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.. • • • •
•With . orWlthout Skin
•
Jewish Soul
Russian-born author mixes sadness and humor
in her debut short-story collection.
. •
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SAN DEE BRAWARSKY
Special to the Jewish News
he sparkling stories in Lara
Vapnyar's debut collection,
There Are Jews in My House
(Pantheon; $17.95), are as
Russian as the kasha Aunt Galya cooks,
washed down by her homemade moon-
shine, in "Love Lessons." Vapnyar's suc-
cess story is an American fairytale.
TI
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846250
Lara Vapnyar has crafted six miniatures
of contemporary Russian life in Moscow
and Brooklyn.
A Family Tradition
Villa
Maria
ristorante
7935 West Maple
Corner of Haggerty & Maple
West Bloomfield, MI 48322
248-960-4800
Villa Maria's hosts, Michael and Lisa, invite you
to continue to enjoy the Al Valente family legacy.
Villa Maria is still owned and operated by family
members. We continue to use the recipes handed
down over the generations and use only the finest
ingredients in these treasured dishes, including fresh
produce from our own summer garden. We hope
you will enjoy dining with our family.
822530
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in-home, office
or corporate
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Farmington Hills Kosher Catering
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Telephone 248-626-5702
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Her book has been published to criti-
cal acclaim, and Vapnyar's already had
two stories published in the New Yorker.
Recently, the 32-year-old author was
photographed for Vani t y Fair modeling
a Vera Wang dress in a downtown New
York City restaurant.
All this is even more remarkable for
the fact that she' an immigrant from the
former Soviet Union, who didn't speak
much English when she arrived in New
York 10 years ago.
One of the six stories in There Are Jews
in My House is set in Brooklyn, and the
others are set in Moscow and other
places in the former Soviet Union. They
are peopled by children, mothers, often
grandparents, teachers, mostly Jews,
with few fathers in sight.
Vapnyar illuminates their interior lives
while also piling on rich domestic
details; there are quiet betrayals, unex-
pected encounters, disappointments,
moments of love. Her writing style is
straightforward and intuitive, with
understated humor, creating thoroughly
engaging stories.
Other Jewish newcomers to America
have written well about their new and
old countries, but writers like Abraham
Cahan and Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote
in Yiddish, and their works have been
translated into English. More recently,
Russian-born Gary Shteyngart set his
celebrated first novel, The Russian
Debutante's Handbook, in the world of
recent immigrants. He writes in
English, having grown up mostly in
New York (he came here at age 7).
Vapnyar went through the Moscow
school system and earned a master's
degree in Russian language and litera-
ture before moving to New York. That
her English is newly acquired and self-
taught is not at all apparent from her
writing.
In 1994, when Vapnyar arrived in
New York, she thought that she knew
English from her Moscow studies, she
says in an interview. But she quickly
realized that
not only was
her compre-
hension of
New York
English very
limited, she
couldn't under-
stand television
and books —
and people she
met couldn't
understand her.
Vapnyar was
Lara Vapnyar: "There
supposed to
were stories inside of
me that I had no idea study in a pro-
gram for new
I -wanted to tell."
immigrants,
but a difficult pregnancy kept her home-
bound in Brooklyn. So she began her
own language study, reading novels like
those of Jane Austen, which she had
read in Russian, and then reading
romance novels.
It was the latter that really boosted her
skills. "The plots are so predictable," she
says, "You really don't need English to
understand."
But learning the language wasn't easy,
she says, asserting, with her Russian
accent, "I'm still learning English."
It was only four years ago that she
began to think of herself as a writer. In