DW Reviews "Pick of the Month" by Traci Kim
Watch the DW Reviews video of Traci Kim discussing Yelena Moskovich's novel A Door behind A Door on YouTube!
"A Door Behind a Door is a puzzle that's also a kaleidoscope. The action and the images are stacked and then refracted off mirrors."
–Maggie Lange, Purse Book
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door)
"Yelena Moskovich's A Door Behind a Door tells the story of Soviet immigrants haunted by a turbulent past. Moskovich takes traditions of Russian literature–namely crime fiction and a journey to hell–and spins them into a surreal world filled with violence, sex, and cryptic symbolism. The result is a dizzying, seasick narrative that drifts through space and time as though driven by impulse rather than narrative sense. Despite its own lack of a center, the book reminds us that the body is the only place we can trust to tell us the truth."
–Fani Avramopoulou, Heavy Feather Review
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door)
"Moskovich's writing is sensory elevated and electric."
–Nathan Scott McNamara, BLOG // LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
(Read the full interview with Yelena Moskovich at BLARB)
"Yelena Moskovich's third novel A Door Behind A Door sees the performance artist and writer continuing with her experimental exploration of the Soviet diasporic psyche... a thrilling, intoxicating ride."
–Trahearne Falvey, Lunate
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door)
"Moskovich draws on Clarice Lispector, Sophie Calle, and even Pauline Réage, as she moves around the page, the body, the world."
–Grace Lavery, BOMB Magazine
(Read the full conversation between authors Yelena Moskovich and Grace Lavery on BOMB)
"Yelena Moskovich's previous novel, Virtuoso, introduced us to a multinational cast of characters and focused on the trauma experienced by emigrants from the former Soviet bloc as they adjust to life in the west, often at the expense of their closest relationships. Virtuoso makes use of fractured timelines and episodic narrative techniques that are particularly effective in conveying the radical sense of disjuncture at the heart of both the migrant and the queer experience; Moskovich's skill in using form as an active part of the narrative makes for a memorable reading experience. Her new novel, A Door Behind a Door, is equally successful in evoking alienation... We don't often see writing like this: genuinely subversive and innovative."
–Nina Allan, The Guardian
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door)
"Wildly dancing from one page to the next, Moskovich's style not only resembles a play, it also arrests the reader as witness and spectator to Olga's world being flayed open in much the way we might watch a dramatic scene on a stage. Different sections, some as short as a few words, are told from a plethora of unexpected perspectives (including those of an old dog, a shadow, and a knife). These inventive ways of plunging us into different details achieve a delicate balance of the interiority expected from psychological fiction with general atmospheric chaos."
–Mrittika Ghosh, Cleveland Review of Books
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door)
"For some, this novel will be about the challenges of the double life of an immigrant, caught in a web between cultures. For others, it's a fable of the American effect–the promise of a new life but the haunting of the one you've left behind... A Door Behind a Door can be read hundreds of times. The new discoveries and opportunities for interpretation won't stop. And in the meantime, you'll be maneuvering through prose so poetic and sharp that you'll long to put the fragment in your pocket, to bring with you toward whatever new life emerges after the experience."
–Madeline Barbush, Independent Book Review
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on Independent Book Review)
"The content and form of A Door Behind a Door are jarring at times, which is part of the point–nothing as dark, unexpected, and sexy as this should feel like anything other than a fever dream... Those who enjoy experimental forms, thought-provoking material, and a good thrill will delight in this haunting novel."
–Katya Buresh, Los Angeles Review of Books
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on Los Angeles Review of Books)
"A Door Behind a Door is Yelena Moskovich's third novel, her contribution to a venerable literary tradition of exploring Hell, with its telescoping time and scrambled geography, its thick atmosphere of mystery and violence–you are not off thinking about the world of David Lynch. It is a highly addictive book, unfolding in poetic little bursts that take up and stretch noirish crime fiction, the Russian literary inheritance, and surrealism."
