Your Mouth Is Lovely: A Novel

By Nancy Richler

Book Overview

"Each winter I'm sure will be my last. Dust to dust, I find myself saying as my frozen fingers struggle tohold the pen with which I write these words to you, Ashes toashes, I mutter, and nothing but suffering and joyin between. I've had my share. Hot and sharp -- I taste itstill in the blood that fills my mouth when I cough."Miriam is a nineteen-year-old imprisoned in Siberia following the Russian Revolution of 1905. Reaching out to the young daughter whom she gave up at birth, Miriam weaves a haunting tale of life in a small Jewish village during the last days of imperial Russia and of a community caught between the rich yet rigid traditions of the past and the frightening, unfamiliar ways of a society desperately trying to reinvent itself.Rejected by her suicidal mother and abandoned by her father at birth, Miriam is marked as an outcast in her village from the beginning. Reunited with her father when he marries Tsila, a haughty and complex woman whose beauty has been marred by the hand of divine anger, Miriam searches to unveil the secrets of her birth in a place of mystery and superstition, where everyone seems to know the truth that eludes her.Your Mouth Is Lovely moves seamlessly from picturesque but impoverished villages, where fife is ruled by the iron hand of God and the equally powerful grip of Fate, to the slums of teeming Kiev, where a seething anger is about to change the course of Russian history. A story of epic human drama, Your Mouth Is Lovely is a poetic, dreamy novel with a darkly magical sheen. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060096780
• ISBN13: 9780060096786
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Your Prose Is Lovely

Your Mouth is Lovely follows the story of Miriam, a young disenfranchised woman who comes of age at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1905. It's a heady time, when the superstitions of traditional Jews of the Russian shtetls are beginning to clash head on with the political leanings of young men and women who are seeking an overthrow of Tsar Nicholas. Into this cauldron of politics, superstitions, and traditions comes...

Think of a Dvorak Romantic Piece -- Beautifully Tragic!

This is a wonderfully rich story with characters so authentically portrayed that I still think of them. I wish that this author would write more. Think Dickens & Tolstoy -- it's here. If you like a little sadness sprinkled with lots of great atmosphere & good dialolgue, this is a must read!! There is music, in a minor key, on every page!! It will, most likely, remain to be one of my favorite books. I've only kept a...

A good book

This novel is an interesting look into rural Jewish culture and society within imperial Russia. It is also a fascinating look at women giving their lives for the "cause" in the 1905 Russian Revolution. I quite enjoyed this story. Miriam, the main character, is an interesting individual with a dramatic past, present, and future. The writing is excellent and the story keeps you interested. I did get a bit lost in the Jewish...

A bittersweet tale of both motherhood and daughterhood

Modern Russian literature is renowned for its ability to render revolutionary action and violence into poetry and lyrical prose. Passionate, as well as intellectually and emotionally challenging, it is often able to present darkness and sorrow in a beautiful artistic light. Nancy Richler, in her second novel, has taken the desperation found in many of the Russian classics, softened it with Jewish folkloric style and created...

Haunting portrait of pre-revolutionary Russian shtetl life

Exploring her own Russian-Jewish roots, Canadian author Richler ("Throw Away Angels") sets her first U.S.-published novel in pre-revolutionary Russia, with its pogroms, poverty, foment and brutal repression. The book takes the form of a chronicle written from a Siberian prison by 23-year-old Miriam for the daughter she has not seen since the day of her birth, six years before. It's late winter, 1911, and the long season has...