Mark has published four award-winning books, including The Other Language, winner of the 2008 ABZ Poetry Prize and An American Affair, winner of the 2004 George Garrett Fiction Prize, and the novel Steal My Heart which won the 2001 Maria Thomas Fiction Award from PeaceCorpsWriters.

His work, including 40 short stories, 50 poems and numerous essays, has been published in a wide range of prominent literary magazines. He has also written pieces for top newspapers and was the screenwriter for the award-winning Peace Corps documentary, “How Far Are You Willing to Go to Make a Difference?” Mark also worked parttime as a writer for the New York Recruitment Office after earning his masters in Ohio.

A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, Mark is listed as a Peace Corps Notable Returned Volunteer in recognition of his literary success. His Peace Corps assignment landed him in Guatemala was to instruct farmers on the particulars of grain-storage and crop improvement techniques, but he also taught English in his village. “I had never taught in a classroom. For supplies, I had a piece of chalk and a blackboard. I had three classes of 40 students each. I couldn’t do anything but improvise. I improvised every day.”

Mark graduated from Harvard and received an MFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University. He is married and the father of two lovely daughters.

This award couldn’t go to a better writer, or a better person. Congratulations Mark!

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Eternal on the Water
by Joseph Monninger (Burkina Faso, 1975-77)
February, 2010
368 pp.
$15.00

Reviewed by Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 1976–78)

In the past few years I’ve reviewed a number of books by RPCVs whose stories delivered compelling drama, but whose writing left something to be desired. If there’s one thing Peace Corps Volunteers come home with, after all, it’s stories.  But not everybody knows how to tell them. It’s challenging, if not downright disheartening, as a reviewer, to walk the tightrope between cherishing memorable narratives and lamenting inadequate craft.

So it is with considerable relief that I find myself able to say that Joseph Monninger knows how to write.  In his new novel from Gallery Books, Eternal on the Water, Monninger’s writing is lovingly polished and gratifying, as in this moment when his narrator, a young prep school teacher named Jonathan Cobb, sets out in a kayak down the Allagash River:

I passed a blue heron, its body still, its legs holding knee deep in a backwater, a frog pond, and I had passed it before I could be certain it was a bird, perhaps it had been a bush, a tree trunk, but then the water shot me out and over a second shelf of rock.  I scraped my paddle blade on the rocks and I suddenly realized that the water was absurdly shallow, the draft no more than inches, and paddling no longer made sense. I used the blades as rudder, shifting back and forth, guiding the boat smoothly now, with confidence, and then, imperceptibly at first, the water broadened. Its urgency departed and what had been compressed now diffused and the water flowed through cattails and reeds, and two red-winged blackbirds made a chittering call, like a piece of paper caught into a fan blade, like grass speaking if it could speak.

As I exhort my writing students, there’s a particular pleasure when form follows content. Cobb’s headlong plunge into the water vividly parallels his emotional course toward the woman he has just met and whose effect on him will prove to be powerfully life-changing.

And tragic. No spoiler alert needed here.  Mary Fury, Cobb’s memorable soul mate, is already dead on page one.   And after finding out that she has died consciously, of her own choice in that same river, the rest of the novel backs up and tells us why, and how, and why it matters.

Monninger is a long-time English professor at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, and author of 16 other books, including several “young adult” novels and non-fiction projects. Asked “what he regrets” in one of his online interviews, he replies, “Besides war, famine, and human suffering . . . I regret the times that I have been unkind and insensitive.”
He doesn’t have to worry about that in Eternal on the Water. His story line is infused with kindness and a tolerable, reassuring sweetness.  Considering that Mary Fury, irrepressible teller of knock-knock jokes, lover of crows and wearer of a “mad bomber” cap, is dying of Huntington’s Disease, the governing attitude of the story is life affirming and remarkably upbeat.

In fact, though this isn’t technically a Peace Corps novel, I contend Monninger gives himself away as an RPCV apart from the facts of his biography. His characters exude reliable hope and buoyant altruism. Mary is part of a camp to create happy experiences for sick teenage girls; her brother, Freddy, is saving turtles in Indonesia; Cobb himself helps a talented but depressed black kid, out of place in his prep school, and brings him into Mary’s extended family in the woods. I’m not sure I buy them entirely, but the characters are worldly without being cynical, experienced without being jaded.  Good old RPCV types, in other words.

