Jenny (Reading Envy)'s Reviews > The Time of Women

This novel is one I picked to read during the first quarter of Reading Envy Russia and did research on female authors publishing in the 21st century. The Time of Women won the Russian Booker Prize in 2009 and was translated into English in 2012.

The story is set in Russia in the mid 20th century, about a factory worker who is an unwed mother. She ends up living with three old women and together they try to navigate the bureaucracy to have enough to eat, to wash, to heat, but also to keep young Suzanna/Sofia at home. I liked how much it shows a daily slice of life for normal people with a little bit of drama, and the old women using their cunning to defeat the bureaucracy.

It's a bit fragmented, especially in library eBook form, so I sometimes struggled to figure out the narrator for a few sentences. The daughter, although she doesn't speak, sometimes writes/thinks in fairy tales in her head, and believes in a mirror world with a more traditional family. The mother is really the only one typically leaving the house both to hold down her job but also to do the shopping, accompanying the older women to the bathhouse, and negotiating for items they need.

I see that others have rated this quite a bit lower but I liked its unique elements.