My Family Was Like a Russian Novel by Carla Sarett
Carla Sarett is the author of She Has Visions:Poems (Main Street Rag Press),Woman on the Run: Poems (Alien Buddha) and two works of fiction The Looking Glass (Propertius Press) and A Closet Feminist (Unsolicited Press). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Sundress Anthology Best of the Net and Best American Essays. She holds a PhD from The University of Pennsylvania and currently lives in San Francisco.
To learn more: follow her on Twitter at @cjsarett and her author site https://carlasarett.com/
advance praise for My Family Was Like a Russian Novel :
A tenacious and original poetry collection. With restrained imagery and haunting language, Carla Sarett crafts a family portrait steeped in curiosity, grief and love. These poems loom quiet and bold: battles ensue even when “the war [is] far away,” even when “no one is dying.” Faced with loss, Sarett wants the reader to “hold sea stars in the darkness.” Ultimately, no matter how much distance between family members, she asks “how long can anyone stay away?” My Family Was
Like A Russian Novel is about what hides beneath the surface of every family; it asks us not to look away.
— Joan Kwon Glass, author of Night Swim
Intimate, minimalist poems about about loss and the claustrophobic way a death in the nuclear family lingers. Each moment is magnified by a subtle brush stroke and gloomy yet vivid aesthetic. Like Simic or Baudelaire, Sarett’s work hums and sings in melancholy, lucid tones of the wounded yet resilient psyche of an isolated, grieving artist and human. A must-read, captivating collection.
—Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of The Fire Eater and Bad
Mexican, Bad American
Surreal imagery captures emotional truths in Carla Sarett's haunting new chapbook. Lineated verse and prose poems unveil an eerie world where sofas and chairs turn fickle, candy corn falls like nuclear waste, and faceless children live on dead-end streets. In this Twilight Zone narrative of a troubled family and a sister's grief, nothing is quite what it seems.
— Jackie Craven, author of Secret Formulas & Techniques of the
Masters
My Family Was Like a Russian Novel lives up to both its title and reader's highest expectations in a braided collection of delicate narrative poems…At moments haunting, at moments hopeful, and with an occasional sting in the tail, Carla Sarett’s distinctive voice pays tribute to the wonders of childhood and the loss ever-lurking beyond. Her writing, at once elegy and clarion call, seeks to enchant.
—Jacob M. Appel, author of The Cynic in Extremis