The Red Passport

As I've lived in Russia, the Red Passport rang a lot of bells. Apart from reflecting with considerable verisimilitude certain attitudes in Russia albeit from an American point of view, the difficulty of writing simple, successful prose while embodying complex truths is the main reason I wholeheartedly recommend this collection. I usually read non-fiction and this was the first collection of contemporary short stories I've read for a long time but also one of the finest and I was transfixed throughout.

Bravo to Katherine Shonk--The Red Passport is a welcome and rare showcase for the classic craft of the American short story. Katherine's characters (sometimes bursting with youth and other times exhausted from life's trials) are both unique and universal. She shares an understanding of human experience and modern-day Russian that, along with her wonderful ear for language and eye for surroundings, draws her characters to life on the page. Her style is clear and captivating, each metaphor a little miracle. I look forward to more from this outstanding American author.

The Red Passport is gem of a book. On one level, Shonk is exploring Russian and American perceptions (and misperceptions) of each other. In that respect, it makes a fascinating cultural study. The stories are precise and melancholy comedies (or tragedies) of cross-cultural manners. But the book really sticks with you for another reason: Shonk gets under her characters' skin and reveals them in all their yearning and weakness. The sentences are lucid and beautiful, yet the writing is never showy. You get to the last page and long for more. Shonk, with her generosity and restraint, is a gift to contemporary American literature. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't love this book.

This collection of stories set in Russia is a rare find. Shonk is a really terrific, hugely promising writer - I haven't picked up a book in a while and kept falling through layers, finding that it's even better and deeper than I'd at first realized. Very good.

This is a wise, sensitive, warm book which illustrates what happens when people reach out for one another across language barriers and internal barriers. Here is an author who shows the Russian people as they are, human, heartbreaking and courageous. Ms. Shonk deftly treats all her charactors and their struggles equally, so invariably both American and Russian charactors speak the same universal language of loss and hope. I have never been to Russia, but I felt instantly transported there, and saw many similarities between our peoples. So, the only prerequisite for this book is an interest in human nature. READ IT!!! You'll be happy you did!