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" Spanning some 15 years and 5,000 miles, Yelena Akhtiorskaya&amp;#039;s debut novel, Panic in a Suitcase (Riverhead), thrusts readers into the Nasmertov family with the sensory overload of an immigrant&amp;#039;s arrival at Ellis Island. It is 1993, and Pasha\u2014a 37-year-old Odessan poet who feels most comfortable in circles that judge a woman first for preferring Tolstoy to Dostoevsky, and second for having &amp;quot;teeth so large her lips didn&amp;#039;t meet&amp;quot;\u2014is visiting his recently immigrated parents and sister in their New York City home. Capturing the irritations and intricacies of family life with Nabokovian humor and wit, the novel eavesdrops on the Nasmertovs as they encounter obstacles both minute and grand: Pasha loses an oar while out rowing; his mother has exhausted the possible treatments for her worsening cancer.  Related: Amy Bloom&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Lucky Us&amp;#039; Starts With a Bang The Nasmertovs come so fully to life that when the novel&amp;#039;s second half leaps ahead to revisit them more than a decade later, it feels as if we&amp;#039;re catching up with old friends. Following Pasha&amp;#039;s niece, Frida, once a stocky nine-year-old, on a trip to Ukraine at age 24, we feel a gossipy pleasure in watching peripheral figures reappear in central roles: He left his wife for that woman, from that party? In beautiful and sympathetic style, Akhtiorskaya&amp;#039;s particular way of recording the world gets at capital T Truth without a hint of sentimentality, achieving the intangible literary goal of showing our oft-banal world in a familiar yet astonishing light. Related: Why Sue Miller&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;The Arsonist&amp;#039; Is This Summer&amp;#039;s Must-Read Whodunit Novel This article appeared in the August 2014 issue of ELLE magazine. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a12872/panic-in-a-suitcase-book-review/?src=sem&mag=elm&dom=ww>