pickOne more book in under the wire for 2022. I was so stressed out reading this book - she did an incredible job of slowly building the suspense and tension in the story. I really enjoyed it, although I‘ll admit I almost threw it across the room at the end.
Speaking of surprise #thingsincommon — I came across a passage in The Dog Park that uses the word ‘recitative,‘ within the same week that I listened to Toni Morrison‘s Recitatif.
pickI loved this slow, dark, suspenseful tale, built through flashbacks that gradually reveal the nature of Olenka‘s peril, why she is so frightened when a woman from her hometown in eastern Ukraine tracks her down in Finland, where Olenka is living under an assumed name. They both escaped their violent, poverty-stricken town of illegal coal mines & opium production by getting involved in the international fertility business: egg donors & surrogacy.
“We're trying to limit the TV and news.“
“Does it help?“
“What do you think? Apparently yesterday they invented their very own 'Putin is a dickhead' song and chanted it all day.“
Once, one of our donors told a client that Ukraine was like a real-life Grimm fairy tale. The interpreter had wisely left that untranslated.
This car ran on gasoline. It hadn‘t been outfitted with a natural gas tank, and it wouldn‘t be, because this car transported people who had the money not to, no matter how expensive fuel was. The people who used this car were driving toward a good future, and I had to deal with whatever came along on that road.
(Internet photo)
The interpreter was a Russian chick in Western clothing who immediately captivated me. My mom was still spraying her hair with furniture lacquer, but this girl was clearly using something else, something that smelled good, like Finnish deodorant.
(Internet photo)
If the boy ever visited Ukraine, it would be on holiday & he would …. fall in love with the old women who sold flowers on the roadside, adding carrots with bushy green tops to their selection during harvest season & becoming berry sellers as the summer came to an end. The boy would find something authentic & genuine in the stooped grandmothers. There was a word for that, poverty, but he wouldn‘t recognize it.
The stagnant heat of our summers released a smell from wallpaper that foreigners didn‘t treat with the same compassion that I did. To them it smelled musty, not like childhood.
Dog Park: A novel | 
