A big book is the perfect format for thoughtful reading on summer evenings. We get the opportunity to immerse ourselves in another era, to share the feelings and adventures of the hero. Seven new novels in the selection of our literary reviewer.
to dream
“Souls” by Roy Hen
The Israeli Roy Hen came up with a novel-carnival from the variations of the life of one soul. An awkward 40-year-old Grisha lives in Tel Aviv. He has a dizzying 400-year reincarnation experience behind him, and he can tell in detail how he was a poor boy in a medieval village or a sharp-tongued prostitute in Morocco. How to live here and now, if you want to find yourself in distant times?
Translation from Hebrew by Sergei Goizman. Phantom-Press, 400 pages, 600 rubles
investigate
“Leave the Chat” by Janice Hallet
A hermetic detective in letters, a puzzle that the reader can solve on a par with the characters if he is attentive. A pair of first-year lawyers get all the correspondence from their professor about a murder case he’s working on. E-mails and WhatsApp messages, transcripts of interrogations, records of policemen… Students’ indifference will help solve the crime. An exciting quest that is fun to complete with friends.
Translation from English. Alena Kuts. Eksmo, 478 pages, 545 rubles.
be surprised
Clara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
How does the android robot see our world? Does he distinguish shades of feelings? The girl Josie is not well, and she is accompanied everywhere by an artificial friend, Clara. The android observes Josie’s relationships with friends, how her mother and father experience her illness in different ways. The limited optics of Clara, which Ishiguro flawlessly maintains, sets off the multidimensionality of human life, which cannot be simplified.
Translation from English. Leonid Motylev. Inspiria, 352 p., 721 rubles.
grow up
The Maiden in the Garden by Antonia Susan Byatt
Lady Byette has been included in the list of the best British authors since 1945 with an exhaustive description of “aerobatics”. The Maiden in the Garden (1978) is a layered and subtle coming-of-age novel. On the eve of the coronation of Elizabeth II, changes are coming in the Potter family: the eldest daughter runs away to marry a priest, and the youngest, the intellectual Frederick, is obsessed with studies and the theater. The similarity of her fate with the life of Byatt herself makes the story more authentic in feel and detail.
Translation from English. Olga Isaeva. Foreigner, 608 p., 583 rubles.
let off
“Dutch House” by Anne Patchett
A family story about a lost paradise, about love and (un)forgiveness. Once Cyril Conroy got out of poverty to give his wife a luxurious mansion in Pennsylvania. Their children, Danny and Maeve, spent their childhood there, and then lost the House at the behest of their evil stepmother. For many years, the inextricable bond between brother and sister saves their lives and interferes with their future: the events of the past are too painful.
Translation from English. Sergei Kumysh. Sinbad, 352 p., 550 rubles.
meditate
“Doctor Garin” Vladimir Sorokin
Dr. Garin, the hero of the Sorokinskaya Snowstorm (he went there through the snow to the village to vaccinate people and froze), nevertheless survived and now works in Altai – he treats mental disorders of the former leaders of the GXNUMX. Explosions force Garin and his assistant Masha to flee to the east. Sorokin’s trademark political satire is superimposed on the travel genre. The first book of a cynical postmodernist with a relative happy ending.
Corpus, 544 p., 752 rubles.
explore new places
“Where does the heart of St. Petersburg beat?” Vladislav Poda
St. Petersburg guide Vlad Poda opens the doors to the most interesting tenement houses of the northern capital and talks about what happened to them before and what is happening now. One hundred buildings and one hundred stories about their creators, famous residents and mysterious visitors with photographs of the author, who knows exactly where Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades” lived, where the “king of Russian laughter” is, and where the emperor’s bodyguard is. Luxurious facades, unusual porches, bizarre staircases… Poda’s Guide is not only a way to find the front doors “with frogs”, “gingerbread house” and “iron house”, but also an impulse to explore non-ceremonial St. Petersburg and fall in love with the northern capital again.
Bomb, 2021.