There might be more kissing in this book than any other novel I’ve ever read, and for that alone, Monninger should get a “chick lit” prize. It isn’t sleazy — it’s the smooching of really hot making out, the way the goddesses intended it, and it’s mostly charming. Cobb and Mary’s mutual physical heat is delivered earthily, without salacious aftertaste, and it adds poignancy to what we know is coming.

Eternal on the Water, in short, is a lovely book, calling us to love one another and to love our life on Earth. Pay attention, Monninger’s generous characters tell us; don’t forget how fast it all speeds by.

Click on the book cover or the bold book title to order from Amazon and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance.

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Tenderfoot
by Mary E. Trimble (The Gambia 1979-81)
Treble Heart Books, $13.50
289 Pages
January 2010

Reviewed by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia 1965–67)

Tenderfoot is set on a ranch in western Washington during the days leading up to the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Author Mary E. Trimble certainly knows the terrain and the language of ranching and riding, and the reader takes pleasure in learning how to saddle a horse, the unforeseen perils of crossing a muddy creek on horseback, and other intricacies of life on a ranch. By the conclusion the novel becomes a page-turner because you do want to know exactly how the tenderfoot, Corrie, will survive the mess she’s in.

The back cover describes Tenderfoot as a romantic suspense novel. It certainly has both romance and suspense, but the two threads are parallel rather than intertwined until the last predictable sequence of events. Perhaps that is my quarrel with Tenderfoot. Both the romance and the havoc caused by the eruption of the volcano are predictable from the first chapter. Trimble’s opening author’s note describes the death and destruction following the eruption, and she precedes each chapter with a paragraph from the local small town newspaper describing that day’s seismic activity on Mount Saint Helens. So the reader knows the characters will somehow be affected by the volcano. But the chapter by chapter news blurbs have little relation to the events in the chapters they precede or the lives of the characters. The heroine makes a couple of camping trips to the mountain, but those trips, like the blurbs at the beginning of the chapters, feel tacked on for the purpose of the dramatic ending rather than integral to the story.

The romance is an example of the lady doth protest too much. Corrie is attracted to J, the rancher, he to her, but she states repeatedly that she doesn’t want a relationship, says it to anybody who will listen, including J, yet she pines for him, thinks about him, and dreams about him in virtually every chapter. This yearning and remonstration begins early in the book and never changes until the dramatic conclusion 200 plus pages later when, as expected, they finally admit their passion for each other.

Trimble offers facts about Corrie — she’s a travel writer, she’s often lost, she’s divorced, she’s published a novel and wants to write about the country, but the reader sees little to back up these facts. Other than making a few notes, she doesn’t write. Late in the book somebody says she is pretty but that is all we know of her appearance. She has a daughter in college so is probably in her 40s, but she often acts like a younger, more naïve woman.

When she gets lost on the way back to the ranch from an evening gathering, she pulls into a tavern parking lot to turn around, her truck dies, and she is afraid to go into the tavern to ask for help or to use the phone. The place is open, and there is no evidence given that it’s rowdy or dangerous. Inexplicably she leaves the borrowed truck in the parking lot and walks back the way she came, several miles in the dark on an unfamiliar highway. Which is where this reader lost patience with her — a travel writer who is afraid to go into a bar and ask for directions? A travel writer who is always lost? She cries a lot too — or is brought to tears — perhaps because of the trauma of her divorce, but the reader has no idea of that trauma. He left her? She left him? The ex does show up for an unpleasant scene midway through the novel, but, even with references to his infidelity, the reader has no sense of her past history with this man.

Tenderfoot is a fast read with most of the story communicated through dialogue, much of which fails to advance the story or deepen the reader’s understanding of the characters:

“You have company? You sound a little rushed.”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Sorry to bother you.”
“No, no bother.”
“Okay then. Friday morning, around 8.”
“You bet. See you then. Let’s talk later about what to take.”

