Snow in May by Kseniya Melnik Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“She wasn’t lucky—she was brave. Courage was needed if you wanted to live your life and not just hold forth about it at meetings and demonstrations.”- Snow in May, Kseniya Melnik

Kseniya Melnik's Snow in May introduces a cast of characters bound by their relationship to the port town of Magadan in Russia's Far East, a former gateway for prisoners assigned to Stalin’s forced-labor camps. Comprised of a surprising mix of newly minted professionals, ex-prisoners, intellectuals, musicians, and faithful Party workers, the community is vibrant and resilient and life in Magadan thrives even under the cover of near-perpetual snow. By blending history and fable, each of Melnik's stories transports us somewhere completely new: a married Magadan woman considers a proposition from an Italian footballer in '70s Moscow; an ailing young girl visits a witch doctor’s house where nothing is as it seems; a middle-aged dance teacher is entranced by a new student’s raw talent; a former Soviet boss tells his granddaughter the story of a thorny friendship; and a woman in 1958 jumps into a marriage with an army officer far too soon.

Weaving in and out of the last half of the twentieth century, Snow in May is an inventive, gorgeously rendered, and touching portrait of lives lived on the periphery where, despite their isolation—and perhaps because of it—the most seemingly insignificant moments can be beautiful, haunting, and effervescent.

I think my favorite part about this book is the cover. I did like the book too, but just look at that cover! This book was a borderline cover buy because of it. And, you know, the synopsis interested me, but mostly the cover.

This is a book of short stories that I was hoping would be in the same vein as The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra, which as you know blew me away completely. There is a bit of Marra in her writing, especially in the story Summer Medicine, but overall she isn't on the same level yet. Melnik's writing is a bit debut-y, but I think that she will grow into a strong writer, so I'm not going to write her off yet. 

The stories were more disjointed in this piece than they were in The Tsar of Love and Techno as well. As a result, I think my some of my favorite stories were the ones that followed Sonya's family throughout the generations. I believe those were Closed Fracture, Strawberry Lipstick, Summer Medicine, and Our Upstairs Neighbor. It made me wish that the book was just stories told from different members of that particular family.

Besides those stories, I also really liked Rumba, about a dance teacher who becomes obsessed with his protege, and Kruchina, about an old woman who visits her mail-order bride daughter and granddaughter in America. The Witch was also a good story, and the style of the prose in that as well as the child narrator made it seem like a dream with dark undertones. While there was some disconnect I felt between the characters, their imperfections made them seem real people just trying to make the best out of their bleak situation.

There are two more stories, Love, Italian Style, or in Line for Bananas, (which is one story), and The Uncatchable Avengers. Of those two, The Uncatchable Avengers showcased Melnik's biggest strength as a writer- her ability to step into a child's perspective- and while Love, Italian Style was my least favorite story, I could see why an older woman in the same Gift of the Magi-esque place as Tanya would love it. Personally, it just didn't fit in with the rest of the stories, to me at least. I suppose the Pavlik in Rumba is supposed to be her son, but I couldn't draw the perfect line I wanted to when trying to figure out how all the stories connected. Again, a stark contrast to The Tsar of Love and Techno, since all the stories obviously connected there. I wish there had been a more obvious framing device tying them all together and not just them living in the same city.

But overall, I don't regret reading this book, if just because of my discovery of Melnik's work. And also, I did add a gorgeous book cover to my collection, so to me it was worth picking up.

7.5 out of 10