BOOK REVIEW: Petropolis by Anya Ulinich
Sasha Goldberg, a mixed-race Russian Jew, lives with her mother in Asbestos 2, once a Stalinist model town but now only a place from which to escape. Lubov, Sasha’s domineering mother, is determined that despite the mediocrity of their surroundings her daughter will have all the benefits of a bourgeois upbringing. Too pudgy for ballet and with no musical gifts, Sasha’s only talent is for art and so she undertakes art lessons in a damp apartment block basement. There she discovers passion, falling in love with an art-school drop-out who lives in a concrete pipe in the dump outside town. Their brief romance leads to pregnancy and outrage from Lubov.
Determined that her daughter will still have a chance at success, Lubov takes baby Nadia as her own and sends Sasha off to art school in Moscow. Sasha is not at home at the art school, for her mother cheated and sent in the drop-out’s art work and claimed it was the work of Sasha. In a bid to escape and find the father who left her behind, Sasha signs up as a mail-order bride and lands in Arizona as the teenage bride of an old-fashioned Russian. Each step Sasha takes to carve a new life for herself leads to increasingly absurd realities and Sasha’s journey becomes a surreal modern-day Odyssey, as she seeks her father and ultimately herself.
Petropolis is the debut novel of Anya Ulinich and readers may be forgiven for the belief that much of this novel is autobiographical. Like Sasha, Anya emigrated from Russia to the United States when she was 17, learned English from watching TV and attended art school. The assumption that this is merely a memoir masquerading as a novel does Ulinich’s writing a great disservice, not only because Petropolis is a biting satire of the coming-of-age novel as a genre but also because she writes black, screwball comedy so incredibly well, especially when one remembers she is writing in her second language.
Petropolis, while certainly containing a great deal of immigrant humour, quickly moves beyond the stereotypical into parody and farce. Ulinich pushes readers beyond their comfort zone but never sinks into Borat-style humour. The extreme situations are designed to throw startling light on the hopelessness of life in Siberia and the overwhelming desperation Sasha feels to escape. Coming-of-age in this situation is not a journey of self-discovery, rather a desperate attempt to find a way to merely exist, outside the servitude to poverty’s daily grind.
While Petropolis, is mainly a commentary on the immigrant experience, it also presents an unique look at mother-daughter relationships. Ulinich seems to be addressing a fundamental question “what affect will extreme poverty and a wish for a better future for your child have on the parent-child relationship?” Lubov is desperate for her daughter to escape life in Asbestos 2 and the decisions she makes appear hard and without consideration for Sasha’s dreams. As Sasha grows through her experiences, she is able to develop some understanding of her mother’s motivation and this gradual melting of the ice between them is one of the truly heart-wrenching aspects of the novel.
Ulinich prevents her novel devolving into slapstick by maintaining Sasha’s fundamental humanity at the centre of her novel. Sasha, like many immigrants, is a survivor and her ability to maintain hope, no matter what life throws at her, is what makes her such a mesmerizing heroine. Readers will soon find themselves deeply enamored of Sasha, for her dry wit, unique perspective on all things American and her huge heart.
Note: I have offered this book as a prize in the Hidden Treasures review contest. To learn more about the contest (which begins on July 15), click here. Enter early and often – there are a lot of great prizes from a number of publishers.
ISBN10: 0670038199
ISBN13: 9780670038190
Hardcover
336 Pages
Publisher: Viking USA
Publication Date: February 20, 2007
