Title: ostarozhno!
Product review: this is the most absurd collection of short stories i have ever encountered, and i don't mean in the danill kharms sort of way. in order for any of these stories to be believable, the author must do one of two things: either make them reasonable, or get the reader to suspend disbelief. kalfus does neither of these. he obviously has pretentions, but he winds up strictly pretentious. living in Moscow for four years obviously made him want to write the great russian novel, which is an absurd notion to begin with, and he tries so hard, too hard in fact that the product is nothing more than parody. his characters are obvious, his devices are silly, and his prose is choppy. if you want to read something about russia, do not look here (it might not be a bad idea to get a russian author, or at least a non-russian author who actually understands russian culture, language, tradition, etc.). about the only thing russian about his characters are their names. this is just plain bad.
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