One happy byproduct of the Jewish exodus from the Soviet Union was the arrival in the West of fine writers like Gary Shteyngart, Lara Vapnyar and David Bezmozgis. In his first novel, A Replacement Life, Boris Fishman, who left Minsk for the U.S. in 1988, stakes a strong claim to be included someday in that impressive company.
Soviet immigrant and Upper East Sider Slava Gelman is a junior staffer at a New Yorker clone, struggling to land a spot as bylined reporter. His life changes course unexpectedly when, after the death of Slava's grandmother, his grandfather enlists his talents. Yevgeny wants his grandson to draft applications for him and a coterie of elderly Jews to receive reparations from the German government for time in "ghettos, forced labor, concentration camps."
There's only one problem with Slava's new assignment as a "curator of suffering": the elaborate accounts he crafts are works of imagination, not recollection. Under pressure to satisfy the demands of his clients and to meet a looming deadline, Slava becomes increasingly agitated over the consequences he faces if his fabrications are discovered.
As much as A Replacement Life is about the inability to escape the pull of family and culture while struggling to fashion a golden new life out of the dross of the old one, it's also a wistful recognition of the elusiveness and malleability of facts, making the case that "to write a good story, the facts had to become the story's instruments." Like his protagonist, Fishman manages to keep all these plates spinning, finally bringing them to a clean stop with impressive style. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer