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To the title character in Irina Reyn's novel, What Happened to Anna K (Touchstone; $24), the velikaia russ- kaia dusha, Russian soul, transplanted to America might be embodied in the way Russians avoid voicing public praise, rebuke strangers in public and show a fondness for politically incorrect jokes. Shards of it are locked up even in Anna, who wakes up optimistic to a new day, yet loves to drink — even if it makes her argu- mentative or depressed afterward — and tends to see things in binary mode: as either wonderful or terrible. An overall feeling of doom is never far away. "The Russian soul had come to claim her, extinguishing all that was sanguine and buoyant, all that was American inside her, leaving only the Siberian Steppes, the crust of black bread, the acerbic aftertaste of mari- nated herring, the eternal, bleak win- ter," Reyn writes. In an interview, the Moscow-born author, who immigrated to the United States at age 7, admits that she, too, has a lingering Russian soul. Her well- written and very enjoyable first novel recasts Tolstoy, as its title suggests, observing immigrants from the for- mer Soviet Union, body and soul. Reyn said, in unaccented English, that she began writing some stories and sketches that would become pieces of this novel during gradu- ate school, when she reread Anna Karenina. As she was thinking about issues of identity for her characters, of integrating tradition and modernity, she realized that Tolstoy had dealt with some of the same concerns; and her questions overlapped with some of his. "Once I decided that I was going to draw attention to a dialogue with Tolstoy, the challenge was how far to go with this. I didn't want to literally transpose his story:' she explains, but, rather, wanted to find moments that would inform her novel. She took care to be sure her novel had its own iden- tity, even while calling attention to this other great work. Readers don't need to have read the Russian classic to appreciate Reyn's novel. She says that many American readers have turned to Tolstoy after read- ing What Happened to Anna K. Reyn's Anna K., who had expected great love for herself and that she would shape great art reflecting her emotion- al life, "waited patiently for the call of the rel- evant lovers through her twenties and early thirties." Single at 36 and aware that her creative inspiration has yet to materialize, she settles into marriage with a successful Russian businessman. Even at her wedding at a Brighton Beach nightclub, she feels that uneasy desire for something more. She and her husband move from Rego Park to the Upper East Side of Manhattan; their circle consists of his friends and their wives, who speak "a Russian-English patois — Americanizing their Russian, Russifying their English." Anna K. is drawn into an affair with the boyfriend of her Bukharan cousin — first glimpsed at a train station. With him, she can talk about books and ideas, and she likes the notion of being his muse. Her cousin Katia mar- ries Lev, a fellow Bukharan, who's pas- sionate about French film. But Anna K.'s life resembles that of Tolstoy's tragic heroine. With humor laced into this story, Reyn explores aging, love and mar- riage, ethnic identity, the power of tradition and the pull of family and community. "I think of myself as a Russian Jewish American writer:' Reyn says. ❑ Irina Reyn speaks Wednesday, Nov.12, at two JCC book fairs: at 1 p.m. at the JCC in West Bloomfield and at 7:30 p.m. at the JCC in Ann Arbor.