- Published: 15 June 2007
- ISBN: 9781590171974
- Imprint: NY Review Books
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 416
- RRP: $39.99
White Walls
Collected Stories
- Published: 15 June 2007
- ISBN: 9781590171974
- Imprint: NY Review Books
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 416
- RRP: $39.99
"Tolstaya's voice is utterly her own, incorporating comic exaggeration, sly satire, bursts of lyricism and whimsy to intoxicating effect." —National Post (Canada) "Tolstaya demonstrates an impressive range in these 23 stories...[that encompass] political satire, flights of surrealism and realistic urban and domestic dramas, nearly all set in the Soviet era...Children, old folks and the struggling in-betweens–Tolstaya sees into all their hearts. Remarkable" —Kirkus Tolstaya has a wholly distinctive voice, a quirky yet lyrical voice that blurs the line between poetry and prose, visionary magic and plain, old-fashioned description....She is an enormously gifted writer. —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Tolstaya offsets layers of exquisitely constructed language with the colloquial and the idiomatic and in a similar way layers the commonplace with the supernatural. The creation of a brilliant jumble of motley metaphors is her gift – not plot, trajectory, or the arc of a story, but the plunge into the middle of dazzling verbiage, her bright universe.” —The Boston Phoenix Praise for Tolstaya: "Tolstaya is "considered by many critics and writers to be the foremost writer of her generation, a miniaturist whose stories combine the linguistic stardust of Vladimir Nabokov and the emotional wisdom of Anton Chekhov." —The Washington Post “If you can imagine a Magic Realist Chekhov, you’re getting close, but her voice is all her own.” —Alan Bilton, Nation.Cymru