Lying Together: My Russian Affair

Rating:
Summary: Well written but near-sighted
Review: Although Jennifer Cohen paints a realistic and visually compelling picture of post-Soviet Moscow & St. Petersburg, I couldn't help but be angry with her failure and near-sightedness when it came to her opinions and her relationship with the country. She treats the whole of Russia as though it is entirely composed of the well developed capitalistic centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg without venturing beyond the boundaries of these cities to see that the majority of Russia is drastically different. Russia is an unbalanced country, it is no place for an unbalanced woman. From the moment I began reading about her love affair with the country I knew that her coming there was destined to be a failure. Her book is filled with hypocrysies about the lowliness and shallowness of Russian life and people which revolves around poverty, corruption, drugs, prostitution, and alcoholism. She is disgusted with these things and yet she fails to recognize the parallel themes between life in the U.S. and Russia like the fact that the widespread issue of alcoholism in russia is the equivalent of the American dependence on anti-depressents, with her and Kevin being the perfect examples - it's just a way to escape the real world. I thought the book would evoke feelings of respect for an American brave enough to leave her cushioned life and take up residence in an unknown and scary contry still trying to find itself, but all I felt was pity and disgust. I felt like she was an intruder and did not belong. Although the book was beautifully written I was left with a feeling of disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Riveting!
Review: I couldn't put the book down and read it in 3 days which is Olympic for a single mama. My only complaint was that I was so eager to find out what happened next I didn't stop and fully enjoy the beautiful prose. It's the kind of book you gladly read twice. Jennifer Cohen is a gifted storyteller and this book held me captive from beginning to end.

Rating:
Summary: A little friendly advice
Review: I loved it! I am an avid reader and I was throughly enthralled throughout the book. There were chapters that I actually gasped out loud while reading. If you want a read that you never want to end-BUY THE BOOK!

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful fun emotional read
Review: I loved this book! It's the first book in awhile that I haven't been able to put down and that I didn't want to end. It spoke to me on so many levels - her wonderful writing, her humor, her insight . A perfect blend of the intelligent mind and the fraility of our hearts. This book was loaned to me to read, and after reading it, I bought two copies - one to own, one to give as a gift. Just wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: Wise, witty and painful
Review: I was drawn into this very moving tale written with the background of Russia in transition: American expatriates and Russians trying to find their way. Ms. Cohen traveled to Russia as a TV journalist to report on the traffic in sex slaves and to find love with a college friend who was based there. Neither the relationship nor life in this troubled country was easy. I liked the references to Russian writers that prove her solid grounding in this land. As a traveling photojournalist I could relate to the challenge of it all. Well done!!

Rating:
Summary: a risky, fantastic debut
Review: Reviewed by John A. Mangarella for Small Spiral Notebook

If the world can be divided into two distinct groups, maybe half would play it safe while the other half pursues their passion through every imaginable risk. Some people make the news while others prefer to watch it on television. Jennifer Beth Cohen followed her desire beyond peril's gates into a Russia where the society was not only coming apart but morphing back together again in ways no one could dream, let alone predict. She fell in love, abandoned her life in Manhattan and moved to Moscow and chronicled her journal in her debut, Lying Together, My Russian Affair.

Cohen chased a hazardous tale about the Russian mob's stranglehold on global prostitution while romancing with Kevin, an unforgotten college heart throb. She went looking for love in all the wrong places and found Doctor Zhivago on acid. Her love affair, both with Kevin as well as her work in a dangerously fragmented land, is written from the heart. She turns her journalistic eye inward and reports upon herself with scalding honesty. She's in love with Kevin who is handsome, sexy and has a Rolodex of Russian contacts at her disposal. Cohen sees her world expanding both romantically and professionally. Great love. Great articles. Countless kisses and maybe a few awards. Russia is a volcano of stories, each one lethal, every one a jagged puzzle piece left behind by the old Soviet Union. But the newsrooms back in the U.S.A. don't want cutting edge journalism highlighting the new Russia. They prefer easily digested Russian stereotypes rather than complicated Russian gangsters and how they rule the land.

Make no doubt about it, this is truly Jennifer Cohen's story despite how deeply she loves Kevin. Right down to the engagement ring on her finger that was pried off the bloody hand of a Russian mobster's girlfriend following their assassination. Kevin thought the ring, with its history, its color, was a flavor of Russia today. From the moment she placed the ring on her finger, her story crashes through the looking glass. Kevin's "work" suddenly takes priority and the few times they land on a story together, you can feel the professional tension. After all, Kevin is the one with the contacts in Moscow and St.Petersburg while Cohen slowly becomes an outsider in her own home. A meeting with friends suddenly becomes an intervention designed to get Kevin into a substance abuse rehab thus leaving the author alone in a country gone berserk.

Jennifer Beth Cohen opens herself with every sentence and buried within the descriptions of each incident lay the Russian face with which she came eye to eye. Lying Together, My Russian Affair is an intimate book because she shows us Russia by baring both the love and the scars left her by a dangerous land.



Rating:
Summary: give it a rest
Review: The protagonist is "unflinching" in her honsty but, as a native Russian who has spent much time in the west, I was bored with another western expat losing thier priveledged emotional virginity against the backdrop of Russia's new revolutions. Cohen's prose are tedious and her descrptions of the "new" Russia in the late 90s largely inaccuarate, uniformed and naive. She is at best a tourist on a dicey journey that takes a predictably wrong turn, but she can bail out to her prozac nation at any time. Can't say that for the cliche Russians who serve as her window dressing in that solipsistic manner particular to the US press corps in Moscow.

Rating:
Summary: I Wanted something to happen but it didn't.
Review: This book took me so long to read and I only finished it because I thought maybe it was leading up to something. I guess if you like smoking, drugs, manic depression and submissive women then you will like this book. I think I may be partial to books with some sort of ending.

Rating:
Summary: Both charming and compelling
Review: This is a great read. And not just for the exotic flavors and brutal realities of the external locales... Ms. Cohen shows great wit, charm, and emotional courage, in bringing us to the internal world of her experience.

Rating:
Summary: The Heroine as Pitiful Monster
Review: Though she thinks she's writing a romance novel, Cohen has actually produced a grotesquely comic portrait of all that is most loathsome in contemporary American culture. She's self-righteous about all the wrong things: smoking, drinking, drugs and sex. But she has no shame at all about letting her tabloid news producer use her to hound any liberal targets he wants destroyed. In fact, she uses a rumor about Clinton administration officials visiting Moscow prostitutes to get him to finance her childish, silly pilgrimage to Russia to entrap "a man [she's] never so much as kissed." When their fanciful romance fails, she returns to a job with Fox Networks, convinced of her own rectitude. At last she has escaped evil Russia, where people drink, smoke and exchange sex for money. She's back home in Trumpland, where true morality reigns.