At first, Keith Gessen's "A Terrible Country" reminded me a lot of his first novel "All the Sad, Young Literary Men." Instead of a book about three highly educated young American men searching for love and career success, it was about one (sort of young, but not really) American man searching for love and career success.
I would have been completely happy if that was all the book turned out to be. Gessen's feckless characters charm me.
But in this case, the main character, Russian-American Andrei, settles in Moscow to coax tales of Soviet life from his grandmother so he can publish a paper and score a job at an American university. It doesn't go well, and along his hapless journey, you get a glimpse of life in "the terrible country" and an incisive examination of what makes Russians Russian.
The weekend kicks off with a Friday concert at First Avenue by the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band made up of several authors including King, Tan, Mitch Albom and Dave Barry. More
Niviaq Korneliussen's new novel follows five people in Greenland's capital, Nuuk; it's a heartbreaking yet hopeful look at young, queer life in one of the most isolated places in the world. More
Sara McColl unstintingly puts her heart on the page as she reflects on caring for her dying mother, with whom she is unimaginably close, as her marriage fails. More
Marianne Power decided to read one self-help book a month, for a year — and follow the advice in each, to the letter. She says it became a much more intense undertaking than she'd anticipated. More
Josh Rosenblatt's personal meditation on fighting and selfhood is replete with engaging literary and historical excursions — giving the idea of fighting a dignity it might be harder to grant without. More
Sarah Moss' beautifully written novel is a set in the 1970s in the rugged countryside of the far north of England, where a group of campers are reenacting the daily lives of Iron Age Britons. More
This new graphic adaptation of Ted Fox's history of the Apollo Theater captures countless electrifying performances, but goes easy on the grittier aspects of the fabled theater. More
Dani Shapiro, at age 54, is shocked to learn that the man she thought was her biological father wasn't a blood relative. Her memoir, a quest for the truth, reads like an emotional detective story. More
At first, 
