![]() ![]() Once an artist of promise, Sukhanov, when faced with the threatening realities of repressive Soviet politics, betrays the humanist, individualistic truths of art in order to make a career for himself and provide security for his family. ![]() The story follows the collapse of Sukhanov's life. Here is a description of Sukhanov's apartment building: "The stairwell split the gray monstrosity of the building in half, laying it open like an enormous, overripe fruit, with the imposing leather-padded, nail-studded doors, two on each floor, embedded in its yawning pulp like dark seeds, every one of them containing its own luxurious blossom of success."Īside from the sentence-level affinities (toeing the line of purple prose and occasionally stepping over into it) Grushin is far more humane toward her characters, never treating them, as Nabokov once said of his own, as "galley-slaves." Despite his many moral failings, the eponymous Sukhanov is a vivid, complex character who deeply engages our sympathy and interest, and Grushin's novel is ultimately intimate, expansive, generous, unrelenting and beautiful. Both write in an elaborate style not often found in the work of American writers. Olga Grushin's debut novel, The Dream Life of Sukhanov, has drawn numerous comparisons to the work of Vladimir Nabokov, not only because the author is a Russian émigré living in America but because of similarities in the two authors' use of language. ![]()
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