November 9, 2011
From the Rohr Judges
Suffice it to say that this isn’t your normal coming to America story. Sasha Goldberg, the heroine of Anya Ulinich’s first novel, makes her way through grade‑Z Russian art schools in left-behind Stalinist mining towns, to arrive in Phoenix as a mail order bride, to go to Chicago as a live-in-slash-personal-Soviet-Jew for a wealthy Jewish family. And that doesn’t give the faintest sense of Ulinich’s go-for-broke, over-the-top style, which mesmerizes on every page. Amazingly, the abounding caricatures and satiric portraits manage to leave a space for profound emotional truth; which reminds us that the best comedies, as this one is, make us care, not simply laugh.