Dialogue like this is believable, but adds nothing to the forward movement or deepening of the narrative. In the example above her ex has arrived unexpectedly, and they are in the middle of a tense conversation when the phone rings. Rather than give this blow by blow of an uneventful conversation, Trimble could have used the interruption to deepen the tension:

Corrie turned her back on Earl and picked up the phone. “Yes, Kevin,” she said. Earl stopped pacing to listen. “I’d love to, Kevin,” she said. When she turned back to Earl, he was ashen. He demanded to know who the fuck this Kevin was; he mimicked her saying “I’d love to;” he ranted the way he loved to rant, and she let him rant. She never said a word, not a word, but she was shaking with relief. It was over, really over. This chapter, the Earl chapter, in her life was closed and thanks to his tantrum, she knew that was just the way she wanted it. A movement outside caught her attention . . .

This self-published novel is attractively printed, but is, perhaps, an example of the perils of self-publishing — a promising story without the benefits of a demanding editor. Trimble isn’t trying for literary fiction, but coaching from an editor who believed in the book could guide an obviously competent writer to get the book in her head on the page.

Click on the book cover or the bold book title to order from Amazon and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance.

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South Pacific Survivor in Samoa
by Kevin Daley (Samoa 1986–89)
Boston: Novels Plus
$16.95
435 pages
January 2010

Reviewed by Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65)

If you like intricately plotted political thrillers, in exotic cultural settings, this book is for you. The author, Kevin Daley, was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Samoa (1986-89); he practices law; and he has studied both writing and the martial arts. In this book, he has successfully brought all of that experience and knowledge together to create an interesting and richly complex story. The action (lots of it) takes place in modern Samoa. There, we find a covey of secret agents (Samoan, American and Chinese), diplomats from several countries (most prominently the USA and New Zealand), a hapless and rather over-the-top warrior-assassin, all wrapped around a heavy dose of Samoan royalty and culture. Much of the story revolves around fictitious historic-political difficulties between American Samoa and the independent nation of Samoa. And part of the plot focuses creatively on a missing book by Robert Louis Stevenson (1859–94), the Scottish novelist who made Samoa his home. There’s also a love plot to spice things up a bit, and buried treasure to be found.

Complicated — yes, but not hokey, though at times it is hard to keep all the threads in the story-line sorted out. In the end, you’ll come away knowing a something about what drives some individuals who thrive on solving secret political and literary intrigues. And you’ll also achieve insights into Samoan history, politics and culture. There’s no question that Daley knows his subject well.

South Pacific Survivor is a fast-paced, multi-faceted tale that will keep you entertained from start to finish, though I admit to getting bogged down a few times in the maze of plots and sub-plots. But be careful. As you read the book keep your eyes wide open and your head on. Enough heads roll to the assassin in this story to justify the warning, for some of the characters in this dark tale of intrigue are bound to lose theirs.

 Jack Niedenthal (Marshall Island 1981-84)

When an ex-Peace Corps Volunteer sets out to write a novel based on his or her Third World experiences they are faced with some perplexing artistic and humanistic challenges:  How does one describe a tremendously unique series of events from ones own life so that others might participate in those feelings and understand those encounters, and moreover, translate, interpret, and describe a strangely foreign culture well enough to be digested and understood by a reader? As any Peace Corps volunteer will tell you, even two people living in the same village at the same time can have enormously dissimilar experiences.  In his debut novel set in Panama, Islands of Shadow, Islands of Light, author Yaron Glazer skillfully overcomes these obstacles. 

Glazer effectively bounces us around in time between 1969 and 2007 as we follow the lead character Jessica Talbot, a former Peace Corps volunteer, as she revisits her country of service to try to investigate the brutal quelling of a riot in the La Joya prison.  While in country, she also attempts to cope with the loss of a boyfriend who disappeared during the American invasion.  I feel compelled to mention that the character of Jessica was portrayed with such emotional depth that as I read the story I just assumed the author of this book was female.  It wasn’t until I did a Google search after I finished the book that I learned otherwise. 

I especially enjoyed reading of the adventures of Jessica with her host Panamanian family. After she is accused of sleeping with the host family father, she moves out of the house.  The passage describing the transportation of her worldly possessions via the use of an old horse to her new accommodations was excellent and convincing.  In this particular section of the book the author skillfully contrasts the strife of host-family life with the compassion and love that is developed between Jessica and some of her students and other locals. 

