Lucia's eyes and other stories

Marina Sonkina's stories give us unexpected characters in surreal situations presented with unflinching verisimilitude in prose that is at once forceful, lyrical and filled with scepticism. This is not the stuff of European fiction, nor of the multicultural mainstream in North American post-20th century writing. This is more like Mavis Gallant in reverse, a shrewdly observant fictive sensibility self-transplanted to the New World from the old.