The Red Passport : Stories

Rating:
Summary: Stories that stay with you
Review: Bravo to Katherine Shonk--The Red Passport is a welcome and rare showcase for the classic craft of the American short story. Katherine's characters (sometimes bursting with youth and other times exhausted from life's trials) are both unique and universal. She shares an understanding of human experience and modern-day Russian that, along with her wonderful ear for language and eye for surroundings, draws her characters to life on the page. Her style is clear and captivating, each metaphor a little miracle. I look forward to more from this outstanding American author.

Rating:
Summary: A Showcase for the Craft of the Short Story
Review: Bravo to Katherine Shonk--The Red Passport is a welcome and rare showcase for the classic craft of the American short story. Katherine's characters (sometimes bursting with youth and other times exhausted from life's trials) are both unique and universal. She shares an understanding of human experience and modern-day Russian that, along with her wonderful ear for language and eye for surroundings, draws her characters to life on the page. Her style is clear and captivating, each metaphor a little miracle. I look forward to more from this outstanding American author.

Rating:
Summary: Lovely and Amazing
Review: The Red Passport is gem of a book. On one level, Shonk is exploring Russian and American perceptions (and misperceptions) of each other. In that respect, it makes a fascinating cultural study. The stories are precise and melancholy comedies (or tragedies) of cross-cultural manners. But the book really sticks with you for another reason: Shonk gets under her characters' skin and reveals them in all their yearning and weakness. The sentences are lucid and beautiful, yet the writing is never showy. You get to the last page and long for more. Shonk, with her generosity and restraint, is a gift to contemporary American literature. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't love this book.

Rating:
Summary: Stories that stay with you
Review: These are beautifully written stories that stay with you. I was drawn to the characters in this book, both the Americans and Russians, and was really moved by the stories. The author captures characters dealing with life in a rapidly-changing Russian society and she does it with a sense of humor and understanding. This is a really, really excellent collection of short stories. I'd check it out.

Rating:
Summary: Lovely and Amazing
Review: This collection of stories set in Russia is a rare find. Shonk is a really terrific, hugely promising writer - I haven't picked up a book in a while and kept falling through layers, finding that it's even better and deeper than I'd at first realized.

Very good.