Vapnyar, Lara 1971–

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Vapnyar, Lara 1971–

PERSONAL: Born 1971, in Russia; immigrated to United States, 1994. Education: City University of New York, doctoral study (comparative literature).

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Author.

WRITINGS:

There Are Jews in My House, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to various publications including Zoetrope: All Story, Open City, and New Yorker.

SIDELIGHTS: Lara Vapnyar, born and raised in the former Soviet Union, immigrated in 1994 to the United States and learned much of her English by watching television and by reading the works of Jane Austen and Alice Munro. In 2002 she began to publish her own stories, written in English.

There Are Jews in My House is Vapnyar's first book, a collection of six stories that deal with Russian or Russian-American experiences of loss and change. In the title story, a young woman initially agrees to give asylum to a Jewish friend and her friend's daughter during World War II, but finds her feelings have altered once the Holocaustic events are set in motion. Old resentments and prejudices come to mind, and in the midst of a walk, she considers going to Gestapo headquarters and turning the women in. She returns home, feeling guilty about her thoughts, to find her houseguests have already fled. "A Question for Vera" also examines Russian anti-Semitism, this time through the story of a young girl who is bullied by a classmate because she is Jewish. Sam Munson, in a review for Commentary, found these two the weakest stories in the collection, because "the fictional elements are forced to play second fiddle to the animating idea, with a consequent loss of narrative power."

"Love Lessons, Mondays, 9 AM" and "Ovrashki's Trains" Munson considered the most powerful works in the volume. The protagonist of "Love Lessons" is a naive Russian math teacher who is forced to teach a girls' sex-education class. She finds herself doing so based on the reading of a text book and the advice of her more experienced aunt until an encounter with the local womanizer liberates her sexually. In "Ovrashki's Trains," a very young girl waits every night for her father's return, only to learn eventually that he has been dead for most of her life and her mother has been unwilling to tell her. Munson remarked that "the way in which Vapnyar handles the details of this revelation, seen from the viewpoint of the girl, is extraordinary." Of the collection, the critic stated: "with her surgical economy of means, Vapnyar … has made a compelling statement against the sterile and self-obsessed excesses of much modern American writing."

According to several reviewers, There Are Jews in My House reflects the unevenness of style typical of a young author, yet the overall quality is still extraordinarily high. Vince Passaro, reviewing the collection for O, wrote that Vapnyar's writing "has an exciting flawlessness, like a perfectly cut stone." Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman remarked that, "writing with rinsed-clean lucidity and keen receptivity to the ridiculous and the sublime, Vapnyar portrays resilient individuals who counter loss and displacement with a covert faith in romance." A reviewer in Publishers Weekly commented that "the six understated stories in this debut collection are beautifully crafted and unswerving in their exploration of human frailty."