SOURCE: “A Rush to Remember,” in Times Literary Supplement, July 21, 1989, p. 808.

In the following review, Laird offers a mixed assessment of Chinese Story and Other Tales.

With the exception of one charming early tale, “A Year of Their Life,” all the stories in this volume [Chinese Story and Other Tales] date from the 1920s. Anyone wishing to feel what it was like to live through that decade in Russia would do well to add Boris Pilnyak's account to Bulgakov's or Pasternak's. His sense of the present—the latest moment—is extraordinarily vivid, as if someone from the future had called out to him “Remember everything! Because all this—and you yourself—will very soon disappear.” Thus Pilnyak, in a rush: “Alcohol in the town was sold in two forms only—vodka and sacramental wine … cigarettes were Cannon, eleven kopecks a pack, and Boxing, fourteen kopecks a pack. … Steamers...