Overview

In 1991, Lori Cidylo shocked her Ukrainian Polish-born parents when she told them she was leaving her reporter's job in upstate New York to live and work in the rapidly dissolving Soviet Union. For the next six years she lived on a shoestring budget in Moscow, in tiny, run-down apartments, coping with the daily calamities of life in Russia. Fluent in Russian, she rode public transportation, did her own shopping and cooking, and shared the typical Musovite's life-unlike most Westerners who were sequestered in heavily guarded compounds reserved for diplomats and journalists. As the country experienced its most dramatic transformation since the Bolshevik Revolution, she realized she had stepped into a fantastical and absurd adventure. Cidylo's wry, insightful account of what it was like for an American woman living in Russia is a dramatic tale full of insouciant laughter, in which vividness and immediacy shine on every page. With the sharp eye of an acute observer, she captures both the momentous events and the everyday trivia: how do Russians address one another now that the familiar ""comrade"" is pass; or, how do you find your way home in a city where the streets keep getting new names? As Russia even now continues to struggle with the Cold War's aftermath, Cidylo gives a delightful surprising, warmly human view of post-Soviet life.

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9780897337458

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Reviews

A fascinating glimpse of post-Soviet society during a time of turmoil and drastic change. --Library Journal Cidylo's light touch and wry humor make this a distinctive trip, offering insight into both sides of the formerly bipolar world. --Publishers Weekly A beguiling memoir . . . [Cidylo] serves up amusing slices of Soviet life. . . [E]vocative vignettes of ordinary life. --Kirkus Reviews Despite continual frustration with everyday life in Moscow (her search for a washing machine, for example, takes on the fervor of a quest for the Holy Grail), Cidylo retains her sense of humor and makes every effort to adapt. She aptly sums up a foreigner's perspective when she writes, 'Many of us don't realize just how ill prepared for life we are until we arrive in Russia.' --Library Journal The best of this fall's new travel books... --New York Times Book Review, Best Travel Books of 2001

Cidylo s light touch and wry humor make this a distinctive trip, offering insight into both sides of the formerly bipolar world. Publishers Weekly

Young women are particularly avid travelers. And they seem to be edging out their male counterparts: the 16-year-old daughter of a friend just went to France for a month with a school group composed of 28 girls and 4 boys. One can hazard a few guesses why this might be so: traveling is a subspecies of self-improvement, and a voyage out is not infrequently also a voyage of self-discovery, one that requires a lot of navel-gazing and journal-writing, activities that most young men, unless they're aspiring rock stars, are disinclined to pursue. Of course, older women also hit the road, and at any age women experience the adventure of foreign places differently from men. There are universal constants: every woman traveling solo is harassed in the same manner the world over. So common are the questions, the answers should be included in their own section in every Berlitz phrase book. Do you have a boyfriend? Do you want a boyfriend? Do you want to [insert lewd gesture here]? On the other hand, few people are intimidated by a woman alone, so doors and hearts are opened to her more often. The best of this fall's new travel books offer proof of all these arguments through a lively sampling of female pespectives. Lori Cidylo, author of All the Clean Ones Are Married: And Other Everyday Calamities in Mascow (Academy Chicago, $23.95), quotes Baudelaire, saying the reason she bought a one-way ticket to Moscow in 1991 was that she was afflicted with gout du gouffre, a taste for the abyss. Before that, Cidylo was working at a small newspaper in Binghamton, N.Y., covering stories that make aspiring journalists wish they'd considered a career in dental hygiene. The epiphany came when my editor sent me to Greene, another small town in the area, to watch a mule dive into a swimming pool. Cidylo arrives in Moscow two weeks before the collapse of the Soviet Union. She isn't fording swollen rivers or diving into lagoons teeming with leeches, but the challenges are just as stiff: she's testing her ability to survive in a country where, in a single day, a package of sausages goes from 1 ruble and 25 kopecks to 195 rubles, and where, over the course of a year, the names of many streets, squares and highways (and even some cities) are changed to reflect the new order. Often a street is renamed, but the old nameplate is still on the building and the new one hasn't been put up yet. Some streets have no name at all. There, on the facade, is a faint trace of the old nameplate, a spot where the paint is slightly darker, slightly cleaner...Walking down such a street is like reading an anonymous poem. No matter how lovely it is, it leaves you feeling a bit bereft. Cidylo has consumer as well as cultural adventures. She recounts with dry wit her encounters with an ultra-feminine translator named Lyudmila (who loves watching American moves not for the stars and their wardrobes but for the variety of sofas on display) and a proto-capitalistic drunk who sells light bulbs on the street (in the shops, a single bulb costs 50 rubles, if there are any to be had.) The only disappointment here is the lack of personal revelation; other than a mildly insufferable date with an odoriferous acquaintance name Boris, whose sweater smelled like a butcher's garbage can, Cidylo prefers to remain mum about her romantic escapades, something the book's waggish title sets us up to anticipate. New York Times Book Review, Best Travel Books of2001

<i> Cidylo s light touch and wry humor make this a distinctive trip, offering insight into both sides of the formerly bipolar world. </i>Publishers Weekly

Despite continual frustration with everyday life in Moscow (her search for a washing machine, for example, takes on the fervor of a quest for the Holy Grail), Cidylo retains her sense of humor and makes every effort to adapt. She aptly sums up a foreigner's perspective when she writes, 'Many of us don't realize just how ill prepared for life we are until we arrive in Russia.' Library Journal

Author Information

Lori Cidylois a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in theBoston Herald, theChicago Tribune, theEconomist, theLos Angeles Times,Newsday, and other publications.

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