、この作品を形にすることで吐きだしてしまったもの以上のものが必要となるのではないでしょうか。そんな意味で、次の作品に注目の楽しみな作家です。
Amazon.com で最も参考になったカスタマーレビュー (beta)
Amazon.com:
34件のカスタマーレビュー
23 人中、21人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
How Easily We Forget
2004/8/9
形式:ハードカバー|Amazonが確認した購入
In David Bezmozgis' book "Natasha and other stories" I expected to find a well written collection of short stories on different topics. But what I found had much more impact. With a style that won't let the reader go, the author moves through the life of Mark Berman, a Russian Immigrant to Canada in 1980. The stories are extremely autobiographical in character, although the author never states that outright.
Each story, in addition to being on a different topic, follows Mark through the ages of 6 to 16, and then two adult experience based stories after the title story "Natasha." The book is extraordinary in its ability to capture immense and incisive amounts of sensitive information about the characters, and convey it in an almost irresistable style, as he ambles through the very complex integration of a 6 year old Russian immigrant to the democratic environment of Canada and North America in general.
"Natasha," the title story really does capture the reader, as it is so illustrative of what we enjoy in North America, and how truly undesirable or worse it is to live in some parts of the world, but so many live in conditions that we in North America just take for granted. We need to be reminded of what we have, rather than what we do not have all the time. This book does an acutely prestigous job of elucidating this concept.
As the author's first book, it appears to be a great one. This author shows tremendous promise, and did something unique, and yet familiar. He used his own experiences, to write his first book, but he created a piece with a new character, than almost any other book of short stories I have previously read. However he did it, this book is not to be missed. It is truly worth anyone's time to invest in reading this fast reading and intimate yet important piece of literature.
Each story, in addition to being on a different topic, follows Mark through the ages of 6 to 16, and then two adult experience based stories after the title story "Natasha." The book is extraordinary in its ability to capture immense and incisive amounts of sensitive information about the characters, and convey it in an almost irresistable style, as he ambles through the very complex integration of a 6 year old Russian immigrant to the democratic environment of Canada and North America in general.
"Natasha," the title story really does capture the reader, as it is so illustrative of what we enjoy in North America, and how truly undesirable or worse it is to live in some parts of the world, but so many live in conditions that we in North America just take for granted. We need to be reminded of what we have, rather than what we do not have all the time. This book does an acutely prestigous job of elucidating this concept.
As the author's first book, it appears to be a great one. This author shows tremendous promise, and did something unique, and yet familiar. He used his own experiences, to write his first book, but he created a piece with a new character, than almost any other book of short stories I have previously read. However he did it, this book is not to be missed. It is truly worth anyone's time to invest in reading this fast reading and intimate yet important piece of literature.
4 人中、4人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
A true depiction of the immigrant experience
2004/12/6
David Bezmozgis astutely describes the immigrant experience in this book of short stories linked through the same characters.
The author's personal experiences, which parallel those of his characters, enable him to descriptively write scenes which come alive and appear real. As a Toronto secondary school teacher who has worked with Russian immigrant students, I recognize realistic scenarios in his stories and feel he has accurately portrayed the lives of these immigrants.
A thoroughly enjoyable read!
3 人中、3人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
Brilliant piece of work!
2005/1/4
形式:ハードカバー
This is a brilliant piece of work. All of the stories in Natasha and Other Stories are connected and narrated by the son of a Russian-Jewish family from 1970s Toronto. The stories of their struggles with wanting a new life. The language is sharp and evocative -- the descriptions vivid and beautiful. And the stories are thought provoking and poignant. My favorite stories are "The Strongest Man" and "Minyan." Reading about this family gave me the impression that David Bezmozgi was writing about his own experiences. It doesn't matter, for this is a brilliant short-story collection that I read in one sitting. I wish I had taken longer to read it and savored the experience. Natasha is going to my re-read pile. I cannot recommend this book enough...
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