This is the kind of opinion that the old Russian-speaking women voice frequently. And how does one travel in a box car with a poorly toilet-trained toddler?Īdams quotes a Brighton grandmother who, after a lifetime of second shifts and poor living conditions, quips that taking care of a baby in America is practically a vacation. Not when the logistics of packing for the obligatory month of collective farm labor in the countryside dominate one’s thought for weeks. As any former Soviets would tell you, this was no trivial matter. Adams often turns her attention to mundane details that make or break a woman’s day and that are of particular interest to women of the Second World War who, even in more peaceful time following the death of Joseph Stalin, didn’t have access to consumer goods readily available to their Western counterparts. The female perspective shines through the novel. Because of the central position that women occupy in both the Russian and the Jewish societies, it’s about time a story like this is written. Starting in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and leading the reader through the Gulags and the dissident underground of the Brezhnev era, the writer concludes her book in pre-pandemic New York City. What Amy Tan did for Chinese Americans, Adams does for women of Soviet Jewish decent.
Like The Joy Luck Club, The Nesting Dolls is a saga of multiple generations of women in a single family. In the final portions of her book, Adams pokes fun of a certain awkwardness, and the narrow, scary outlook of the Russian émigré scene that produced Shafutinsky.
The latter is a Russian American and Russian singer-songwriter who made a name for himself performing in Brighton Beach restaurants frequented by the ex Soviets in the 1970’s, and 80’s. Thematically, The Nesting Dolls is part Joy Luck Club, part Doctor Zhivago, and part Misha Shafutinsky.
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