The Most Anticipated Book of 2024 as Chosen by * The Millions * Chicago Review of Books * Hey Alma * Stylecaster * And many more! *
Award-winning author Katya Apekina's Mother Doll is an edgy and visceral nesting doll of a novel, about four generations of mothers and daughters and the genetic traumas within Russian history.
“A deeply moving story. . .Weird, wild, unusual and fun. I really love it. —Lauren Groff
“Haunting, hallucinatory, and very funny. . .A rare achievement. —Elif Batuman
“Very unique and surprisingly witty… Apekina turns a multi-generational family story on its head. » —Publishers Weekly (STAR REVIEW)
“Like the Russian nesting dolls that inspired her, Mother Doll reveals layers of profound joy. » —Kirkus Reviews (STAR REVIEW)
Zhenia is adrift in Los Angeles, pregnant with a child her husband never wanted, while her Russian grandmother and world favorite dying on the opposite shore. She becomes deeply disconnected from herself and her desires when she receives a strange call from Paul, a medium who usually specializes in transmitting dead animals, with a message from the other side.Zhenia's great-grandmother Irina, a Russian revolutionary, came to him in her ancestral grief, desperate to tell her story and receive Zhenia's absolution.
As Irina begins her confession with the help of a purgatory chorus of grieving Russian ghosts, Zhenia awakens to aspects of herself she did not want to face. But does either woman have what the other needs to understand her difficult situation? Or will Irina be stuck in limbo, with Zhenia in ancestral agony, and her children following her?
Funny and deeply moving, Mother Doll forces us to witness the painful secrets imprinted from generation to generation.Katya Apekina's second novel is a family epic and a meditation on motherhood, immigration, identity and war.
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