It might be tempting to mock Black Earth City: When Russia Ran Wild (and So Did We). Its subtitle alone suggests a dated tell-all by the latest expatriate to land a publisher.
Sure enough, Charlotte Hobson treads on familiar ground in her first book. Born in England to a Russian mother, she spent the 1991 academic year in Voronezh (a.k.a. Black Earth City), and offers up this memoir of her heady student days.
Russia hands will find little new here. Hobson's range is broad but fairly shallow, covering subjects from frisky students who illustrate Russia's shifting sexual mores to the arrival of capitalism in a joint-venture pizza parlor. She observes the country's long-held idiosyncrasies with equal wonder: the majesty of pukh; the importance of coat hooks; the intricacy of the bartering system Russians developed in response to chronic shortages.
What saves "Black Earth City" from becoming a clich?, however, is solid, old-fashioned storytelling. Hobson manages to tell a compelling tale of ordinary life in Voronezh. Her understated style reveals a deep emotional connection with the city and people and is by turns moving and witty. Against all odds, Hobson's adventures kept even this disenchanted ex-expat turning the pages.
An inescapable shortcoming is that many passages scream yesterday's news. Clearly, the time Hobson describes was momentous. She arrives in Voronezh shortly after the August 1991 coup that sparked the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin's rise to power. The country was re-examining its past and trying to imagine a different future.
But after all the wrenching events Russia has since endured -- the 1993 storming of the White House, the military campaign in Chechnya, the 1998 foreign debt default and ruble devaluation -- the nascent sexual revolution in Voronezh hardly seems provocative. Thus in early chapters, Hobson risks losing news-minded readers with declarations like, "Now, suddenly, the controls disappeared and seventy years of pent-up desire burst onto the streets."
Overall, though, the way she unfurls her often touching account trumps the story's expiration date. Hobson deserves high marks for this memoir. Her stay in Voronezh clearly meant more to her than a fashionable year abroad (she went on to spend most of the 1990s in Russia).
Growing up, Hobson had resisted her mother's attempts to persuade her to learn Russian. After her mother died when Hobson was 17, the author abruptly switched her university course to Russian from Arabic. She headed to Voronezh, some 500 kilometers southeast of Moscow, in search of a more authentic experience than the Russian capital could offer.
To her credit, Hobson does not let the narrative slide into a daughter's journey to find her roots. She is careful to concentrate on her new friends, treating herself almost as an omniscient narrator.
Her prose is simple and her tone matter-of-fact, almost detached. Still, Hobson draws us into her own quiet delight as she unravels the mysteries of her adopted country. She conveys her romanticism about Russia without proselytizing. Evoking powerful images with plain language, Hobson describes even the most grueling scenes without sentimentality.
We witness a commemorative service outside Voronezh at Memorial Wood, where hundreds of corpses had been discovered in recent years, bodies believed to have been shot by the NKVD in 1938-39. "Bones were jumbled with clods of earth, twisted belt buckles, shoes, rags. The skulls were placed on top, looking out, each with a neat round hole in the crown. [A tiny boy] kept very still and squeezed his eyes shut."
Many of Hobson's characters come alive. Edik, a pretentious, would-be dandy given to silk scarves, strives to escape the uncivilized provinces, where he says the "intelligentsia is quite suffocated." The narcomani appear briefly but memorably, rebelling against Soviet tedium with drugs and drink, art and literature. Of their lot, Petya Pravda, "deciding the only sincere way of life was in the mind," disengages from the world as he moves up the drug chain to heroin.
Hobson treats her romance with the hard-drinking Mitya from a distance, preserving its intimacy but offering glimpses of tenderness, as when he fusses over her winter wear: "I must confess it was a moment I enjoyed: Mitya smoking with no hands and narrowing his eyes like a private detective as he tightened the toggles on my coat."
This book is not a political analysis and assumes little prior knowledge of Russian history or culture. Hobson portrays her environment without passing judgment on it. The story is personal, and she puts her characters in a historical context without, for the most part, drawing broad conclusions or making predictions. As a snapshot of life in a curious place, "Black Earth City" is likely to satisfy.
"Black Earth City: When Russia Ran Wild (and So Did We)," by Charlotte Hobson. Published by Metropolitan Books. 210 pages. $23.
