3/30/2023 0 Comments Gitkraken pull and push![]() ![]() JC: Early on, Lara tells us that Yevgenia’s spiral-bound notebooks with her communiques about “sex and men and politics and reading habits” are to be her “meager inheritance.” You weave Yevgenia’s “lessons about men” (“ Sometimes you have to play nice to get what you want. Also, I spent many formative years living near the San Jacinto mountains-terrified of coyotes and wild dogs, not to mention the people, and also, I wanted to memorialize, I guess you could say, a kind of Southern California that is fast disappearing-the open landscapes, not yet charred by fires, or excessively built up by developers. I was especially interested in seeing what these characters, Lara and Yevgenia, would make of the place. What drew you to choose as a setting this place near the San Jacinto mountains, with its coyotes, its hateful winters, its desperate people?ĪA-A: A desert is a place that lulls a person into believing that nothing is required of them until it’s nearly too late and suddenly, you need all of your faculties to survive. JC: As the novel opens, Yevgenia and Lara arrive at the latest in a string of temporary residences, the “dubiously named” Oasis Mobile Estates in the Southern California desert. But I thought it was a fitting title for this story because there is a way that neither Lara nor Yevgenia and perhaps other characters in the novel, can answer, because it’s still a question if this is a country they can leave or not. Oddly, I came to the title pre-pandemic and pre-Russian invasion. ![]() over the former Soviet Union, the line from the epigram clicked.įor Brodsky, it was the way justice was administered by a jury of twelve in the US and not by the surreal forces of gossip and political maneuvering under the Soviets, that drew him to the U.S. So when I came across Brodsky’s conversations with Solomon Volkov talking about why Brodsky preferred being in the U.S. I was living on an island, an archipelago actually, Hong Kong, and I never felt like I could get away or escape without some elaborate planning. JC: How did you come to your title, which draws from your Joseph Brodsky epigram: “I would prefer the country you can leave to the country you cannot”?ĪA-A: I think I came to the title before I came to the novel, only I didn’t realize it. ![]() Jane Ciabattari: How have the past few years of uncertainty and tumult been for you? How have you managed your life, your work, your writing? A Country You Can Leave is filled with passion and humor, rawness and loss it is a fresh and vivid reminder of how good storytelling works. It is here, as Lara enters “what will be the merciless year of sixteen,” she is ready for the longing for her often absent mother to finally loosen-ready to make her first stutter steps toward independence.Īngel-Ajani paints a shimmering portrait of Lara’s coming of age-her contradictions and confusions, her ironic familiarity with her mother’s vices and admirable qualities, her secret yearning for love, her sophisticated understanding of how women manipulate men, her innocence beneath it all. Ever alert, Lara watches as Yevgenia cleans herself up, flirts with the property manager, and gets a discount on their latest temporary home. She opens as the pair arrive in a trailer park in the Southern California desert, after a hot, dusty nonstop drive from Las Vegas. The tensions between teenage Lara and her Russian-born mother Yevgenia sizzle in Asale Angel-Ajani’s wry and tumultuous first novel. ![]()
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