I’m torn whose blurb to put on the cover, Shteyngart’s or Vapnyar’s? I love them BOTH!
“You want tough? I’ll show you tough. Russian provinces are nothing compared to the loneliness of New York.”
— Vica Miller, Inga’s Zigzags (Inga thinking)
“You don’t have to name the character’s problem, just describe its effects.”
— Ha Jin (via theparisreview)
“I almost felt at home, the balmy evening reminding me of many such strolls I had taken along the Neva in St. Petersburg, when the evening air was full of possibilities, the sun refusing to descend as if commanding the summer to never end, installing the reign of the White Nights for June and July, with no room for darkness.”
— Vica Miller, Inga’s Zigzags
“She went to a coffee machine, walking on three-inch heels as if they were slippers, softly swaying her hips hugged by an abbreviated black skirt – just long enough so as not to cross the border between the hired employee of a Western advertising agency and one of the hookers that would flood the pavements just below those windows come nightfall.”
— Vica Miller, Inga’s Zigzags
“A thrilling ride that zigzags right to your heart.”
— Lara Vapnyar, author of The Scent of Pine, about Inga’s Zigzags
“… I have an accent, all right… but my emotional accent is even stronger… You see, I think that the soul of every relocated person has an accent.”
— Vica Miller, Inga’s Zigzags (Inga speaking)
“… there is no such thing as work and life balance; it was invented by shrinks who charge you a shitload of money to give you an illusion that you’re getting there.”
— Vica Miller, Inga’s Zigzags (Alexandra Veil speaking)
(N.) ‘so-chee-fo-bee-a Sochiphobia is fear of going to Sochi, in Russia, for the Winter Olympics. Unlike “social phobia,” a condition suffered by people who feel groundless panic at everyday encounters, Sochiphobia grows out of fear of terrorism and other negative incidents that might occur in…
I LOVE IT!
“Perhaps I should have never returned to Russia. My life would have been a straighter road, with fewer bumps and turns. Yet the most thrilling adventures lie hidden around the corner about to be turned. Or so I thought.”
— Vica Miller, Inga’s Zigzags (opening paragraph).