Glazer’s writing mechanics, language skills and story telling abilities are outstanding.  I had a hard time putting this book down, and that says a lot because at this time in my life, having lived on a small Pacific island for 30 years, I have become a pernickety reader:  If the fiction I’m reading does not effectively provide enough detail to suspend my belief systems, I am quick to toss a novel aside and move on.  I loved the exquisite details of life on the prison island; the mosquitoes, the heat, the food, the close comradeship and conversely the fierce hatred between the various prison personalities-guards and prisoners alike–as they try to cope with living in intense, almost unimaginable isolation. 

The prisoner we follow throughout the book, Castillo, who is on the island because he was falsely accused of murdering his wife, at one point gets tied to a tree for days for insulting one of the guards when he asked for more food. He describes being overwhelmed by mosquitoes:  “On the third night the full moon rose, and it was if a humming cloud had descended upon him through a window to God.  Elsewhere around camp, pigs wallowed in mud to coat their hides and prisoners covered their skin in urine-soaked cloth and burned dry dung in coffee tins.  Only Castillo remained exposed.”

Ultimately the best compliment I can give Mr. Glazer is that I now feel that I have lived through a portion of Panama’s troubled history; indeed, I now have an idea of what it was like to dwell there as a foreigner among all the uncertainty, chaos and corruption of the time.  This book was a great adventure.

Here David reviews Toby Lester’s The Fourth Part of the World

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The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map that Gave America Its Name
by Toby Lester (Yemen 1988–90)
Free Press
$30.00
2009

Reviewed by David A. Taylor (Mauritania 1983–85)

In The Fourth Part of the World, Toby Lester (Yemen 1988-90) traces the history of our understanding of the terrestrial shape. Centered on one particular map from 1507 — the first map where the name “America” appears (beside a tiny ship furiously churning the sea) — Lester reaches back and forth in time, across all continents, to piece together the cartographic puzzle. The map offers a focus of a Western “collective quest for knowledge, power, and wealth the likes of which had never before been seen. That quest was at once mystical, rapacious, evangelical, self-centered, grand, inspiring, and often delusional — and nothing charts its full course better than the Waldseemüller map of 1507.”

There’s something else going on here too. After all, the cartographic story could be told much more succinctly than Fourth Part’s 400+ pages. But Lester takes his time to probe episodes of cultural contact, misunderstanding and miscues, from English medieval geographers to Marco Polo, as well as instances of heroic book collecting (see Petrarch painstakingly copying one of the few surviving copies of Ptolemy’s Geography). And there are many surprises. Who knew Boccaccio was a geographer too?

Lester, a contributing editor to The Atlantic, writes vividly when he has a scene with boundaries, for example the room where the Waldseemüller map was discovered in the garret of a castle in Germany in 1901: “The garret is a simple room. It’s designed for storage, not show. Bookshelves line three of its walls, from floor to ceiling, and two windows let in a cheery amount of sunlight. The floors, uncarpeted, are lined with broad unfinished planks. Wandering about the room and peering at the spines of the books on the shelves, Fischer soon came across something that piqued his curiosity: a large folio with red beech-wood covers, bound together with finely tooled pigskin.” From that discovery, the rest of the book’s exploration unfolds.

But Lester also does well in tracing moments of disastrous cultural contact, the too-well-known (Columbus’s arrival on Hispaniola) and the mostly-forgotten (Louis de La Cerda in the Canary Islands, in 1341). In the latter episode, he glimpses seeds of a larger pattern:

It’s worth pausing for a moment to consider the many dynamics at play in this little-known episode. With the financial backing of a king from the Iberian Peninsula, a maritime expedition led by Italian sailors sets off in search of islands rumored to exist somewhere out in the Atlantic. Guided by maps that contain a blend of the real and the imaginary, they find a series of islands, on which they encounter a pagan society previously unknown to Europe. They take prisoners, search for riches, loot and plunder, and finally return home, bearing samples of commercial goods, including human captives . . .  Word of the islands spreads fast and reaches the pope, who considers himself empowered to grant ownership of them to whomever he sees fit — and who, when he does so, sets in motion a race among different Iberian monarchs to explore, exploit, and Christianize the region. These are the very dynamics, of course, that would assert themselves time and again in the Atlantic . . .

