Mark Budman's Page

Mark Budman’s "My Life at First Try," is smart and funny and compelling, and in an era when both the immigrant experience and the resurgent aggression of the once-Soviet Russia are central issues, the novel is timely, as well. This is a splendid debut by an important new American voice.

/Robert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize winner, the author of "Intercourse" and "Severance"/

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/From Publisher's Weekly:/

This blazingly fast and funny "semi-autobiographical" novel follows a Russian man's comically earnest pursuit of the American dream. As a child, Alex, living in 1950s Siberia with his parents and grandparents, sees a picture of his American-born second cousin, Annie, and he believes he has found his destiny. Throughout his formative sexual experiences, he fantasizes about Annie, who embodies the exoticness of Western culture and the wholesomeness of the American dream. By the late 1970s, when Alex's parents decide to decamp for the U.S., Alex packs up his wife and their young daughter, too, and after the trio land in upstate New York, Alex goes to work at the IBM-like HAL Corporation while his wife, Lyuba, an internist, takes longer to settle in. At first, Alex is content with his new freedom-loving democratic identity, but as his children grow and Lyuba becomes more independent the dream begins to lose its sheen. The novel is hilarious, eye-opening and, by the end, a little depressing. It's tough not to have Alex's buoyant energy rub off on the reader.

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/From Kirkus Review:/

An emigre and raconteur chronicles, in digestible bites, his life in Russia and America.Born in what is today the Republic of Moldova, Budman applies his memories of life in Soviet Russia and his sardonic observations of life in America to his witty semi-autobiographical debut. Utilizing the brevity of "flash fiction," the author lets his fictional doppelganger Alex reveal his story in pocket-sized segments, allowing him little more than a chapter or two for each of his 56 years, capturing both the significant turning points and the poignant minutiae of a lifetime's journey in an insightful running commentary. The youthful narrator is a sex-obsessed young man who knows to shout his opposition to the imperialists even in state-sponsored karate class but who also rightly fears the drudgery of work. "I just finished reading Dante's 'Inferno,' so I recognize Hell right away," he says of his first job. "I've abandoned all hope. I'll be lucky to get out of here alive." As time passes, Alex trains as an engineer, marries a girl named Lyuba and raises two daughters, all the while consumed with a healthy imagination and his ongoing attraction to his cousin Annie, who lives in America. Struggling to support his family, Alex schemes to move them to New York, where he becomes a drone for the HAL Corporation. With success beyond his wildest dreams behind him, the boy who only wanted to get a girl finds himself sad, lonely yet still archly comic, even as he tries to come to terms with a life passing him by. "Writing in a second language is supposed to be a torture," says Alex. "But I enjoy it. Maybe I'm a masochist." A funny, little-seen version of the American dream.

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/From Booklist:/

Readers who enjoy a fast-paced narrative will take pleasure in Alex’s inquisitive journey.