The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight

Synopsis: Within a current day setting in Russia, with all its difficult economics and "shell shocked" population, a number of diverse individuals relay their lives via an omnipresent narrator in separate yet interrelated chapters. They all live in the same dilapidated building where the plumbing has been non existent for several months. They are coping, but it seems there is nothing they can do about the situation. Most significantly the group experiences a death of one of their fellow residents via suicide. Because the "dead guy" is not buried properly in contravention of the demands of his Muslim tradition, he haunts the others with hilarious, heart wrenching, and smelly results. Layered within this story are the difficult and sadly comical experiences of each of the individuals. Each leading lives with a shared, conflicted yet accepting, desperation. All with differing perspectives due to varying ethnicity, age, and gender. Each are both thoughtful and dark. As the characters are developed, the story starts to revolve around several American museum facilitators of "Russian Extraction" who will visit and determine if they are to help the Russian group and their local "handmade" museum. It is a promise of a monetary donation, but as the residents try to meet the Americans' exacting standards and try and plan out a reasonable way of showing the donators that their museum is worthy of support, that they lead normal and sane lives, havoc ensues. My Thoughts: The above description of this book unjustly simplifies it, since there is so much more complexity within the book than can be described within three paragraphs. There were so may wonderful examples of complex and unusual word usage. I found myself laughing and amazed. The most fun aspect of the book is the way that the author seamlessly incorporates folktales, knowledge and tradition from each of the respective religious backgrounds. "Magical realism" melded with the reality of life - heartbreaking yet hopeful. The book is a linguistic mix of metaphor and imagery. Key concepts which I found interesting within the book are the nature of truth and how cultures define what they choose to relay to the population through the media, what they hide, and who it is that decides what is shared. It is here that we see that Russians as indirect by cultural default. But we also see how frustrated and powerless they feel about their country's conflicts. Here is a wonderful example where the main character Olga struggles with her job of translating for a local newspaper, where she is required to create euphemisms for the public to read: "Through the snow Olga trudged, dimly aware that in faraway places people spoke with purer words of unvarnished meaning. Or maybe not. Maybe at other news agencies in other countries people simply told more palatable lies. And as she rounded the corner and climbed over the remains of the broken stone archway that marked the entrance to the courtyard, she felt d

This is a highly unusual book. It's full of Rabelaisian gusto, more than a touch of the magical and the macabre, and the dreams of the pure in heart in a filthy Russia where nothing works, not even the outhouses. Ochsner has a voice like no other: confident as she bounces along, but then a paragraph would stop me short and I'd start to reread it, but I wanted even more to find out what happened to her characters so I'd go on. Like an old-fashioned novel, the patient and the good are rewarded at the end--maybe too easily? As FOR the bad guys, some are REALLY bad, and come to bad ends.

I entered another world, a world of magical, enchanting, heartbreaking souls. As Russia moves from the darkness of a totalitarian state into the "light" of whatever this transformation yields, I found myself wondering whether it is better to live in the darkness or to die in the light. As the character Tanya says, "Suffering - if beautifully done - is an art form." Dreambook is written with great imagination and passion for humanity. Do yourself a favor and read this book.