eBook 9780815651291. Buy Love Is Like Water and Other Stories by Samia Serageldin from Waterstones today! To see what your friends thought of this book, I just inhaled this book. No route defined for this request... Back home. What a wonderful, impressive collection. She’s once bitten and cute as a button. Not yours, of course, but a fictional family whose story you can follow through the generations of... Fiction. Terror. Here's my review, in the Spring 2020 issue of WORLD LITERATURE TODAY: Olga Zilberbourg is the author of LIKE WATER & OTHER STORIES, forthcoming from WTAW Press, and three Russian-language story collections, the most recent of which was published in Moscow in 2016. This is a collection of short stories that will be very interesting to read for any Russian immigrant in the US, or any person who is interested in Russian culture and how the background of being born and raised in Russia affects the everyday life of American Russians. The stories give vignettes into the lives of mothers, immigrants, and children and weave in clever bits of welcome humor and history. This wildly imaginative play with everyday reality marks other stories in Like Water: in “Dandelion,” for instance, the protagonist sends her son to a literary agent in place of a novel; in “Companionship,” a three-year-old returns to his mother’s womb. The author manages to draw you into the worlds of these characters with such economy. “The personal is political” is a slogan I remember from the feminism of the 1960s. 3-column-low 1 pyo-teaser. Few, if any, characters reappear from one story to the next. To visit us, please book your timeslot here. Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2020. Olga Zilberbourg's “Like Water and Other Stories” fits into this intersection, and always in the messy, surprising and unpredictable ways that liberate her reader’s perspectives. The humour, all along, is unique, never ebullient or quite dark but consistently, subtly contemplative. They gently transported me into an immigrant, Russian culture and at the same time spoke very much to contemporary American issues. 3-column-low 3 product-care. Even though “Like Water” is a collection of short, seemingly separated and not related st. We, the writing scholar and a nurse educator and PhD student at a major Canadian university, describe how we collaborated on developing and delivering a 1-day academic writing workshop for inc … She makes the familiar strange, the exotic familiar; her stories are as memorable and piercing as fairy tales. Every word in Olga Zilberbourg’s writing is carefully chosen, but it does not have this careful feel, on the contrary, it's freely flowing! Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in, Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. Is this late night Uber trip love at first ride? Thematically, Olga Zilberbourg focuses on the experiences of Russians transplanted to America -- particularly those old enough to have grown up in the Soviet Union -- and of mothers and daughters, using wry humor to pry open the meaning behind experiences of confused identity, loss and discovery. Some of our stores now offer shopping by appointment. Olga Zilberbourg's first story collection in English is a gem of a book. I've never read anything quite like this book, and I was excited to read each new story, unsure of what to expect. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. I want more! We were destined to follow in their footsteps. In "Companionship," a young boy decides to return to his mother's uterus. LIKE WATER is a unique portrayal of motherhood, of immigration and adaptation, and an inside account of life in the Soviet Union and its dissolution. No matter how hard it tries, it just can't get used to water. At most, it is an event of international importance, something that happened “over there.” This is less true for Americans who were born in the USSR such as author Olga Zilberbourg, whose first book of English-language short stories, Like Water and Other Stories, was released last fall. The color of a baby stroller evokes memories of rape. ", A to Z of original poems, flash fiction and short stories: quick reads for busy people, The Emotional Embodiment of Stars: A Collection of Short Stories. Go, get this book! Please try again. I found them to be insightful, ironic (sometimes ruefully so), crafted with a delicate hand. We were destined to follow in their footsteps. Born in Leningrad, USSR, she came of age during the country’s disintegration, when the fall of the Iron Curtain created unprecedented travel and educational opportunities. I have heard Zilberbourg read and present; at one event, she apologized for her accented English. Subscribe. It had a lot of personality and smarts and the right kind of melancholy. About us; You & Other Stories; Co-labs; Refresh and try again. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. We simply had to apply ourselves to other disciplines. "Kearney treats her characters, and their relationships with their pets, with a cleareyed, unsentimental sensitivity and depth.". A Russian immigrant mother watches the abundance of her son's life, and the different attitude that may be cultivated through that abundance. Whether a fully developed short story or a one line or one paragraph condensed idea, this collection will make you think, discuss, and reevaluate the sources and inevitability of your own personal experience. by Wtaw Press. Or rather Like Water and Other Stories showed me a beautifully entrancing circuitous route to story. Whether a fully developed short story or a one line or one paragraph condensed idea, this collection will make you think, discuss, and reevaluate the sources and inevitability of your own personal experience. A happily married woman muses about her life and desire after an old friend confesses love by email. Her incredible imagination and facility. Water was just so boring, tasteless and never quenched my thirst. Some stories hew strictly to a realist path. Celebrate Valentine's Day with this science fiction story collection! I did long for some of them to continue, to find out more about what happened. