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Marina Petrova
MARINA PETROVA's writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Brooklyn Rail, Late Night Library, Underwater New York and Sugared Water magazine. She lives in New York.
A Political Fairy Tale
By Marina PetrovaDie Zeit, a weekly national German newspaper, describes Adam Bodor’s new novel, The Sinistra Zone, as “linking intense realism with a boundless imagination, this fascinating novel could have been written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” True, The Sinistra Zone fuses what seems real with what seems fantastic, demanding its magic realism sticker and thus practically begging for the Marquez comparison.
Secrets and Lives
By Marina PetrovaBy conventional measures, July’s characters appear unreliable if not certifiably insane, so it’s easy to label her work “quirky” or “whimsical.” It has a dreamlike quality. But there is more to it than smoke and mirrors.
Not Another Holocaust Novel
By Marina PetrovaThe author is walking a very tight rope, high up in the air, juggling pots, pans, and maybe even a few blenders.
Emily Culliton's The Misfortune of Marion Palm: A Novel
By Marina PetrovaMost people don’t walk out on their life. They have children, a spouse, parents, an aging golden retriever who needs daily arthritis medicine, the winter vacation in Florida six months from now and already paid for, the midnight hour to themselves in the (almost) renovated basement.
In Conversation
Skate Dad: NEAL THOMPSON with Marina Petrova
Neal Thompson is the author of multiple nonfiction books, such as A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert "Believe It or Not!" Ripley, Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR and Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard—America's First Spaceman. His newest work, and his only memoir to date, is about raising his two skateboarding sons. Thompson, in his role as a skate dad, tells a story of defiance, frustration, fear of failure, and love. He writes about parenting without pretense and with self-deprecating humor.
In Conversation
2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas
MARIE-HELENE BERTINO with Marina Petrova
Marina Petrova sits down with Marie-Helene Bertino, The author of 2 A.M. at The Cats Pajamas. It’s a hot, hot afternoon in August. But “It is a dark, dark seven A.M. on Christmas Eve Eve” in Philadelphia when the book opens and the city is being cold and a bit hostile to its inhabitants. The novel follows the lives of three characters over a span of 24 hours. Nine-year-old Madeleine is an aspiring jazz singer, with a recently deceased mother, a mouth of a sailor, a cockroach-infested apartment, and a father who is so stricken by grief he cannot get out of bed.
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