I was promised a complicated, beautiful traditionally woven Georgian carpet. Instead I got a rug full of loose ends and filled with holes and hot chocolate stains at best.

The book suffers from 1. lengthy lists , 2. skipping by the events to move forward (were left with constant "and then this happened, Brilka, and then this happened, can you believe it?" , 3. easy plot lines/ devices (such as "friends/family in KGB" or "cool gay friend", and don't get me started on how easily and quickly we brushed over major character deaths), 4. the chosen format by itself - it's supposed to be a story from the point of view of Niza, Brilka's aunt - how come she knows exactly everyone's thoughts and feelings? (and we're sometimes reminded of this fact via "but that's what I at least think happened, Brilka, I don't know for sure. So how should we trust her?

I don't think the author and the redactor understood who is this book for. You might say, "this book is for Brilka, duh. It says on the cover! " But consumer-wise, who is this for? Germans, who find the Soviet Union interesting? I don't think that the continuous name-dropping of Soviet things made them feel anything. People from post-Soviet countries? There's too much info on the history to make it seem like we don't know it already.

Cut some character lines that lead nowhere (chocolate?), leave out the quotes that also brought little connection to the story, maybe rearrange some parts - instead of making us suffer in chronological order, make it more interesting by intertwining the stories from the past and future, or maybe focus on the family as a whole instead of character-by-character. Especially since basically everyone is highly unlikable, and you have to push through some chapters in order to get to the stories that are less annoying (Elene's part, I'm looking at you).

Then, maybe, the book would be firstly, more approachable for the readers who do not read a thousand page book on a whim, and secondly, for the book sellers themselves, for whom it would be easier to sell, say, 600 page book.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for big books. I love them! I'm usually the one to ask for more! But that happens when the characters have real depth, when after a thousand pages I spent with them, they are dear to me like a family member. Here, after thousands pages, I found no character depth, because we have 7 major characters, with which we all just have to "get over with" in order to get to Brilka. So, here I want to ask for less.

*I appreciate the audiobook narrator, Tavia Gilbert, for reading this behemoth for 40 hours, but as native russian-speaker, the proper nouns were botched, sorry. I didn't bother me too much, but still.

Read as part of the Big Book Summer theme for chill book club