"Snow in May" by Kseniya Melnik ****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Short Stories
• Debut
• Russian author, born in town in which stories are set
• Planned publication in May 2014
• Setting:  Magadan. Russia
• Vocabulary:
• avitominosis:  any disease caused by lack of vitamins
• Quotes:
• p.10...."To this day I bite my elbows in regret."...GREAT
• p.25..."Now she knew with absolute certainty that she'd been happy just a moment ago,.....".  So poignant, and true so many times in life
• p.25..."Everything felt wrong, like she was living in a parallel universe, separated one crucial degree from the one containing the life she was meant to have."....again, poignant
• p.64..."But only in solitary confinement does memory become a merciless editor, cutting a bearable story out of the ever-accumulating mess of days."...dare I say, poignant
• p.98..."A marriage, she had discovered, was a deep trench inside which festered concealed details about the person in whose company you had enlisted."...Ouch
• p.195..."If you like to slide, you must like to pull the sled."...smile
• p.265..."It was absurd to imagine yourself dying in such ordinary circumstances, in you familiar-familiar hometown, yet it shouldn't have to matter.  Love was love."
• Title:  Reference made to joyous moment of surprise, sensroy memory, and hope
• Funny moment:  Pregnant woman feels tremors and sttributes it to the life within her and her fine attunement to it....later finds out that Russia's largest atomic submarine was stationed nearby
• Review:     This debut collection of short stories was engrossing! Each protagonist is linked in some manner to the city of Magadan in Russia, gateway to the Gulag, and also the author's home until age 15. Each story was a poignant portrait of a life of yearning, a life of dreams fulfilled or not, and seemed to somehow give a sense of dipping one's toe in the water of someone else's life. I was left with wonderment at the amount of time in any lifetime spent yearning.