White Walls

Praise

“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