–Michael Schapira, Full Stop Magazine
(Read the full interview with Yelena Moskovich at Full Stop)
"Moskovich, with brazen language, weaves together a novel filled with polarities. She plays, twists, and turns, always contrasting the brutal with the beautiful in her vignettes and leaning into the oddities of the English language (perhaps, in part, influenced by her own knowledge of several languages). In a literary culture obsessed with realism, Moskovich presents a refreshing take on the absurd and avant-garde."
–Sasha Starovoitov, The Columbia Review
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on The Columbia Review)
"The much-anticipated [book] from Moskovich is a novel that centers on Olga Bokuchava, who immigrates from the Soviet Union to Milwaukee with her family. Two separate acts of violence – a murder in her former apartment block and the subsequent accusation that her brother has stabbed a woman – collide when she is contacted by a man from her past who has information about both crimes. Part thriller and part narrative experiment, A Door Behind a Door is utterly unique."
–Wendy J. Fox, BuzzFeed
"18 New Books From Small Presses That You Won't Want To Put Down"
"[A Door Behind a Door] is composed entirely of hundreds of brief, titled paragraphs, with the disjointed and often dreamlike narrative sowing confusion that reflects the characters' psychological dislocation and conflicts around family, sexuality, and the uneasy relationship of the Soviet past and the American present. This is a difficult book, especially for someone like me who is not drawn to experimental writing. But Moskovich's daring prose is a potent reminder that there are many ways to tell a story."
–Howard Freedman, The Jewish News of Northern California
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on The Jewish News of Northern California)
"Author Yelena Moskovich plays with pop culture, clichés, and language to explore everything from gender and queer desire to immigration, memory, nostalgia, and the impact of political historical events over individual lives... The poetic language, which brings an idiosyncrasy to each character and place, carries through the sense of alienation and sadness, love and desire, longing and unreliable memory."
–Anastasiia Fedorova, The Calvert Journal
(Read the full interview with author Yelena Moskovich on The Calvert Journal, 6/15/2021)
"A Door Behind A Door wrestles, and lyrically so, with questions of splintered moral conscience and spiritual crisis, while rooting itself in the molten geography of the body... Moskovich's multi-layered novel speaks to mercy and salvation, on undisclosed terms, and the highest compliment I can pay to one of the most dynamic contemporary authors working in the field: She makes you happy to be a reader."
–John Biscello, Riot Material
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on Riot Material)
"A phantasmagoria about immigration, death, and queer desire... A Door Behind a Door feels psychologically resonant even when its events swing thoroughly into the realm of the mystifying and fantastic... As tempting as it is to slot Moskovich's fiction in with other works of the Soviet diaspora, the most salient feature of her work is its originality."
–Kat Solomon, Chicago Review of Books
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on Chicago Review of Books)
"A Door Behind a Door is loose, dreamy, and symbol-packed... The resurfacing of characters from Olga's past in her new city speaks to the theme of immigration in the novel, of new homes and the passage from old to new–a passage that is perhaps not ever fully complete in the sense that the past cannot be shaken."
–Marta Balcewicz, Ploughshares
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on Ploughshares)
"[Yelena Moskovich] is without a doubt one of the best working writers today... she's not simply engaging with the reader on an intellectual level, but also a subconscious emotional one."
–Joseph Edwin Haeger, The Big Smoke
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on The Big Smoke)
"A Door Behind A Door is a fitting title for such a layered work, one which is likely to have many interpretations as each reader explores the novel through a slightly different lens... Reading A Door Behind A Door is like pulling a loose string and watching the fabric slowly unravel ... except it snags and snarls upon itself, looping back over, revisiting what you think you know with a new piece of information or from a different angle. Fear not, though, brave readers. If you are willing to take a leap into the unknown, the payoff is most assuredly there in Moskovich's extraordinary writing."
–Beth Mowbray, The Nerd Daily
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on The Nerd Daily)
"A Door Behind A Door drips with mood and dread. It's a novel inventive in form, with imagery you won't forget any time soon... It's the closest thing I've experienced to reading a David Lynch novel, where a perfectly chosen word leaves you with a knot in your stomach, just as a disturbing sequence of images would."
