If you decide to immerse into Tolstaya’s stories I recommend you do it cautiously, as you might see more of yourself in her wide arrange of characters than you are prepared to.She dexterously paints setting worlds for mature characters who look back at their pasts just for the sake of remembering, not even desiring to change what was for what could have been: men fallen prey to a voice, elderly women evoking the summer when they could have fallen in love, birds that forebode the death of a belov...

At sixty, fur coats get heavy, stairs grow steep, and your heart is with you day and night. These stories are wistful, weighty and they elucidate the human condition during that period of, shall we say maturity? Characters suffer in silence, watch the world go by vividly, and though they've been partakers for years, they don't feel as if they have played a role. To them life is about dissatisfaction in as much as it is about desire and dreams are sometimes daydreams in which love is true and

--Loves Me, Loves Me Not--Okkervil River--Sweet Shura--On the Golden Porch--Hunting the Wooly Mammoth--The Circle--A Clean Sheet--Fire and Dust--Date with a Bird--Sweet Dreams, Son--Sonya--The Fakir--Peters--Sleepwalker in a Fog--Serafim--The Moon Came Out--Night--Heavenly Flame--Most Beloved--The Poet and the Muse--Limpopo--Yorick--White Walls--See the Other Side

And the grey vault of the heaven over us where the squadron howled, racing by with no place to land, and the distant brown forests, and the hill in the middle of the globe where we stamped our feet in the wind that blew salt out of the carved salt cellars, and the frozen earth, shuddering under the hooves of the raven black steed, invisible from here—at that moment all this was our life, our one and only, full, hermetic, real, palpable life. This is what it was and nothing else. And there was on...

When a reviewer such as myself doesn't follow their customary habit of strewing quotes amongst their thoughts, it is for one of two reasons. The more common one is that nothing stood out much from the forest of text, or at least not in a way worthy of the accompanying stripping of context. The second is that quoting a sentence would require a paragraph or a page or a story entire, and Tolstaya does not (fortunately) work in a micro form that affords such holistic referencing. As such, you'll hav...

Every once in a while I come across a book and think this is the way I want to write ... and this is how I feel with Tatyana Tolstoya. I don't even know the name of what it is that she does - it's impressionistic perhaps - but sometimes, when I'm sitting here at my desk, I'll try and push myself to write what I'm now calling a 'Tolstoya' sentence ... 'White Walls' brings together two of her previous short story collections 'On the Golden Porch' and 'Sleepwalker in a Fog'. I'd been introduced to

she captures the feeling of otherness...that glimmering world which peaks out from the corners of our own that in her stories is best perceived by children, old people, and romantic neurotics. the first 2/3 deals with struggling with the tension between this world, how hopelessly elusive and wonderful it is, and drab reality. one character goes through surgery to get this awareness removed.the last 1/3 seems to shift to the perspective of those "drab" people who don't seem to perceive the glimme...

admittedly, with one story left i have not quite finished this, but it really is a wonderful collection of stories. the narrator throws me a bit in some of these, but some of them are just beautiful - perfect combination of fantasy, humour and longing. i imagine tolstaya must be a very interesting person.

I came across Tolstaya's book more or less by accident, it was simply next in my queue: my long standing quest to read everything that NYRB is publishing. I enjoy reading short stories or novellas, always have, ditto with my last two endeavors from the NYRB series, Eileen Chang's 'Love in a Fallen City' (absolutely marvelous), and John Collier's 'Fancies and Goodnights' (twilight zoneish, and very, very funny). I am not so sure about 'White Walls', though, some stories I liked, such as 'Okkervil...

Faves - Sweet ShuraDate with a BirdThe FakirSleepwalker in a FogHeavenly FlameLimpopoWhite Walls

A crisp voice. Tolstaya renders the world in sharp detail, as she does the internal landscape of her characters. Relatable, human: alternatively sad, comic, grotesque, pathetic, sublime.

What an incredible and, now precious find this has been for me. Since very recently becoming a father time has become so precious, especially time to read. So I have embraced the art of the short story and fallen in love with it. Tatyana Tolstaya is an amazing voice who has the ability to jump from subject matter and style to leave you thinking you have actually been reading a book that is a collection of several well accomplished authors. Mixing classic Russian heartache and humor to blend with...

I'm still convinced I'm going to like this Tatyana, but for now I've given up. Her writing style is quite different from what I'm used to, and the first fifty pages, at least, felt more like sketches than stories--which is cool; just not what I need right now. It's not you, Tatyana, it's me.