Lester is particularly careful to paint this story of discovery not simply as adventure or cartography, but as a continuous exploration to reconcile the ancient knowledge of Ptolemy and others with what Europeans were re-learning during the Renaissance. How did Ptolemy’s world correspond with the new horizons they were finding? In many cases, the effort to force new evidence into old wineskins was disastrous. Lester’s real heroes are the humanists who took notice of classical knowledge but also aimed to look anew — humanists like Roger Bacon, who noted, “All the sciences are connected . . . they lend each other material aid as parts of one great whole, each doing its own work, not for itself alone, but for the other parts.” And when one of their books disappears from view, that loss, too, registers in these pages.

So even when enthusiasm for a precise understanding of Martin Waldseemüller’s paper trail flags, this book’s adroit narrative, impressive range, and deft humor keeps a reader engaged. Lester’s book is a celebration of the rare instances where curiosity and persistence triumph, and monument to the more frequent tragic cases in which people force their experience of the world into the smaller vessels of their own prejudices. In containing both, The Fourth Part of the World does justice to the double-edged sword of knowledge and discovery.

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Click on the book cover or the bold book title to order from Amazon and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance.

When sending in your nomination, please cite for what prize, and give the full name of the book, the full name of the author, plus the country and years when the RPCV served.

These are the only  books nominated so far.

Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award

Heat, Sand, and Friends
by Allen W. Fletcher (Senegal 1969–71)

First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria
Eve Brown (Ecuador 1988)

Maria Thomas Fiction Award

Islands of Shadow, Islands of Light
By Yaron Glazer (Panama 1997-99)

Whispering Campaign
Stories from Mesoamerica
by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77)

In an Uncharted Country
by Clifford Garstang (South Korea 1976–78)

The Broken Teaglass
by Emily Arsenault (South Africa 2004–06)

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

For those of  you who are new to Peter Hessler, he was was the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker and a contributor to National Geographic.  Previously he had written for the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Boston Globe, and the Wall Street Journal. He is best known for his two earlier books, his ‘Peace Corps book”  River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (2001), a Kiriyama Prize-winner, and Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present (2006), a collection of journalistic stories he wrote while living in Beijing.

Peter’s wife, a journalist and writer in her own right, is Leslie T. Chang. Leslie lived in China for a decade as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, specializing in stories that explored how socioeconomic change is transforming institutions and individuals. She has also written for National Geographic. Factory Girls is her first book.

Matt received his MFA from the University of Iowa’s Writing Program (other fine RPCV writers who graduated from this program are Richard Wiley (Korea 1967–69), Phil Damon (Ethiopia 1963–65), Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975–76), and John Givens (Korea 1967–69). At Iowa Matt was an Arts Fellow, a writer-in-residence at the Museum of Art, and a postgraduate Writing Fellow. Today Matt is a fellow and student at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. On June 9, 2009 Peace Corps Worldwide published an interview I did with Matt about his book. 

In the interview I asked Matt what other Peace Corps memoirs he had read and he replied, “Well, I’ve read Peter Hessler; George Packer; Tom Bissell; Sarah Erdman; Norman Rush; Tony D’ Souza, just to name a few. I think as someone who wanted to write about their Peace Corps experiences, it was important to read books similar in vein but also know when you can tell you’re being too influenced. So, for example, when I was reading Packer’s The Village of Waiting, even though I loved the book, I could tell that my brain was spinning a mile a minute with the similarities of our experiences, our beginnings, and I needed to put it down.”

One book that he didn’t mention was Mike Tidwell’s (Zaire 1985-87)  The Pond of Kalambayi: An African Sojourn. There is a lot of Tidwell’s experiences in Matt Davis’s wonderful new book, two PCV writers who get to the end of the earth, physically and mentally, then turn around to save themselves, tell their stories, and make their way back  home again.

Unlike Tidwell, but like Hessler, Packer, and Bissell, Matt Davis returned to his country of service to find, if anything, what he had left behind. The book ends with Davis summing up, “Now, at the ripe old age of thirty-one, I still think that those two years were like the flutter of an eyelid, and that those times are like a slap of a book’s pages when the covers are closed shut, the story done.”

