Novelist’s use of language makes debut a delight

Panic in a SuitcasePanic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya;  307 pages. Riverhead Books. $27.95

By Janice Steinberg 

Janice Steinberg
Janice Steinberg

SAN DIEGO — Yelena Akhtiorskaya’s sentences frolic. They gambol. They have so much fun in Panic in a Suitcase, a marvel of a first novel about a Jewish immigrant family from Odessa, that you can’t wait to join the party.

Those sentences! Akhtiorskaya tosses off gems of imagery like ” … the trouble with cherry pits was their clotted bloodiness and that they carried the ugly secret of mouths” and “His corkscrew brown hair could’ve been apportioned into five poodles.”

Dialogue is punchy and cinematic with fizzy undercurrents of tension (and no quote marks).

You’ve been eating a lot.

            Not any more than usual.

            More frequently than usual.

            What’s that got to do with my writing?

            Maybe you’re compensating.

Akhtiorskaya writes fearlessly, like a dancer who’s never been injured pushing every move to the max, and sometimes a sentence takes off like a bungee jumper, yelling whee, but did anyone test that cord? “With the first sip [of Ukrainian Coca-Cola], Frida almost choked and quit drinking but a moment later the papillae of her devastated tongue were pleading for another wash of nuance murder.”

“Nuance murder” is a stretch. Still, reading this giddily inventive prose is like touring a city where you’ve lived all your life and discovering entire districts you didn’t know existed. I suspect it’s because English is the author’s second language. Akhtiorskaya was born in Odessa in 1985. Her family moved to the U.S. when she was seven and settled in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, like the Nasmertovs in Panic in a Suitcase.

The immigrant story is a classic of American Jewish literature, and Akhtiorskaya deals with classic themes of dislocation and the pressure on the generation raised in America to be the family success story, the reason all the sacrifices they made were worth it.

But Panic in a Suitcase gives the familiar story some deliciously contemporary twists, and not only because of the ironic narrative voice. For the Nasmertovs, in striking contrast to earlier immigrant generations, the past is only a plane ticket away. That turns out to be an opportunity. And a complication.

In fact, not all of the family left Odessa. Esther and Robert, physicians in their 60s when the book begins in 1993, made the trip, along with their daughter, Marina, and her family. But their son, Pasha—an appealingly schlumpy poet in his late thirties—has stayed behind, “keeping guard over their memories.”

Most of the story takes place on two visits Pasha makes in the 1990s. Drawn by the news that Esther has cancer—a situation handled with an admirably light touch—he flirts with the idea of joining the rest of the family and tests the waters of the émigré literary community.

Speaking of water, some of the most hilarious scenes involve bodies of it: A freak tornado at the beach rips off Pasha’s clothes and leads to Pasha (covered by a towel) and Robert quoting Pushkin. Father and son take a rowboat out on a lake, but lose an oar; as they drift, Pasha does a wild riff on his day job at an eye clinic, where he writes testimonials: “Thank you, Filatov Eye Institute, for giving me back the ability to see my glorious country in all its fine detail.”

Pasha ultimately resists the lure of the West, and, in the second half of the book, it’s 2008, and Frida, Marina’s daughter, travels back to Odessa … and considers staying. The panic in Frida’s suitcase is that she’s given in to her family’s pressure to go to medical school, but she hates it. The trip is a rebellion, and it leads to a decision about what she wants to do.

Frida’s arc is the most conventionally novelistic aspect of Panic in a Suitcase— character struggles with a conflict, gains self-knowledge, and grows—and the least satisfying. Maybe because Frida’s story is close to the author’s, Akhtiorskaya treats her with less comic detachment, and, in comparison to the rest of the Nasmertovs, she’s a bit beige

But who needs an ordinary character arc when this novel offers extraordinary delights in its play of language and in its heart? Akhtiorskaya brings funny bone-deep knowledge to the Brighton Beach milieu in which she grew up. More than that, she brings compassion toward this splendid, charming, messy family. A thrilling debut by a writer with a generous soul.

*
Janice Steinberg is an arts journalist, and the author of The Tin Horse (Random House), about a Jewish immigrant family in Los Angeles.  She may be contacted via Janice.steinberg@sdjewishworld.com

 

 

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