Anna: Oh hey, I'm totally on board!

Hullo folks. Just discovered this blog whilst idly researching whether Europa has a subscription service (alas, no), and realized I'm right on track for Ami level this year! Could not resist the opportunity.

Brief bio: I'm a bookseller at Posman Books in Grand Central Terminal, cat lover, desultory knitter, complainer, half-elf ranger.My taste in fiction runs along the knife edge of "genre"; I'll take killer prose over great story, and voice over either; and I don't believe "serious" equals "depressing." I blog at Muse at Highway Speeds, and tweet @ragesinggoddess.

And here's what I thought of Alina Bronsky's The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine:

If you've ever described your sense of humor as "sick"? You must have a go at Hottest Dishes, whose first-person narrator Rosa is one of the most obliviously despicable black-comic protagonists ever. I mean, in the first chapter alone, she forces her pregnant 17-year-old daughter (whom she hates anyway, because she's sullen & ugly) to undergo several attempts at a home abortion...none of which are successful. But her granddaughter, Aminat, turns out to be the apple of her eye, and she determines to win her beloved little girl the best life imaginable, no matter who she has to crush to do it. Vain, nasty, abusive, and often deluded, Rosa is also hilarious--a true feat on Bronsky's part! Yes, this one I Liked. Because of the LOLs, and then the sudden shocks as I re-remembered that I was being entertained by a monster. Also, maybe I should track down some recipes.

Alina Bronsky's The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

When I dislike the main character in a novel, I usually don’t like the novel. So how can I explain my fascination with Alina Bronsky’s The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine? Rosalinda represents all that is wrong with motherhood – she constructs her relationships with her daughter and later her granddaughter completely strategically, always thinking how she might benefit from their interactions. She’s seems almost completely unaware of how she is viewed by others. It’s totally over-the-top. Which is probably why she’s makes such a compelling unreliable narrator.

Rosalinda is inordinately proud of her Tartar heritage (which comes along with a host of folk medical remedies that are truly hilarious). She’s proud of her beauty and youthful appearance (especially her shapely legs, which she believes men swoon over). She’s proud of her family (or at least she believes she could be, if they’d simply do as she tells them). Her lack of self-awareness has benefits, as she walks around Russia and later Germany convinced of her own important place in the world, even if she’s cleaning someone else’s toilets – or rifling through someone else’s private papers.

Of course, her megalomania has disastrous effects on the people in her life, especially on her daughter Sulfia, who can never quite escape Rosalinda’s sphere of influence and therefore misses every chance at happiness with her own daughter, Aminat. Aminat herself watches Rosalinda with a keen eye, and the reader has the impression that she’s just waiting for her chance to act – she reminded me of a mouse eyeing a big, Persian cat, just waiting for the cat to lower it guard enough for the mouse to make its move.

What Bronksy gives the reader with The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is a true tragicomedy, which succeeds only because Rosalinda is so totally outrageous that it’s funny, in a thoroughly disturbing way. It reminded me of Voltaire’s Candide, but without the main character’s growing realization that perhaps everything wasn’t alright with the universe after all – despite tragedy after tragedy, Rosalinda remains convinced of her own omnipotence from start to finish. This book really worked for me, although I can see appreciate that it might not work for everyone. With a good sense of gallows humor, I think the reader will enjoy the novel despite their feelings about the narrator, a pretty interesting feat for Bronsky to pull off, in my opinion.

I was planning on this being a weekend cooking post, but after reading the novel, it doesn’t seem right – the only thing foodie about the book was the title. The semester ends on Friday, so I’m still hopeful I can finish up a couple of the challenges I have lingering before then. If only I had some little elves to do my grading for me, so I could just read my holiday break away! And catch up on my reviews! I'm way behind over at Col Reads!

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky

Snippy, snarky, and wholly original, the voice of Rosalinda Achmetowna will stay with you long after you close this book. First published in German in 2010, this Booker-nominated bestseller explodes with personality, wit, and the wisdom of an older woman. Not that Rosalinda thought of herself as old.

Life in Russia was never easy, but Rosalinda thought her daughter, Sulfia, made life especially hard for herself. In the time-honored way of mothers everywhere, she hectored, berated, cursed, and finally resorted to direct intervention in her attempts to get her daughter gainfully wed. And it’s a good thing, too, since Sulfia had a child—a lovely child—who was soon to become central to the trio’s “escape to the West.”

It is rare to encounter a voice so fresh with biting insights and yet so laughingly tender at the same time. Always on the lookout for the main chance, our heroine finds myriad ways to game the system while she holds on, white-knuckled, to the gains she feels she deserves. It is hard not to feel regret when we close the book at last, for she is a woman with the carapace of a beetle, but an interior soft as pure gold. “People liked it when someone tugged at their heartstrings. I couldn’t understand why,” Rosalinda tells us. But I think Alina Bronsky understands it.

Classic Rosalinda:

”I noticed that by German standards, I was a fairly young woman. It was as if I had stopped aging. Of course, I hadn’t forgotten my real age. In Russia I knew I was young but that other women my age no longer were. Here I realized that the women my age really were young, even if they looked worse than me.

Even some women much older than me were still young. I stared at the first real old lady I saw—one with violet-colored hair—after she passed me on her bicycle. I took a picture of the second one. The third time I saw an older woman on a bike, it made me think. Then I bought myself a secondhand bicycle from a newspaper ad.”

Paperback, 304 pages. Published April 26th 2011 by Europa Editions, Incorporated (first published August 19th 2010)ISBN160945006X (ISBN13: 9781609450069)

This book counts towards the 2011 Europa Challenge. The Bowed Bookshelf: The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky

Alina Bronsky made me a believer in Europa Editions

Europa Editions had been on my radar for a while, but it wasn't until I received a copy of The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky in the mail that I really had any idea what they were about.  I didn't read the book immediately.  It looked intriguing, but I had other books scheduled before it.

I would pick it up now and then, wondering if it was going to be as good as I hoped. Then I started seeing the first reviews coming in.  I generally don't read other reviews before I write my own, but I was finding it hard to resist.  Europa kept tweeting little snippets  that made me want to read the book immediately.  One day, I finally gave into that urge.

Tweets like this one.  Of course, this is a line from my review....

I'm not going to tell you in any great detail what I thought of the book. Read my review for the specifics. What you do need to know is that I thought it was hilarious! Sometimes, the only way to deal with the pain is to laugh at it.  That's proven true in my own life, and it is more than true in this book. If Europa was wise enough to bring this title American readers, then I can't wait to see what else they have for us.

After reading it, I started pouring over the Europa catalog, trying to figure out what I needed to read next.  I have two on the shelf and another that I'm looking forward to.  I don't know when they'll get on the schedule, but I'm sure that it will be sooner  rather than later - especially with this challenge to egg me on. 

Interested in reading more about Hottest Dishes? Take a look below.

Oh, and did I mention that it made my 5 Best Books list for the year (so far)?

Related articles

• Reviewed: The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (vol1brooklyn.com)
• Hammer and Tickle (tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com)