Good citizens need not fear

Summary: "A bureaucratic glitch omits an entire building, along with its residents, from municipal records. So begins Reva's ingenious novel-in-stories, intertwined narratives that span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. But even as the benighted denizens of 1933 Ivansk Street weather the official neglect of the authorities, they devise ingenious ways to survive. In "Bone Music," an agoraphobic woman survives by selling contraband LPs, mapping the vinyl grooves of illegal Western records into stolen x-ray film. A delusional secret service agent in "Letter of Apology" becomes convinced he's being covertly recruited to guard Lenin's tomb, if only he can convince a contrarian poet to officially apologize for reciting a forbidden joke. Weaving the narratives together is an unforgettable, chameleon-like girl named Zaya: a disfigured orphan in "Little Rabbit," a beauty-pageant crasher in "Miss USSR," and, when she reaches adulthood, a sadist-for-hire to the Eastern bloc's newly minted oligarchs in "Homecoming." Good Citizens Need Not Fear takes us from moments of intense paranoia to surprising tenderness and back again, exploring what it means to be an individual amidst the roiling forces of history. Inspired by her and her family's own experiences in Ukraine, Reva brings the black absurdism of early Shteyngart and the sly interconnectedness of Anthony Marra's The Tsar of Love and Techno to a fictional world that is as clever as it is heartfelt."--