kerryvaughan's reviews
169 reviews

2. I Don’t Care: Stories by Agota Kristof

Translated by Chris Andrews

Best hour and half of reading I’ve done in a while. This collection is a stunning quiver of 25 very short arrows, sharp and slicing right into your heart, your gut, your brain. Thematically they circle around loss, exile and searching for home whatever and whoever home means. Some stories are darkly funny, others are heartbreaking. Together they perforated me. 

Favorite story: “The Streets” but ask me tomorrow and it might be “My Father” and the third day it might be “A Northbound Train.” #2025books

1. Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai 

First book of the year, finally done. It shouldn’t have taken a week to read this fairly short book. But it did. Because I didn’t connect with it like I wanted to. Everything about it is something I love on paper. It’s bleak? It’s funny? It’s “profoundly unsettling”? It’s about a possible devil coming to town and screwing everyone over? A *checks notes* tango?? With Satan?? Say less bro 

But I must have expected *more* bleakness and profound unsettlement. Or maybe I had too much distraction going on in real life. That’s the only reason I can think of for not vibing with this like I thought I would or wanted to. Even when I think about it, I rationally think “this book’s rad” but I emotionally think “….meh.” 

I learned after reading this that there’s a six or seven hour long classic movie of this. Have you watched it? Is it worth it? That’s a long time to be dragged by the nose through the mud by Irimias, which perhaps is the exact point of the movie’s length. 

I’ll still read all the other Lasz Kraz on my TBR but maybe won’t rush out to get them. I have so many other valued books to read, already in my grubby little hands, unless Irimias talks me into giving them all to him. #2025books

109. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

….meh. Tree of Smoke was so much better. 

This isn’t a bad book. It’s probably even a good one. But I expected more (perhaps wrongly) from a Pulitzer winner. And instead of liking any of these people, I longed for Denis Johnson’s characters the whole time. And, kick the poor Sympathizer while he’s down, but I also just read The Disinherited, which also pitted the lure and peril of Communism against each other but in a gnarlier, more heartbreaking way. And well, even a nice sailboat sucks when you’ve just been on yachts. 

Confession: I finished this on Jan 1 but I’m counting it as my last 2024 book bc I didn’t want to get stuck looking at it as the first book in the 2025 IG highlight. 🫠 #2024books

🐛🐛🐛🐛

Although I try to not deep-dive too hard on one author at a time, one thing led to another and I read all four of the Sorokin books I own in quick bear-succession. I tried to write near-succession and my phone autocorrected to bear-succession (because it can see the bear on the cover??), proving yet again that AI is scary both in how right it can think it is and in how wrong it can actually be. 

Anyway, thinking you’re right when you’re dangerously wrong is fitting for this review, since it’s how I figure Sorokin means us to see main character Komiaga and his murderous, treacherous, pious actions done as an oprichnik, a brutal enforcer in the service of Russia’s government. Komiaga loves his country and believes his drugs, rape, murder and pillage to be done in “faith” to His Majesty. All in a day’s work! 

Men behaving badly in the name of service to God, country or king is nothing new. But this is Sorokin so you know it’s gonna get weird. And although this doesn’t go as buck crazy as some of his other work, it has its obscene horrendous moments. And some funny moments. And the best moments which are funny AND obscene AND horrendous. 🐛 

(I really hope someone knows why this emoji is here)

#2024books

Main character Omon and his best friend want to go to space. They enroll in military school and get chosen for the cosmonaut program. Things turn weird. 

It’s alright. Prose (maybe the translation, maybe the source material) is thin and story is predictable, at least for me they were. You ever watch/read/listen to something and some out-of-place detail wrecks your suspension of disbelief, slapping you out of the world the creator(s) established? Like figuring out you’re in a dream because you know your next door neighbor isn’t a conjoined twin with your boss? There’s a name for this occurrence, isn’t there? Anyway, it happened here. A particular moment (which I won’t mention for spoiler reasons) and all was lost. 

All that said, it’s not a *bad* book. And if I hadn’t lately been knee deep in much meatier Russian literature, I may not have found this watery. But today? Right now? Meh. It just made me want to go back to Sorokin, which I promptly did. #2024books

 Whaaaaaaat a book. Oh Vlad, you so bad. 

Blue Lard by Vladimir Sorokin, translated by Max Lawton. I hesitate to say I loved it because it feels like saying I love murder scenes staged by the criminally insane into red art installations. But I kinda do love those. So I think I loved this. Yeah. I loved it. Is it too cutesy to call it a murder scene staged by the criminally insane into a read art installation? 

ITo steal the blurb, it’s “an act of desecration. Blue Lard is what’s left after the towering masterpieces of Russian literature have been blown to smithereens, the most graphic, shocking, controversial, and celebrated book to be published in Russia since the end of Communism.” 

That’s a hefty description but it’s probably accurate. This book is an unhinged fever dream. Per Max’s “extroduction,” Sorokin himself can’t explain it all. Going in, I only knew what the blurb said: there’s a futuristic lab where clones of famous Russian authors write under duress and secrete “blue lard,” a scientifically unique substance harvested to power reactors on the moon. The blue lard is stolen by a figuratively and literally underground cult who sends it back in time to an alternate reality where Stalin and Hitler are best buds and Hitler shoots electricity out of his hands. 

Despite this, uh, memorable synopsis I’d gotten so distracted by the obscenities and beauty of the first 50 pages (“as he was a coffee table, so has he remained.”) that I forgot all about the plot until I stumbled onto it mid-page. And then I lost the plot again in the caves, disoriented by the layers and distracted by some truly crystalline writing. Because that’s how this book operates. Oh and it can be funny as hell. AAA, I’m looking at you. 

Maybe not worth saying it this late in the post but I would 100% not recommend this book to many people. It’s hard to read for 100 reasons. But if you’re into the grotesque and surreal and witty, you’d be into this. #2024books