On the Golden Porch by Tatyana Tolstaya

On our first full day in Portland, we left our friend Alec's apartment in Southeast to roam the neighborhoods. Eventually, we made our way downtown and stepped into Powell's Books. It was exactly what we had hoped for: a city block of books. After navigating the floors, I settled on a bench in The Blue Room (literature) and opened a book called The Art of the Tale. Flipping through the collection of international short stories, I felt like it had a bias toward American writers. I read a few and the last one really caught my eye. I had never read anything by Tatyana Tolstaya and also had never put much thought into what writers the Tolstoy family might have produced.

The story is a magical recollection of a childhood in a small town near Leningrad. The characters are familiar not just from experiences but reminiscent of characters from Russian literature I've read. Since I read it I've tried to find her compilation of stories but I have yet to come across it.