Product Description

Few readers had heard of David Bezmozgis before last May, when Harper's, Zoetrope, and The New Yorker all printed stories from his forthcoming collection. In the space of a few weeks, these magazines introduced America to the Bermans--Bella and Roman and their son, Mark--Russian Jews who have fled the Riga of Brezhnev for Toronto, the city of their dreams.

Told through Mark's eyes, and spanning the last twenty-three years, Natasha brings the Bermans and the Russian-Jewish enclaves of Toronto to life in stories full of big, desperate, utterly believable consequence. In "Tapka" six-year-old Mark's first experiments in English bring ruin and near tragedy to the neighbors upstairs. In "Roman Berman, Massage Therapist," Roman and Bella stake all their hopes for Roman's business on their first, humiliating dinner in a North American home. Later, in the title story, a stark, funny anatomy of first love, we witness Mark's sexual awakening at the hands of his fourteen-year-old cousin, a new immigrant from the New Russia. In "Minyan," Mark and his grandfather watch as the death of a tough old Odessan cabdriver sets off a religious controversy among the poor residents of a Jewish old-folks' home.

The stories in Natasha capture the immigrant experience with a serious wit as compelling as the work of Jhumpa Lahiri, Nathan Englander, or Adam Haslett. At the same time, their evocation of boyhood and youth, and the battle for selfhood in a passionately loving Jewish family, recalls the first published stories of Bernard Malamud, Harold Brodkey, Leonard Michaels, and Philip Roth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #910717 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 147 pages

Amazon.com Review
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.
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From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Arriving with his family from Latvia in 1980, six-year-old Mark Berman embarks on his life in Toronto. In a series of seven interrelated stories, he shares his experiences in his new land. He begins with a poignant tale of adjustment and a neighbor's dog; describes his coming of age with a 14-year-old, sadly sophisticated Russian cousin by marriage, Natasha; and, finally, relates how as an adult he moves his newly widowed grandfather into a retirement home. These stories are both universal and yet very much of a time and place. Mark is defensive about his father's status and belligerent in his Jewish school, spends his teen years stoned on pot, and watches as the members of his small, close family age and die. His family bears the physical and emotional scars of World War II and years of Soviet oppression. He is very much an immigrant, yet observes the sterility of suburbia with a jaded eye. His love and respect for his parents waxes and wanes through adolescence and young adulthood. Quietly compelling, the stories will attract teens through the commonality of feeling, yet give them a wider perspective either of a life they don't know or a way to communicate a life they might be living. This small treasure trove of characters will stay in readers' minds for a long time.–Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

How Easily We Forget
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.

A stunning debut, and other such clichés.
Despite the obvious fact that his stories are concerned with the experience of Russian diasapora, it is still rather disheartening to read little but reviews and comments reflecting on this fact. I am not a first generation immigrant to Canada, and am not Russian. That is not to say that I am not intersted in the experience of a Russian immigrant, just the opposite, I am very interested, I merely make no claims to be able to critique the 'authenticity' of the work. I do, however, spend much of my time reading and studying literature, and feel reasonably confident in my view that this is an incredibly solid and praise-worthy work of literature. Bezmozgis' minimal and eloquent style, the elusive and almost absent character of Mark, his unpretentious and never excessive stylistic quirks, and his lucid portrayals of childhood sexuality all indicate that his text is one which will stand the test of time. More importantly, it is a text which, in the now, has deep emotional resonance.

One could, of course, read Joyce's "Dubliners" as merely a collection of Irish short stories written from exile in Trieste, and reflect on the validity, or 'Irishness' of their portraits. This type of reading might, however, drain the pure beauty out of a work as refined and touching as "The Dead".

Likewise, whether or not Bezmozgis has the right to portray the diasapora (of which he is, it has to be said, a member of, with a vaild voice) in the way he does, his writing, outside time and place, is justification enough.

Regardless of their authenticity, and regardless of their 'position' in culture, I will never forget these stories' striking relevance to my, completely unrelated, life.

A true depiction of the immigrant experience
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!