What people are saying.

  • . . . Alenyikov carefully renders in this Phillip Roth-writing-The Brothers Karamazov a post gay story . . . Alenyikov’s achievement in Ivan and Misha far surpasses his skillfully calibrated telling of a NY story of love and desire. Through his characters’ difficulties in distinguishing life from the hopes it holds out the author offers a reflective novel that acutely examines the question of what remains unique about a normalized gay experience.

    — Yoav Sivan, NY Gay City News

  • Many-faceted love is the book’s subject: from the intense and fleeting to bonds of familial obligation . . . Throughout the prose is plain, prophetic in tone. What happens to us when we love? How terrible are the deeds that love can make us commit? What does it mean to live for another? When the lines between love, madness, and death begin to blur, you know you are in Alenyikov territory.

    — Karen Laws, The Rumpus

  • There are tragic elements in the stories. There is death, serious mental illness and Aids in these stories. There is also a sheer love of life that comes strongly through. Readers of Russian literature will love all of the references and will have fun deciding if they agree with what the characters say about the various writers. The prose is beautiful. There are many exquisitely done images. I will restrain myself from comparing his work to the great Russian masters but this could be done without condescension or pandering.

    — The Reading Life

  • . . . Alenyikov weaves literary prose to poetry as if such a thing were easy to do. He exposes his characters — their quirks, their longings, their cares, their loves, their angst — with a lilt of pen rarely equaled . . .

    — George Seaton, Outinprint

  • . . . Word madness is a hallmark of the writing: lyrical descriptions of place, time, and events; touches of the bizarre; everyday humor; and a love of New York from Brighton Beach in Brooklyn to the gentrifying East Village delight with their clarity and detail. Written with sweetness, compassion, and great beauty. . .

    — Ellen Loughran, Booklist

  • “Michael Alenyikov’s Sorrow Drive is a remarkable achievement. Grief-struck and yet so full of life and love on every page, each of these four stories carry a great deal of emotional weight. Taken together the cumulative effect of the book is as glorious as it is sorrowful."

    — Peter Orner, author of Still No Word from You: Notes in the Margin

  • . . . Alenyikov’s richly detailed yet straightforward prose pulls us into the world the father and brothers have made for themselves in contemporary Brooklyn, capturing the jitteriness of Ivan’s manic episodes, the tensions of urban gay life, and the coping with family acceptance and AIDS. In one story, set in the week before 9/11, the mere dates on the calendar put readers on edge. The strongest story, told in Louie’s voice, takes us inside the infirmities, sorrows, and long perspective of advancing age. VERDICT Highly recommended . . .

    — Library Journal, Reba Leiding, James Madison University Libs., Harrisonburg, VA

  • “These four stunning novellas have an almost magical effect as Alenyikov masterfully weaves together disparate lives and universal themes into something approaching the sublime. He evokes the common goodness of people, as well as the common heartbreaking challenge that we all face and feel compelled to understand. Each story complements and clarifies the others in their exploration of family, of displacement and loneliness, of trying to find a way forward by looking back.”

    — Trebor Healey, two time winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award, author of A Horse Named Sorrow