True enough for Matt Davis, but perhaps not so true for his readers. These stories linger. And as Faulkner once wrote, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

You can read more about Matt, including where he will be speaking, at his website.

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Click on book covers or bold book titles to order books from Amazon and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance.

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Cold Snap: Bulgaria Stories
by Cynthia Morrison Phoel (Bulgaria 1994–96)
Southern Methodist University Press
June 2010
208 pages
$22.50

Reviewed by Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991–93)

Good fiction works from the inside out. Yes, The Sun Also Rises is a novel about post-World War I Paris, with a little Spanish bullfighting thrown in, but it’s essentially and vividly the story of a man (Jake Barnes) who loves a woman (Lady Brett Ashley) who will never be his. It’s the story of his heart’s anguish and his soul’s quest for tranquility. (Fishing helps.) It’s the story of unrequited love and all its attendant miseries and jealousies, as well as its rare moments of levity. (Alcohol helps — temporarily, anyway.)

Cynthia Morrison Phoel’s delightful first collection of stories, Cold Snap: Bulgaria Stories, is certainly about Bulgaria. Within the book we have Bulgarian geography, principally the town of Old Mountain. We have Bulgarian words (Molya ti si! Vsichko e nared!). We have Bulgarian dishes and a sprinkling of Bulgarian history.

But reading the stories, one doesn’t think first of Bulgaria. One thinks: When will the heat come on?

The annual turning on of the heat in Old Mountain is the narrative pivot in the book’s final story, the novella-length title piece, around which revolve the continuing stories of half a dozen characters introduced in the previous five stories. Temperatures must be below freezing for four consecutive days before the heat is turned on, and so early winter becomes an endurance test, featuring sweaters and space heaters and lots of shivering. But the story isn’t only about the literal cold. It’s an endearing ensemble piece about the coolness and warmth of the characters we’ve come to know and like and how they feel toward each other and themselves.

The motif of warm and cold is present throughout the collection. In the opening story, “A Good Boy,” we see a marriage go cold when a husband trades his labor for a satellite dish. His television immediately becomes the household’s dominant figure, alienating his wife and confusing his son. (With satellite TV comes, among other kinds of entertainment, pornography — not exactly the ideal form of sex education.)

In “Galia,” the title character is, for a long time, a bemused witness to her own life. Everything is provided for her — from grades in school to a husband. But on her wedding night, she is faced with an opportunity to act on her own behalf — and with someone who isn’t her husband. Good storytelling involves putting characters in situations in which they face meaningful choices, and Phoel skillfully brings Galia to a crisis point. She does the same with Galia in the concluding story, and this doesn’t seem like a trick already performed. but like a portrait expanded and made more vivid.

If Lorrie Moore, the author of the seminal short story collection Birds of America and several other funny and unsettling works, had served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bulgaria, she might have written “Never Trust a Man Who.” In this story, Phoel hilariously shows what an English class in a foreign country can do with a hodgepodge of colloquialisms, a Halloween essential, and a touch of British slang (italics hers):

“I’m not feeling well today.”
“You’re looking a bit green around the gills.”
“Well, I just puked in the trash can.”
“You don’t say. Did you catch that nasty bug that’s going ’round?”
“No, I ate a jack-o-lantern.”
“Blimey!”

As with Moore’s stories, there’s something stirring beneath the funny surface. In this case, it’s the protagonist’s first-hand understanding of the complexity of love.

It’s natural to want to compare Phoel’s writing to Chekhov’s, and not only because of the relative closeness of Bulgaria to Russia (they’re on the same side of the world, anyway, three countries apart) or because one of Phoel’s minor characters is named Boris or because one of her star-studded blurb-writers did (”Cynthia Phoel’s collection has a Chekhovian feel…” says Lee Martin). No, it’s because there is a similarity in the sound and subtlety of the writing. If you sleep through one of Cold Snap’s sentences, you’re liable to miss a nuanced turn in a character’s psychology. With Phoel’s work, as with Chekhov’s, it pays to pay attention.

A good work of fiction is both universal and particular. And so it’s always about the heart in conflict with itself (to quote one of Hemingway’s contemporaries) and always about the place where it’s set. Phoel’s characters have compellingly conflicted hearts, and her Bulgaria is memorable for its (turned on, at last!) radiators — and much more.