Natasha and Other Stories, by David Bezmozgis

Caught between insecurity and nostalgia

David Bezmozgis vignettes of immigrant life are neat, tragi-comic miniatures, set in an unfamiliar milieu but dealing with familiar issues of adaptation. Mark Berman, the central character, comes from a family of Latvian Jews who emigrated to Canada in 1980. Even aged nine, Mark realises that his parents are "strangers in the country, and they recognised that the place was less strange to me".

David Bezmozgis vignettes of immigrant life are neat, tragi-comic miniatures, set in an unfamiliar milieu but dealing with familiar issues of adaptation. Mark Berman, the central character, comes from a family of Latvian Jews who emigrated to Canada in 1980. Even aged nine, Mark realises that his parents are "strangers in the country, and they recognised that the place was less strange to me".

His father, keen to escape the drudgery of a chocolate factory, struggles to hit the right note in his promotional leaflets: "Roman Berman, Soviet Olympic coach and refugee from Communist regime, provides Quality Therapeutic Massage Service!" Invited to dinner by a rich doctor, he assumes he is about to strike lucky and turns up "dressed in his blue Hungarian suit - veteran of international weightlifting competitions from Tallinn to Sochi". The evening hardly proves equal to his hopes.

Then the stories get darker and more complex. By 1984, Mark's mother is "recovering from a nervous breakdown". He is on his way to becoming the kind of disturbed adolescent who gets into a fight during a Holocaust Day commemoration at school. And the life they have left behind is about to cast its long shadow over them all.

First to arrive, part of a Soviet delegation with KGB minders, is the weightlifting champion Roman discovered when running a clandestine bodybuilding class in Riga. Sergei was Mark's childhood hero, but now he is embittered and envious of the West. The visitors remind the Bermans why they left a country where "people line up just for permission to line up". But they also remind them how insecure Toronto makes them feel, and how nostalgic for the old country they remain.

Even more disruptive is the heroine of the title story, a morose 14-year-old nymphet who worked on the fringes of the Russian porn industry until her mother whisked her off to Canada to marry Mark's uncle. Mark now spends his time getting high in his basement and doing deliveries for a local drug dealer. It is only when Natasha arrives to teach him some vital lessons about sex and survival that he grasps the futility of his "subterranean life".

Here the book changes tone once more. Mark has reached an age when he must confront the death of his grandparents' generation. The final two stories complete the life-cycle by looking unblinkingly at grief, terminal illness and the heartbreakingly petty squabbles in an apartment block for aged Jews.

Readers will soon discover that David Bezmozgis is a major new talent, and his collection a superb evocation of its time and place, and of people caught between two worlds. By the end it is also, simply, about the human condition.

The reviewer edits the 'Jewish Quarterly'

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