–Maria Loreto, Paperback Paris
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on Paperback Paris)
"The novel touches on many themes: queer sexual desire, violent sexual desire, immigration, the Midwest, imprisonment, and punishment. The novel is told in sparse lyrical fragments and Moshovich's language is stunningly refrained throughout... The text retains the concision of poetry while giving the pleasures of pulp crime and this potent mixture allows Moshovich to go places contemporary fiction often shies away from."
–Keegan Swenson, Maudlin House
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on Maudlin House )
"As she has done in the past, the author is a master of mixing the profound with the mundane, all the while delivering little bons mots of wisdom... There is a lot of spirituality and wisdom in these pages. It is pure Moskovich."
–Virginia Parobek, World Literature Today
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on World Literature Today )
"Literally like nothing I've ever read before... Moskovich's style is what really makes A Door Behind A Door something fresh and interesting. She writes in bursts, breaking up paragraphs and thoughts into short, bite-sized chunks, each of them titled as well as though each piece were a tiny story in its own right. It is this structure that really lends itself to the dreamlike way the novel progresses; these small parts function like threads of the dream you are trying to keep hold of once you are awake, snapshots of a bigger picture that has become blurred at the edges."
–Nat Wassell, Cultured Vultures
(Read the full review of A Door Behind A Door on Cultured Vultures)
"Yelena Moskovich's novel A Door Behind A Door is clever, surprising, and intense, a book I could not put down."
–David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy
Listen to the musical playlist that author Yelena Moskovich created for A Door Behind A Door created, on Largehearted Boy
"Olga escapes the violence of the Soviet Union for life in Milwaukee, but the reappearance of a Soviet murderer and rumors of her missing brother trouble her new life. Moskovich unfolds this non-linear story through telegraphic bursts of words."
–Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
(Read the full review of A Door Behind A Door on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
New Books to Read in May: A Door Behind A Door by Yelena Moskovich
–The A.V. Club
New offerings from the world of crime, mystery, and thrillers: A Door Behind A Door by Yelena Moskovich
–CrimeReads
(View the full list on CrimeReads)
A Door Behind A Door featured on "HAPPY LESBIAN DAY OF VISIBILITY! (APRIL 26, 2021)" and "NEW RELEASES: MAY 4, 2021"
–Dahlia Adler, LGBTQ Reads
(View the full list on LGBTQ Reads)
"Yelena Moskovich's A Door Behind A Door reminded me, as I was speeding through it, for there was no other way to read a work of such momentum and force, that novels are made of sentences, and who else writes sentences like this, does anyone else, I thought, as if in a fever dream, opening up each portal and falling through it, write sentences like this juxtaposing despair and lust, tragedy and farce. It's like a hornier, more visceral The Crying of Lot 49."
–Kate Zambreno, author of Screen Tests, Heroines, and Green Girl
"It's like nothing I've ever read before! Read if you're into: Soviet diaspora stories, experimental fiction."
–Emily Burack, Alma
(Read the full review of A Door Behind A Door on Alma)
"This novel follows a Russian immigrant to Milwaukee and manages to incorporate the mafia, a one-eyed man and a supernatural stray dog all into one story. Read if you like a little experimental fiction."
–Archer Parquette, Milwaukee Magazine
"The plotlines of Yelena Moskovich's short novel are ragged, yet the narrative is tightly structured... Moskovich experiments with narrative in the Oulipian vein (Anne Garréta comes to mind), filling the pages with unusual typography and arresting metaphors."
–Anna Aslanyan, Times Literary Supplement
(Read the full review of A Door Behind A Door)
"Unsettling, ferocious, complicated, engrossing, inscrutable. Yelena Moskovich writes like nobody else. Stunning stuff."
–Alex George on Twitter (Skylark Bookshop, Columbia, MO)
"A Door Behind a Door almost makes you relearn reading. It's told in bursts and bites of language that go on to mess with your mind. The best way to read it is in one sitting, preferably in the middle of the night. I did not do that and I wish I did."
–Anton Bogomazov, Politics & Prose (Washington, D.C.)