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. Well, she has nothing to apologize for. This is what good fiction is all about, of course. I think Olga’s writing is crazy genius. Really enjoyed this collection - especially the tempo. Reading Like Water and Other Stories is like eating a bowl of trail mix. Born in Leningrad, USSR, she came. We knew exactly what it would look like.". We are & Other Stories. Peg Alford Pursell is the founder, director, and publisher of WTAW Press and … Anthony Marra calls LIKE WATER "A book of succinct abundance, dazzling in its particulars, expansive in its scope," and of these stories, Karen E. Bender says, they "cast a clear, illuminating light on topics ranging from motherhood, the workplace, birth, death, ambition, and immigration, all explored through exquisitely wrought characters in Russia and the United States. It's about Russians and Americans and Russian-Americans. Zilberbourg includes such vivid details, you are suckered into believing it's all true, setting you up to fully receive beautiful insights stated explicitly or often between the words. So what if we weren't geniuses in mathematics? “Like Water and Other Stories,” explores the lives of women who have different and often competing roles and cultures. California Interest. Some unfold over many pages. Bravo to this brilliant author on a stunning literary debut. She makes the familiar strange, the exotic familiar, and her stories are as memorable and piercing as fairy tales. From Soviet-era Russia to modern-day California, these stories burrow into the human experience of childhood, immigration, motherhood, professions, relationship, and--most predominately, it seems--alienation, that sense of being present in, but now quite entirely OF a place, or an environment, or an event. Some unfold over many pages. But everything comes with many grains of salt, and before you know it, the book is done. Just as soon as you’ve grabbed on to one of Zilberbourg’s bright, insightful characters (a self-proclaimed Leningrad genius, or an enigmatic American literature professor) the story is over, and a new one’s begun. Brief content visible, double tap to read full content. Short Stories. These brief stories--some only a few sentences long--are by turns droll, uncanny and heartbreaking. You think you're going to just eat one, then you want another, and another. Happiness, Like Water is both an apt and a paradoxical title for Chinelo Okparanta’s debut collection. And other favs, where a character walks a line between two cultures, such as Sweet Porridge, in which a mother must raise her own pampered child under completely different conditions from her Russian childhood. A delightfully wry perspective on motherhood and migration, Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2019. This eclectic collection is tied together thematically. Some stories fill your head with sweetness. But seriously awesome short stories that investigate motherhood, immigration, academia, diaspora, and loneliness. Olga Zilberbourg weaves a magic spell in the accretion of characters and pace and tone and circumstance. But everything comes with many grains of salt, and before you know it, the book is done. One of m. This eclectic collection is tied together thematically. When I finished I was a little sad that they were over. Among my favorites, The Broken Violin and My Sister’s Game mark the moment in youngster’s lives when they are forced by the thoughtlessness or cruelty of peers to decide who the truly are. Her original language is Russian and she has published several books in Russia. 3-column-low 3 product-care. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Find 25 ways to say LIKE WATER, along with antonyms, related words, and example sentences at Thesaurus.com, the world's most trusted free thesaurus. The writing is like water – clear, fluid, nourishing, and you keep needing more. He’s her charming passenger and he's ready for love. They worked in the areas of functional analysis, algebra, topology, group and probability theories, solved Poincaré conjectures and Hilbert problems, named countless theorems after themselves, and won chess championships. Olga Zilberbourg weaves a magic spell in the accretion of characters and pace and tone and circum. Even though “Like Water” is a collection of short, seemingly separated and not related stories, it's being perceived like something whole, part of one life, just traveling in time and places. Turns out I was wrong or had been wrong for the dozen years I favored novels over reading short fiction and stories. "Like Water and Other Stories" is a sublime collection filled with stories so condensed that they come out in just a few sentences, to longer tales about seemingly endless journeys at sea and conversations that never leave a room. Wonderful gentle trip into every day lives, Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2019. One of my favorites imagined a writer "submitting" her child to a publisher. Reading Like Water and Other Stories is like eating a bowl of trail mix. I remember many years ago reading his prose for the first time with the same feeling: "I have never read anything like that before." hero-low 1 shop-by-appointment. Some are tiny. 33 Sweeping Multigenerational Family Dramas. Please try again. It's about Russians and Americans and Russian-Americans. With settings from the former Soviet Union and present-day Russia, to the east and west coasts of America over the past 30 years, she has plenty of political range to work with. Water whether they ’ re retrieving ducks or toys droll short stories ( Adult fiction ) date, order... Of fourteen or fifteen, it shifts to her girlfriend 's sister 's bachelorette party a humanities dies... By Wendy Webb, Previous page of related Sponsored Products, a of. 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