“Prose of the highest calibre: every detail resonates with absolute authenticity, you can feel and hear the heroine's every breath.”
“The writing in Fish is excellent, it is an easy read in one sitting. You simply can’t tear yourself away from this novel, you just want to turn the page to see what new plot twist awaits.”
“Aleshkovsky has a talent for original imagery and visually rich descriptions of the physical space his heroine occupies, and he is particularly skillful in incorporating local traditions and beliefs into his heroine's world... Equally important, he is able to endow his heroine with a credible voice and persona.... Nina Shevchuk-Murray's translation captures Vera's world with the same power and sensitivity as the Russian text...”
“His descriptive writing is, in some places, quite outstanding... His prose borders on the lyrical... ”
“Aleshkovsky is one of our finest prose writers... The novel Fish: A History of One Migration, was the literary event of recent years.”
“Aleshkovsky's novel is an engrossing portrait of the narrator Vera (nicknamed "Fish") and of Soviet and post-Soviet life, combining rich detail with a shimmer of mystery. Like many heroines of Russian literature, Vera is a sufferer, and her story brings up the transience and fragility of human relationships as well as the endurance of experience in human memory. Aleshkovsky has learned well from the "women's prose" of the glasnost and early Soviet eras. Translator Nina Shevchuk-Murray, who is herself a poet and literary editor, sensitively conveys the stylistic variety and distinct voices of the novel. A wonderful discovery!”
“For 15 years, I have been avidly following Peter Aleshkovsky's work. This is a writer with an unusual gift for description. He writes deliciously, exactly, specifically... Aleshkovsky's new novel is written from the viewpoint of a woman. And again the effect of reliability, the “effect of presence” is exceptional. This is a tense, psychological novel about a particular type of female... and an extremely interesting character. It should be read by all lovers of classical realism, those who want a taste of this unfading Russian style.”
“The attention to detail, the smell of the era (the action takes place in the 1970s and 1980s, the fall of the Soviet Union, the restless 1990s, and the present), the depth of understanding for human nature is all combined with the author's affectionate sympathy for all that touches his pen.”
“We return to Stargorod 20 years later: the tone is different, the narrator closer, and the rhythym quicker... The son of a geography teacher, Parfyon Dmitriyevich Malygin, an office supply salesman, has gifted the author a magical pencil. And Aleshkovsky's solemn and cherished prose pours through his narrator: “I buy a lined notebook and begin to write in it. And if my hands grow cold, I warm them with a breath from that world.” And warm it he does, interceding for many who are stuck in their archetypical childhood, which for a Russian is like a road that flows endlessly backward in time.”
“Life here is half-dream, a mirage, Russian roulette. The happy endings are imperceptibly stolen from these stories... The author does not abuse his remakes, but modernizes the ancient, archetypal stories with pleasure, skill and tact.”
“Aleshkovsky's plots are werewolves: they are the eternal human stories retold in contemporary language. If one wanted to, one could uncover all of the literary and mythological sources herein - both lying on the surface, and cleverly hidden by the author. But confronted by unexpected incidents from life itself, with real historical facts, old narrative forms are transformed and brought to life. Outwardly, this is collection of entertaining stories - modern fairy tales - something quite popular with modern readers. But at the same time, one discovers soon enough that the book has something else going on in the background, which is actually the true purpose of this whole endeavor.”
“[Aleshkovsky] truly has the time and unspent will to speak of 'what is most important,' and in the Russian literary context this is far from some sort of 'postmodernism.' It is traditional, realistic, somewhat naturalistic and in the sprit of the 1860s, prose that seems almost avant garde.”
“Aleshkovsky’s is an important voice... in contemporary Russian fiction. He makes use of Gogolean satire, the folk tale, the chronicle, and even the saint’s life... he steers a steady course between sentimentality and cynicism, and maintains a creative tension between custom and circumstance, typicality and eccentricity.”
“Aleshkovsky has a vivid style and a fresh vision of his homeland, which still has the ring of the country which Leskov and Dostoyevsky explored so unforgettably. This is the real thing: real literature about real people in Russia as it really is.”
“A masterful novel, shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize, it mirrors the chaos that now infuses Russian life as its people struggle to navigate the transition from communism to democracy.”
“One of the leading writers of the post-perestroika generation. His works, be they Gothic novels or works of realism, are distinguished by compelling plot and an original mining of literary tradition.”
“Aleshkovsky is endowed with some sort of genetic instinct that allows him to enter our modern literary sea with the recklessness of an old captain who can steer past all the dangers and traps without even glancing in their direction. Aleshkovsky is at home in Russian realism, or more loftily: it is his homeland.”
“Peter Aleshovsky is a highly talented Russian writer, with a powerful sense of the disorders and conflicts of his society and a desire to penetrate it to its roots... Aleshkovsky writes with a vision of his society and its vacancies, yet through the life and journeys of Skunk he shows the traces of a greater and older society, a Russia that has long compelled the imagination— where nature is an overwhelming fact of life, animals and rocks have strange powers, where the Old Believers survive, like some priests show the usual human corruptions, but sometimes reach beyond degradation to a certain blessed innocence... Aleshkovsky has a gift of myth and symbol, and a deep sense of place and culture and their meaning. Here is a very strong and exciting voice in the lively world of contemporary Russian fiction.”
“In places this prose is simply amazing: concise, exact, with a truly piercing rhythm, with truly wonderful passages. This was written with the firm hand of a master... ”
The translator of Fish: A History of One Migration, Nina Shevchuk-Murray, interviews Peter Aleshkovsky about his novel.
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