Piroshky With an Accent
by Vladimir Kotelikov
Overview
Editorial Reviews
Beautifully written. An interesting story of hardships and miracles unfolds. Firsthand discription of an immigrant's life. --Debbie Holmes, 01/21/2004
Mr. Kotelnikov is a gifted writer with something to write about. The story is genuine with truly poetic metaphors. --Reinhart Stogic 3/24/2004
My thoughts
I LOVE Pike Place Market in Seattle, and I love all things Seattle. I haven't had the opportunity to get a piroshky...yet...but it's one of the first places I plan to visit when I head to Seattle this fall (September 2007). I have great respect for the author, Vladamir Kotelnikov, for being a refugee in America and making a name for himself.
The book, you ask? Um, it is with great reluctance that I tell you that it's not my favorite. I'm invoking Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50. There are bits of interesting reading in the first 50 pages, but I feel like I'm reading and re-reading the same things. The writing is disjointed in my opinion, which is not to say that I'd attempt to go to Russia and write a book in their language!!!
If it's all the same to you, I'm going to love Vladimir Kotelnikov without finishing his book. And I can't wait to try a piroshky!
Favorite Passage
"Are you Russian?" one of them asked me. "Basically?"
"Yes," I answer placidly, knowing his next question well in advance.
"So why is everything here not quite Russian?"
That day I was extremely tired, so I couldn't restrain myself. "And Russian is what, exactly? Is it what your wife makes? Or maybe that's too good for ordinary Russian piroshky."
My critic wasn't put off.
"Are the mushrooms in your piroshky American?" he asked maliciously.
"No, they're Russian," I burst finally. "I gathered them in outer Moscow last night with a flashlight."
He and I parted severely displeased with each other.
Zina looked at me with condemnation.
"You can't talk to customers like that," I read in her huge, sad eyes. So as a hot-tempered person, I've tried every since then to stay away from the cash register.
A little later I worked on the first page of our Guest Book in Russian. "We don't try to compete with your grandmothers, mothers, and wives. Of course they bake piroshky for you better than we do. But I bake them like my mom and my wife bakes them. Try them, maybe you'll like them. Your respectfully, Baker Vladimir."