Tatyana Tolstaya's short stories are perfect for rainy Sunday reading. One of my favorite current Russian writers, Tolstaya really knows how to maintain the traditional mood of Russian literature while adding a modern touch to each story. I particularly love "White Walls" and "Okkervil River"

I continuously buy this collection for people as a gift

I fell echoes of Bunin's writing style in those short stories with a bit of fantasy/fairy tale who to me wrote the the most delicious and perfect book of short tales that Ive read : Dark Avenues,so measuring this book with another is unfair, but I have to say this book dont meet my expectations Some Good stories,others I dont care ,but this writer has personality and hability to write stories remarkable characteres and complex structure narrative. The russian winter revealing lonesome souls and

This collection compiles stories from Sleepwalker In A Fog, which I already wrote about, with the ones collected in On the Golden Porch and a few stray ones that actually appeared in The New Yorker and so on. It is tempting to see all writing that emerged from Soviet Russia as an allegory for the political and social restrictions that were in effect, but the best stories here (i.e., ones I most liked) plainly have a universal resonance. The theme of hers I am drawn to is where the narrator, feel...

For me the collection was very inconsistent. I came to it with high expectations, because I loved her novel, The Slynx. Some of the stories were wonderful evocations of strangers in strange lands. The other tales simply went too far afield for me to feel any attachment to characters, places or events.

I know she's brilliant, but her stories are hard to follow. And, I never felt really invested in her characters. I read only twelve of the twenty-four stories. "Sweet Shura" and "A Clean Sheet" were great, but the rest didn't really grab me. I couldn't even finish "The Fakir" and put the book down.

Instead of admitting defeat (after only one member finished Brothers Karamazov for August) my delinquent book club decided to double down Tolstaya for September. As long as there's caviar...

Read it... 'Sweet shura' is my favrt in the collection

i didn't realize i started reading this in august. it seems like it was much longer ago than that. i bought this in april 2018, after it was recommended to me by a friend. i started it, but took quite a break from it while i read a lot of other books, and truthfully, i don't really recall anything special about what i read before i put it down. and i am unable to find anything special about it now that i've picked it back up. i don't think this is going to work out. i think we're all done here.

The story "Unnecessary Things" by contemporary Russian writer Tatyana Tolstaya was translated and published in the magazine "The New Yorker". It doesn't have a straight forward plot. The story presents how human memories are connected with the things of the past. The memory of each person is a huge source of vivid recollections which only ironically could be called "unnecessary things". Here is the link to the text of the story:https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash...

These lyrical stories are full of the mature person's characteristic resignation and longing. Tolstaya's writing perceptively reveals hidden recesses of the human heart. Her artful prose keeps the reader floating along through her singular blend of the fantastic and the ordinary. I like getting lost in the unique, special world that only exists in the writings of Soviet-era women. They have an uncommon relationship to materialism, to their men, to hope, and to withered illusions.

Such a complex body of work! I have loved some stories, hated others, but I was in constant awe of Tolstoya's shape-shifting style of writing. What I mean is, you can definitely see one unifying presence behind every story, but at the same time, you meet a new face of the writer, in every story, as you go along. You'd may think "that's true for most short stories collections ever", but I feel this book to be something special in that regard.

FINALLY done w/ this. dense as all hell and i really struggled (for 8 months!!), but also did quite enjoy it (especially when i got a hard copy from the library instead of reading an ebook). last two stories, WHITE WALLS and SEE THE OTHER SIDE, were my favorites.

i hate to give one star to books, but i read the entirety of this and comprehended nothing, so i can’t say that i liked it.

There's something imperfect about a collection of short stories -- you don't want to read the whole volume straight through, but you also don't want to read each short story separately either. The former method leaves you a bit overfed, while the latter leaves the book unfinished for too long and makes you less likely to get to the end. Sticking it out the whole way through is well worth it in this case, though. If the first three or so do anything for you, you won't want to miss out on the gems...

I got this book because some of the stories translated by Jamey Gambrell, who has recently died. Tolstaya's writing to me echoes that of Grace Paley. There are long sentences, lines long, like waves, rolling one after another. “You would certainly be glad to meet me” wrote Paley in “Distance” in 1967. “The heralds blow their horns: a new day!” chortles Tolstaya's Alexei Petrovich in “Night” in 1991. The people are often lost souls. But where Gambrell and Tolstaya show so much genius is in the de...

Got myself a copy of Tolstaya's stories after my daughter was dissecting "Peters" and "Sweet Shura" for her A level Russian. She loved it in the original, I've fallen in love with the English translations too. Beautifully written. Haven't come across such amazing writing skill in a long time. This author has definitely become one of my top favourites (in the ranks of such amazing story tellers as GG Marquez and R Kapuscinski).