Memoirs of a Muse - Lara Vapnyar
by Zia ~ November 5th, 2006. Filed under: Books.
Tanya is a typical Russian girl, except for the fact that she has an obsession with Dostoevsky, which becomes an ever bigger obsession with his mistress Polina. Thus inspired, she decides her life’s work will be as a muse. When she emigrates to the United States, she escapes the confines of her relatives, meets Mark, a novelist, and moves in with him. She has done it … she is a Muse, just like her beloved Polina
Being a Muse, however, is not an easy job. Sure, she lies around the apartment all day eating bon bons and reading trashy novels (”for her English”), but Mark is a whiny, self-obsessed schmuck who is a pretty terrible writer to boot.
I thought this was great: funny, well-written, totally offbeat. My only beef is the abruptness of the ending and how she describes how she overcomes her Mark/Muse inertia in, like, three pages. But aside from that, recommend.