Articles by Yevgeniya Traps
April 5, 2011
The Price of the Dream: David Bezmozgis’s The Free World 0
Emigration is not unlike love: its true course never did run smooth. You envision the free world filled with beauty and wonder, and then you see it, the West, and it is lovely, yes, tantalizing, but also cruel, withholding, a stern, ingrate mistress, possessed of a stony heart, an unyielding temperament.
November 2, 2010
Chosen: Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question 0
The Finkler Question is unapologetically comic, a book brimming with moments that inspire laughter. Humor is its modus operandi, its raison d’être. It bristles and overflows with set-ups and punchlines, with observations and jests.
August 6, 2010
The New Normal: Martin Amis’s The Pregnant Widow 1
The Pregnant Widow has a simple premise really: a love triangle powered by youthful lust and a suitably exotic locale. Then again, maybe not so simple.
June 17, 2010
Paper Routes: Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists 3
Rachman wields prose that is fittingly functional, dispensing, for the most part, with unnecessary flourishes, efficiently doling out pertinent particulars with a simplicity that is so striking as to be deliberate.
