Vaclav & Lena
By Haley Tanner
(The Dial Press, Hardcover, 9781400069316, 304pp.)
Publication Date: May 17, 2011
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Compact Disc, Hardcover, Paperback
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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the June 2011 Indie Next ListVaclav and Lena seem destined for each other. They meet as children in an ESL class in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Vaclav is precocious and verbal. Lena, struggling with English, takes comfort in the safety of his adoration, his noisy, loving home, and the care of Rasia, his big-hearted mother. Vaclav imagines their story unfolding like a fairy tale, or the perfect illusion from his treasured Magician’s Almanac, but among the many truths to be discovered in Haley Tanner’s wondrous debut is that happily ever after is never a foregone conclusion.
One day, Lena does not show up for school. She has disappeared from Vaclav and his family’s lives as if by a cruel magic trick. For the next seven years, Vaclav says goodnight to Lena without fail, wondering if she is doing the same somewhere. On the eve of Lena’s seventeenth birthday he finds out.
Haley Tanner has the originality and verve of a born storyteller, and the boldness to imagine a world in which love can overcome the most difficult circumstances. In Vaclav & Lena she has created two unforgettable young protagonists who evoke the joy, the confusion, and the passion of having a profound, everlasting connection with someone else.
Haley Tanner lives in Brooklyn. This is her first novel.
From the moment they meet in New York's Brighton Beach neighborhood, Vaclav and Lena make magic together. Each envisions a lifetime at the other's side รข?? and then, one day, Lena disappears. Their story of love and assimilation sits at the heart of Haley Tanner's debut novel, Vaclav & Lena. More at NPR.org
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Advance praise for Vaclav & Lena
“In this charming and wonderfully engaging tale, the reader is swept into the beautifully rendered landscape of the immigrant childhood experience. Haley Tanner has created a world peopled with characters of great poignancy, and they will linger in the mind—and heart—long after the book is put down.”—Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge
“There are books you enjoy, and then there are books you live in. Haley Tanner plunges you into the Russian émigré community in Brooklyn, where two souls connect under a maternal watchful eye. Tanner’s assured narrative voice finds new ways to describe emotion and character, bringing the reader up short again and again with small shocks of awareness. This book is sad, funny, true, and shot through with grace.”—Judy Blundell, National Book Award–winning author of What I Saw and How I Lied
“Vaclav & Lena is a wonderful achievement, generous, playful, moving, and refreshing. It was the voice that first captivated me here, a voice that allows Haley Tanner to say anything at all, and to say it truly. Give this novel a few short pages, and I guarantee you’ll want to read it to the end.”—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The View from the Seventh Layer and The Brief History of the Dead
“A terrific, enlightened debut.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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