Natasha Mileusnic is an editor living in New York City.
Sure enough, Charlotte Hobson treads on familiar ground in her first book. Born in England to a Russian mother, she spent the 1991 academic year in Voronezh (a.k.a. Black Earth City), and offers up this memoir of her heady student days.
Russia hands will find little new here. Hobson's range is broad but fairly shallow, covering subjects from frisky students who illustrate Russia's shifting sexual mores to the arrival of capitalism in a joint-venture pizza parlor. She observes the country's long-held idiosyncrasies with equal wonder: the majesty of pukh; the importance of coat hooks; the intricacy of the bartering system Russians developed in response to chronic shortages.
What saves "Black Earth City" from becoming a clich?, however, is solid, old-fashioned storytelling. Hobson manages to tell a compelling tale of ordinary life in Voronezh. Her understated style reveals a deep emotional connection with the city and people and is by turns moving and witty. Against all odds, Hobson's adventures kept even this disenchanted ex-expat turning the pages.
An inescapable shortcoming is that many passages scream yesterday's news. Clearly, the time Hobson describes was momentous. She arrives in Voronezh shortly after the August 1991 coup that sparked the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin's rise to power. The country was re-examining its past and trying to imagine a different future.
But after all the wrenching events Russia has since endured -- the 1993 storming of the White House, the military campaign in Chechnya, the 1998 foreign debt default and ruble devaluation -- the nascent sexual revolution in Voronezh hardly seems provocative. Thus in early chapters, Hobson risks losing news-minded readers with declarations like, "Now, suddenly, the controls disappeared and seventy years of pent-up desire burst onto the streets."
Overall, though, the way she unfurls her often touching account trumps the story's expiration date. Hobson deserves high marks for this memoir. Her stay in Voronezh clearly meant more to her than a fashionable year abroad (she went on to spend most of the 1990s in Russia).
Growing up, Hobson had resisted her mother's attempts to persuade her to learn Russian. After her mother died when Hobson was 17, the author abruptly switched her university course to Russian from Arabic. She headed to Voronezh, some 500 kilometers southeast of Moscow, in search of a more authentic experience than the Russian capital could offer.
To her credit, Hobson does not let the narrative slide into a daughter's journey to find her roots. She is careful to concentrate on her new friends, treating herself almost as an omniscient narrator.
Her prose is simple and her tone matter-of-fact, almost detached. Still, Hobson draws us into her own quiet delight as she unravels the mysteries of her adopted country. She conveys her romanticism about Russia without proselytizing. Evoking powerful images with plain language, Hobson describes even the most grueling scenes without sentimentality.
We witness a commemorative service outside Voronezh at Memorial Wood, where hundreds of corpses had been discovered in recent years, bodies believed to have been shot by the NKVD in 1938-39. "Bones were jumbled with clods of earth, twisted belt buckles, shoes, rags. The skulls were placed on top, looking out, each with a neat round hole in the crown. [A tiny boy] kept very still and squeezed his eyes shut."
Many of Hobson's characters come alive. Edik, a pretentious, would-be dandy given to silk scarves, strives to escape the uncivilized provinces, where he says the "intelligentsia is quite suffocated." The narcomani appear briefly but memorably, rebelling against Soviet tedium with drugs and drink, art and literature. Of their lot, Petya Pravda, "deciding the only sincere way of life was in the mind," disengages from the world as he moves up the drug chain to heroin.
Hobson treats her romance with the hard-drinking Mitya from a distance, preserving its intimacy but offering glimpses of tenderness, as when he fusses over her winter wear: "I must confess it was a moment I enjoyed: Mitya smoking with no hands and narrowing his eyes like a private detective as he tightened the toggles on my coat."
This book is not a political analysis and assumes little prior knowledge of Russian history or culture. Hobson portrays her environment without passing judgment on it. The story is personal, and she puts her characters in a historical context without, for the most part, drawing broad conclusions or making predictions. As a snapshot of life in a curious place, "Black Earth City" is likely to satisfy.
"Black Earth City: When Russia Ran Wild (and So Did We)," by Charlotte Hobson. Published by Metropolitan Books. 210 pages. $23.
Natasha Mileusnic is an editor living in New York City.
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