SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE The stories of Kseniya Melnik`s debut collection are small-town miracles, each a miniature epic. Their focus is Magadan, a town in the Northern Far East of Russia, & the unvisited lives of its inhabitants & emigrants
- schoolchildren, doctors, teachers, mothers, daughters. Some characters span several stories. Some of their stories span decades & continents. The measure of their telling, though, is invariably the measure of everyday existence. Their dramas, too, are made from"idian stuff, each life with its own sly or suppressed tragedies, & its brief, often unexpected ecstasies. Kseniya Melnik`s sensibility is sober & humorous; her stories are moving & funny. In their patient, deliberate unfolding
- at once surprising & convincing
- & in the fitness of their details
- vital because they are suggestive
- we sense, above all, an assurance that is dazzling.