Tatyana Tolstaya's collection of short stories, On the golden Porch, published in Britain in 1989, was received with hysterical enthusiasm. Some rather silly things were said, like 'Tolstaya writes.' Some rather lazy comparisons were made too: she was likened to every Russian writer one can call to mind, with the exception, as far as I know, of Tolstoy. Well, now Tolstaya writes again, and the italics have become capital letters The new collection, Sleepwalker in a Fog, consists of seven stories; the first of them, the title piece, is almost long enough to be called a novella, and at 60 pages the final one must certainly be so called.

LRB 20 August 1992 | PDF Download