It’s hard to believe that this is Haley Tanner’s first novel. The ease with which she grabs the reader’s attention right from the get-go, right from the dedication in fact, is rarely the stuff of young debut authors ... Emotions rule this novel, but in a good way. There were many times when the emotions expressed proved so overwhelming that one simply had to close the book and push it away for a while ... A certain feeling of dread never quite leaves the reader, who turns each new page with the fear that something enormously tragic is about to happen to poor Lena.
Whimsical love stories are tough to pull off. But as in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, vibrant characters, believable romance and dark undertones make for a moving tale. The book’s contrast between childhood fantasy and the grim world outside tamps down the cutesiness. It helps that Ms. Tanner is such a strong storyteller, and her distinctive voice — winsome without being dopey — engulfs you immediately ... There are two love stories in this book: the one between the boy and the girl, and the one between the mother and the son. Each relationship jostles for space in a crowded Brighton Beach apartment ... Ms. Tanner reserves the abracadabra for Vaclav’s routines. She shows what love can do and also what it cannot.
Tanner writes in third person, in the fractured language of a Russian coming to English as a second language. In a lesser writer’s hands, this tactic would be profoundly annoying, but Tanner ably utilizes the narrative to illuminate her characters ... If Tanner falls down anywhere, it's in her rendition of Vaclav, who is almost too good to be true ... Lena is far and away the book’s most complex character, the axis which everyone else spins round ... If Vaclav and Lena doesn’t bowl you over with depth and complexity, it will win you over with the purity of its intent, its evocation of what for many readers is a foreign milieu, and its fervent belief in the possibility of happy endings.
Though Tanner’s efforts both to unlock the door of Lena’s past and to make way for a happy ending combine for a deus ex machina effect, she describes Lena’s trauma well ... Elsewhere, Tanner’s prose tries unsuccessfully to capture both precociousness and halting English. Why is it that pint-size protagonists must charm their grown-up readers with a prodigious vocabulary? ... Still, we come to believe in Vaclav’s determination and Lena’s longing ... When the magic enchants, we can ignore the machinery protruding from behind the curtain.
Vaclav and Lena, captures the slow, methodical thought processes of young children, the awkward diction of non-English speaking immigrants, and the hearts of its readers with a tale of unconditional love; of attachment, separation, and reunion; and of trauma and healing ... There appears a seeming dumbing down with the excessive repetition that is more like young adult than adult fiction.
...this is a love story, and these two keep faith over the years, with each building an emotional shrine to their relationship until a reconnection years later proves to be magnetic, stormy, and revelatory. If the final reveal doesn't live up to the emotional crescendo that's been building throughout the novel, readers will nevertheless be more than taken by the one-of-a-kind relationship between two magnificent characters.
The author captures the subculture of the Russian émigré subculture in New York with verve and realism but infuses her two leads with such innocence and zeal that they become impossibly charismatic by the story’s end ... These two graceful creatures must find some space between all their secrets in order to find happiness, alone or apart ... A terrific, enlightened debut that captures the fervor that hides in naïveté.
