Dream Life, Dream Debut

Have just finished Olga Grushin's The Dream Life of Sukhanov and found it quite remarkable. (Deservedly, it's been shortlisted for the Orange Fiction prize.) The prose, though a bit too adjective-filled to begin with, soon becomes bewitching in its ability to portray moods and memories; and the subject -- that of a Soviet art critic and editor ruing his lost artistic integrity -- achieves a resonance far beyond the specifics of this particular story. Grushin, the first Russian citizen to enroll in and complete a four-year American college program, is currently working on her next, a novel that "concerns Russia once again, but this time some of it takes place in America, and my main characters are both Russian and American." One awaits breathlessly.