Forty Rooms

Zusatztext 59054843 Informationen zum Autor Olga Grushin  is a Russian-born award-winning writer whose work has been translated into fifteen languages. Her first novel!  The Dream Life of Sukhanov ! won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction and for England’s Orange Award for New Writers.  The New York Times  chose it as a Notable Book of the Year! and both it and her second novel!  The Line!  were among  The Washington Post ’s Ten Best Books of the Year (2007! 2010). In 2007!  Granta  named Grushin one of the Best Young American Novelists.  Forty Rooms  is her third novel. Grushin was born in Moscow! moved to the United States as a teenager! and now lives outside Washington! D.C.! with her two children. From the Hardcover edition. Klappentext Follows the life of a woman born in Moscow who leaves for the United States! where she finds happiness and love but must also deal with the ghosts of her youth. BATHROOM: THE TREE AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD The bathroom is the first place to emerge from the haze of nonbeing. It is cramped and smells sweet and changes from time to time. When the world outside hardens with dark and cold, the sky-blue tiles grow icy and sting my naked soles, but pipes vibrate in a low, comforting hum and the water is hot and delightful; I plunge into it with a heedless splash, rushing to slide into soap suds up to my chin before the prickle of goose bumps overtakes me. Then the world swells stuffy and bright, and now the coolness of the floor feels nice, but the pipes lie chilled and inert; I watch the stream from a just-boiled teakettle hit the cold water inside the plastic bucket before I climb gingerly into the empty tub and wait for the sponge to dribble lukewarm rivulets down my back. Most evenings the hands that touch me are the ones I know best, light and gentle, with a delicate ring on one finger and fingernails lovely and pink like flower petals. With the hands comes a voice, a soft, quiet voice that sings to me – though the songs themselves sound sad. Other times, the hands are harder, their fingers thick and blunt, the fingernails cut short, almost to the quick, one finger squeezed tight by a plain golden band that seems far too small for it; but these hands are never rough, and I like them just as much, not least because I am less used to them and I feel curious, and also because the voice of the blunter hands does not sing but tells jokes. The voice is firm at the edges, and the jokes are loud, large with mooing roosters and oinking cats, and a naughty gnome who comes only on Sundays to talk of messy meals and chamber pots and other things equally funny and gross, and I laugh and laugh until bubbles spurt out of my nose. But sometimes, rarely, the hands are different – large, loose-skinned, and bony, smelling of smoke, their long fingers stiff, their joints like the bark of the old tree by the swing set in the courtyard. These hands move with an odd, crablike grace, barely touching the sponge, forgetting why they are there, emitting faint clatter and jingle as they alight on the side of the tub; open-mouthed with amazement, I watch a bracelet of pink oval stones slide up and down the withered wrist, each stone carved with a pale woman’s face, thin and elegant, glowing from within. And the voice, like the hands, is withered and straying; and it does not sing, and it does not laugh – it tells stories instead. The passing of seasons, another winter giving way, another summer cresting, brings with it Grandmother’s yearly visit. I find myself waiting for the stories above all else. They never have the same beginnings – no matter how much I beg for some half-remembered tale, Grandmother will not repeat herself – but they all lead to the same place, a hidden kingdom of manifold marv...

Product details

• Authors: Olga Grushin
• Publisher: Putnam Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 16.02.2016
• EAN: 9780399576874
• ISBN: 978-0-399-57687-4
• Dimensions: 142 mm x 210 mm x 22 mm
• Series: Putnam
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Russische SchriftstellerInnen: Werke (div.)