My Russian

by Deirdre McNamer

Book Overview

While her family thinks she is vacationing in Greece, Francesca Woodbridge- disguised by the wig, the dress, and the limp of an elderly woman - checks into a local hotel just blocks from her home. The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345439511
• ISBN13: 9780345439512
• Release Date: July 2000
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Unputdownable!

This book thrilled me: an engrossing plot and sumptuous writing. The plot, wherein a woman disappears from her smothered life and returns to examine it in secret, is compelling enough, but what gives this novel real heft is the author's startling insights about marriage, loyalty, and friendship. Her writing vibrates with beauty and intelligence. Even the most minor characters - especially the hapless motel clerk - shimmer. This gal's the real deal. Highly recommended!

Very Absorbing, Here's Why...

This novel is a collage of flashbacks and vignettes about regrets, disappointment, confusion, sorrow, feeling out of place in your own life. If you are intrigued with character studies and well sketched observations, you may devour this as I did. The reader is drawn in alongside this woman as she ponders what to do next in her life, how she got where she presently is. At times the book made me impatient for a clearly defined plot. But it is this mystery-collage style that builds suspense, the final chapters bringing excellent closure. It is often a dark, sad book but also intensely fascinating. It is rare that I cannot put a book down - I charged through this in just several days. Highly recommended if you like an absorbing psychological puzzle!

gripping and insightful

McNemar beautifully portrays a woman on a psychological edge, who contemplates extreme measures (and takes some) to escape from the dissatisfactions of her life. The combination of being internally desperate and externally competent - the schism between inner and outer - is exquisitely rendered. It is interesting to compare this book with Lisa Zeidner's "Layover", also about a woman on the edge, also about a woman taking at least temporary leave of at least part of her life. Both have brilliant evocations of the psychological landscape.

Emotionally rich with wonderfully dense imagry

This book struck me as a real, true book... not in that it happened, but in that the narrator lived this adventure. It has been called a "Literary Thriller" (readers try to discover who shot the narrator's husband), but I found it more a novel of self-discovery and insight. The writing was excellent--evocative, poetic, and, in many turns of phrases, unusual, invigorating, and surprising. I'd recommend it to all of my friends.

A disturbing, deeply funny look at a woman's wrong choices

``My Russian'' is a delight. By turns hilarious and distursbing,her characters are fiesty and alive, her prose is graceful andmercurial. But mostly, McNamer writes with a profoundly realizedsense of place. The best book I've read since ``Charming Billy''.Where has McNamer been hiding all this time?