"A Door Behind a Door is mysterious like an inscrutable note found in a book you thought was new & haunting like the memory of a friend you betrayed. Murder, national identity, emigration, family, America, all swirl around in this story of a ghost from the homeland sabotaging a new life that feels like fairy tale fallen down a trap door. "
–Josh Cook, Porter Square Books (Cambridge, MA)
"Olga has working hard to escape and evade the traumas of her childhood, to shut them behind layers of locked doors, and hide within a new life, far from her ancestral home. But an unconfronted past never stays buried for long. This surreal and aesthetically grungy novel is all about the dangers and consequences of trauma left unchecked, in individuals, communities, and families."
–Recommended by Daniel K., Prologue Bookshop (Columbus, OH)
"Oh, hell yes! Told from a variety of viewpoints–including that of a supernatural stray dog–and chopped into short fragments of prose, Yelena Moskovich's A Door Behind a Door is a tiny tornado of fury, power, and homoeroticism amongst a community of Soviet immigrants in a purgatorial Milwaukee. Olga is forced to suddenly leave the blissful life she shares with her girlfriend in search of her brother, who has fallen in with the local Russian mafia amid a string of mathematical stabbings. She ends up knife-in-hand, after waitressing at a sleepless diner and catching a few glimpses/glitches of her brother as she and everyone around her sails into a raging sea. Read this book–once, twice, thrice–and you'll get something new out of it every time."
–Mary Wahlmeier Bracciano, The Raven Bookstore (Lawrence, KS)
"Utterly striking, Yelena Moskovich's A Door Behind a Door successfully reimagines and subverts conventional notions of genre and form. Moskovich's prior screenplay work is palpably felt in this work... A Door Behind a Door serves as a testament to Yelena Moskovich's singular talent and innovation as a writer, a highly engrossing tale swirled in mystery and murder that will keep readers turning its pages until the very end."
–Meghana Kandlur, Seminary Co-op Bookstores (Chicago, IL)
"Moskovich (Virtuoso) mystifies with this vivid story of a pair of estranged siblings who immigrated to Milwaukee from the Soviet Union as children in 1991... The dynamic style and psychological depth make this an engaging mind bender."
–Publishers Weekly
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on Publishers Weekly)
"A tense puzzle box of a tale... This impressionistic novel is relayed in short paragraphs of sparse, measured prose as Moskovich portrays a loosely connected group of Russian immigrants caught up in a heady mixture of desire and violence."
–Kristine Huntley, Booklist
"Happiness is a horror when you don't believe you deserve it; so an immigrant learns in Yelena Moskovich's daring literary novel, A Door Behind a Door... Olga and others narrate the tale in evocative, needful micro bursts. But as the book progresses, it seems increasingly likely that the others are part of a bleak fantasy, borne of Olga's terror.... an excruciating novel in which love can be undone by stabs of selfdoubt."
–Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword Reviews, starred
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door on Foreword Reviews)
"Yelena Moskovich returns with her latest work, A Door Behind a Door, bearing many of the hallmarks–the post-Soviet diaspora, the mesmeric blending of past and present, desire and violence–of her previous novels, Virtuoso and The Natashas. This time we are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the protagonist Olga receives a phone call opening up a Pandora's box of haunting memories and unsolved puzzles from her Soviet past."
–Matt Janney, The Calvert Journal, "Books to look forward to in 2021"
(View the full list on The Calvert Journal)
"Moskovitch has delivered us a compact, fragmented fever dream that is just as much a novel as it is extended poem and expansive allegorical metaphor. Gradually you will feel increasingly unmoored from reality while simultaneously honing in on every word and sentence, so deftly does she utilize nuance and precision of language."
–Charla DelaCuadra, Pink & Green Musings
(Read the full review of A Door Behind a Door)
"This book is haunting, nightmarish and unlike anything I've ever read. Moskovich is an extremely talented writer and I flew through it in one sitting. The narrative unfolds in a nonlinear timeline and offers an ingenious sprinkling of clues along the way–blending the past and present so the mystery is revealed bit by bit. Moskovich conjures a creeping sense of
