After a pretty crazy workweek, yesterday I got to have a nice reading-day-in, finishing up The Witches of Eastwick (review here) and reading a few stories from David Bezmozgis’ Natasha.
I originally spotted Natasha years ago, on a table at Indigo in Montreal, came this close to buying it and ended up with Enduring Love instead (yes, my memory really is this good, even of my wild college days), and never heard of it again until last summer when I happened upon it at a library book sale. After spending about a year on my shelf I finally opened it on Friday when I was in the mood for short stories (I need to read more of those), and it’s another good-but-not-great one—but it really is quite good. The stories are snapshots of the life of a small boy whose Russian Jewish family immigrates to Toronto around 1980, when he is about six or seven. They are affecting without being emotional or insipid; they deal in a more quietly bleak look at immigrant life, still better than bleaker Soviet life.
The workweek ahead promises to be even crazier than the one behind, so it’s hard to say how much reading will get done. I find that it’s not that I don’t have the time to read when I’m extra busy at my job, but that I don’t have the mental energy for it. I spent a lot more of my evenings last week watching the US Open than reading because it was all my brain could handle. This seems like a sign I might continue with more short fiction, though Wieland has been at the top of my pile for so long now.
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