Review by Booklist Review
Anya lands in prison in Moscow; her only crime was being within reach of a riot control policeman at an anti-corruption protest rally. She is thrown into a cell with five other women also been jailed for petty crimes. Anya finds some measure of comfort in the stories of these fellow inmates and in knowing that her sentence could not possibly last more than ten days. Yarmysh, exiled press secretary for Alexei Navalny, presents a first novel that skillfully breaks the claustrophobia of life in a jail cell by cataloging Anya's life before her imprisonment: her complicated friendships and the misogyny she faced while trying to gain a foothold on the lower rungs of Russian bureaucracy. Anya's desperation intensifies as the days go on, to the point where she soon begins to question whether there are larger metaphors in her life and current situation that she might have missed. The familiar trials and tribulations that everyday Russians face stand out in dramatic effect as Yarmysh illuminates the subtly veiled political dissent within an oppressive society straining at the seams.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Yarmysh's provocative debut offers a jaundiced view of life in a Russian detention center. Anya Romanova, 28, is arrested after being in the wrong place at the wrong time at a protest rally, and is sentenced to 10 days in jail. There, she meets a motley group of women: Katya and Diana are in for driving without valid licenses, as is Maya, whose been trading on her plastic surgery enhancements for a life of luxury with various wealthy boyfriends. Natasha swore at a cop; Ira refused to pay alimony. Behind bars, it's a dreary environment: the inmates are fed and allowed to shower at the mercy of the capricious staff, a radio blares at all hours, and the exercise area is a sad enclosed square. As the days wear on, Anya starts hallucinating about her fellow inmates, imagining narratives for them that distract from the power of Anya's own unfolding backstory, which involves abandonment by her father at nine, being shipped off to another family as a teen, and later having a troubling internship at the Foreign Ministry, where she has a run-in with a sexual predator. Though there are rewards in the revealing look at how Russia metes out harsh punishments for small crimes, the mystical elements make this a bit muddled. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young Russian woman faces 10 days in a detention center. This debut novel by Yarmysh, best known as press secretary to the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, certainly holds a great deal of promise because of both its author's job title and its own premise. When Anya is arrested at a Moscow rally protesting government corruption, she is sentenced to 10 days in a detention center. In the cell she shares with a handful of other women, she encounters a kind of cross section of Russian femininity: There's Diana, who, at 25, is on her third husband; Maya, who has undergone innumerable elective surgeries and makes a living as a "kept" woman; Ida, who seems to have a learning disability and spends all day looking forward to her dose of Lyrica; and a few others. Almost no one Anya encounters has committed anything more egregious than driving without a license. Yarmysh's intent is clearly to produce a timely, prescient social commentary, but many of her observations come across as trite. She writes that "prison time was elastic: it stretched out interminably, only to then fly like an arrow." Meanwhile, Anya notes that "the detention center was a bit like a summer camp for dysfunctional adults." The book moves most freely when the women in the cell get together to gossip and talk about their lives and in the flashbacks to Anya's earlier life. Still, Yarmysh's prose is stiff, and her characters seem more like sociological sketches than living beings. A subplot in which Anya begins to see visions or hallucinations in the cell not only strains credibility--it seems to contradict the very project Yarmysh set for herself. With two-dimensional characters, stiff prose, and a dose of prison clichés, the book fails to deliver on its own promise. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
