There are not too many coming-of-age novels in English, set during the so-called ´perestroika times´, at the end of the Soviet Union, when Gorbatchev opened up progressively the Soviet society to the world. A time of change, challenge and illusion.
Four teenagers, the main characters of the emotional debut novel by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, The Orchard - title inspired by the famous play of Chekhov The Cherry Orchard - are growing up in times of trouble. Like everyone else, they are surviving political turmoils and economic restrictions - particularly food-related, while dreaming about far away lands. Their parents and grand-parents, generations who survived the terrible WWII, especially the Leningrad blockade.
´My parents never talked about love, only duty -to one´s family and to one´s country´.
Anya - the storyteller - together with Milka, and their boyfriends, Lopatin and Trifomov, do swim through the waves of change. A team of troubled teengers trying to make sense of their lives, their political context and the world of the adults in general. Gorcheva-Newberry is very careful to notice the switch between emotions, and do also generously includes descriptions that may create a special atmosphere of the book, allowing the story to develop in different descriptive directions. The Russian/Soviet literary and musical references are also detailed, allowing to recreate the intellectual ambiance as well.
Hence, the grief that we may resent together with Anya, as she is experiencing the loss of Milka, and other people who laid the ground of her further life as an adult.
In many respects, The Orchard is hard to qualify clearly as a coming-of-age story. I will rather prefer to consider it as simply a book about delicate souls hit by fate.
This book drained me emotionally, but in a very good sense, as it confirmed that we can relate to the same biological way in so many similar yet diverse ways.
Rating: 4.5 stars
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