Something Unbelievable: A Novel

ISBN: 0525511903

Author: Kuznetsova, Maria

Condition: New

An overwhelmed new mom discovers unexpected parallels between life in twenty-first-century America and her grandmothers account of their familys escape from the Nazis in this sharp, heartfelt novel.A fresh perspective-one thats both haunting and hilarious-on dual-timeline war stories, a feat that only a writer of Kuznetsovas caliber could pull off.-Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth AvenueLarissa is a stubborn, brutally honest woman in her eighties, tired of her home in Kiev, Ukraine-tired of everything really, except for her beloved granddaughter, Natasha. Natasha is tired as well, but thats because she just had a baby, and shes struggling to balance her roles as a new mother, a wife, a struggling actress, and a host to her husbands slacker best friend, Stas, who has been staying with them in their cramped one-bedroom apartment in upper Manhattan.When Natasha asks Larissa to tell the story of her familys Soviet wartime escape from the Nazis in Kiev, she reluctantly agrees. Maybe Natasha is just looking for distraction from her own life, but Larissa is desperate to make her happy, even though telling the story makes her heart ache. Larissa recounts the nearly three-year period when she fled with her self-absorbed sister, parents, and grandmother to a factory town in the Ural Mountains where they faced starvation, a cholera outbreak, a tragic suicide, and where she was torn in her affections for two brothers from a wealthy family. But neither Larissa nor Natasha can anticipate how loudly these lessons of the past will echo in their present moments.Something Unbelievable explores with piercing wit and tender feeling just how much our circumstances shape our lives and what we pass on to the younger generations, willingly or not.