Review: Natasha, by David Bezmozgis
April 4, 2006
[rating:5/5]
Finally got some killer bookcases for my basement and put up all the books I’ve been meaning to read. Even found a box of books I had lost track of. In this box, a copy of Natasha, a quick read (147 pages) about a boy’s life with his Soviet emigre family in Canada.
“It was almost ten when my father opened the back door of the gym and stepped out into the alley where three young soldiers were singing drunken songs. The smallest of the three was pissing against the wall. My father turned in the opposite direction, but one of his students decided to flex his new muscles. He accused the little soldier of uncivilized behavior, called him a dog, and said unflattering things about his mother. The little soldier continued pissing as if nothing had happened, but the two bigger soldiers got ready to crack heads.”
There’s so much to this book. First love, father’s attempt to start over in the west, all written with fantastic detail and wit. These quotes certainly don’t capture the range of the book, as it goes from point to point in the lives of the characters. A wonderful read.
“Joe Choynski was being inducted in the old-timers’ category that day. Chrysanthemum Joe, Little Joe, the Professor, the California Terror: he was known as the greatest heavyweight never to win a title by the handful of people who still remembered that he’d ever been around. He was America’s first great fighting Jew. He quoted Shakespeare in his correspondence. He was friend to Negroes. Coolies on the San Francisco docks taught him to toughen his fist in pickle vats, which was why he never so much as chipped a bone- bare-knuckle or gloved. Legend had it that he invented the left hook.”
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