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Reviews
of "My Life at First Try"
Mark Budman has a pitch-perfect ear for the
rhythms and sounds of English filtered through the hypervigilant
sensibilities of an immigrant. The narrator's mordantly witty, deadpan
account of his life is told in short discrete segments like a string of
linked stories, and the cumulative power of this voice drives the novel
from first page to last. Mark Budman is a powerful, exciting, and
original writer, and "My Life At First Try" deserves recognition and
success.
Katharine Weber, the author of "Triangle" and "The Little Women"
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Just when you think you've seen enough autobiographic novels, Budman's
debut makes you thankful you kept the door open. In prose that is
simultaneously droll and sincere, unflappable yet laced with pathos,
this is a book that will stay with you not in pithy quotes but as the
texture of an experience.
Cris Mazza, the author of "Waterbaby" and "Homeland"
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Mark Budman’s "My Life at First Try," is smart
and funny and compelling, and in an era when both the immigrant
experience and the resurgent aggression of the once-Soviet Russia are
central issues, the novel is timely, as well. This is a
splendid debut by an important new American voice.
Robert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize winner, the author of
"Intercourse" and "Severance"
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From Publisher's Weekly:
This blazingly fast and funny "semi-autobiographical" novel follows a
Russian man's comically earnest pursuit of the American dream. As a
child, Alex, living in 1950s Siberia with his parents and grandparents,
sees a picture of his American-born second cousin, Annie, and he
believes he has found his destiny. Throughout his formative sexual
experiences, he fantasizes about Annie, who embodies the exoticness of
Western culture and the wholesomeness of the American dream. By the
late 1970s, when Alex's parents decide to decamp for the U.S., Alex
packs up his wife and their young daughter, too, and after the trio
land in upstate New York, Alex goes to work at the IBM-like HAL
Corporation while his wife, Lyuba, an internist, takes longer to settle
in. At first, Alex is content with his new freedom-loving democratic
identity, but as his children grow and Lyuba becomes more independent
the dream begins to lose its sheen. The novel is hilarious, eye-opening
and, by the end, a little depressing. It's tough not to have Alex's
buoyant energy rub off on the reader.
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From Kirkus Review:
A funny, little-seen version of the American dream.
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From Booklist:
Readers who enjoy a fast-paced narrative will take pleasure in Alex’s
inquisitive journey.
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From People Magazine:
A mordant dreamer, the protagonist of this first novel is deliciously
at odds with his comrades in Russia; in college, the son of Jewish
refugees disses a Chechen brute and barely escapes a mugging. ... this
soulful tale about a perpetual outsider marks a debut well worth
celebrating.
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From San Francisco Chronicle:
Life zips by, a cascade of events that we can barely assimilate. If we
have enough time to jot down even a few well-made observations - and
there are more than a few in this entertaining novel -- that will have
to suffice.
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From the Boston Globe:
Budman's description of his attempt to become an even more exotic
specimen - himself - in the USSR and later in the United States, may be
more memoir than fiction, but the novel's exuberance demolishes such
boundaries.
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From The Washington Post:
He's an endearing narrator, who plunges into idiomatic English with a
winning sense of fun at his own expense and just a touch of that
wonderful Russian accent. "I'm an indestructible charm machine," he
tells us, "smooth and naturally well-oiled." Through high school and
then engineering college, he wages a "private war against the internal
enemy -- my own virginity."
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From Time Out Chicago:
Budman tells his story (it’s admittedly semi-autobiographical) in
tight, tiny vignettes, a form he’s accustomed to as the publisher of
the flash-fiction magazine Vestal Review. Told in such short sections,
the story comes through in patches that, over time, enmesh, overlap and
weave together into a rich, if haggard, story of a life..
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From BlogCatalog
This is Mark Budman’s best achievement here: muscular sentences that
tell a compelling story about the power of the American dream/myth.
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From The Internet Review of Books
From his exploration of life in a communist society to his newfound
freedom—sexual and otherwise—in America, Budman takes the reader on an
intimate interior and exterior journey of awakening. Budman isn’t
afraid to ask painful questions, both of his adopted country and of
himself.
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From Rain Taxi
Mark Budman’s My Life at First Try straddles the space between the
short story cycle tradition of writers like Sherwood Anderson, James
Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway, and the novel, with its essential unities
of character and plot.
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