"In a politically fractious America in which “bearing witness” has been attacked as a motive for art in recent years, emerging writers have nonetheless written boldly across divides of class, ethnic identity, and gender. Outstanding among these has been Anthony Marra, a young American author whose first two books are set mainly in Russia and the former Soviet Union. In A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Marra’s debut novel, three survivors of the Second Chechen War band together in an abandoned hospital. In 2015’s The Tsar of Love and Techno, linked short stories follow various characters’ dreams and dashed hopes from the 1930s to the present, and then beyond."

"The novel is set in three parts in the Ramsays' summer home, on the Isle of Skye. On the surface, Mrs. Ramsay — the devoted mother and matriarch of the family, and Lily Briscoe — a female artist committed to personal autonomy, stand in stark contrast of each other. Mrs Ramsay appears to have it all, but underneath, the responsibilities of being an ideal woman — a wife and mother — is slowly killing her. Throughout the first part of the book, Mrs. Ramsay is almost never without her knitting, a fact that becomes even more prominent in her absence, when the remaining characters return to the summer house after Mrs Ramsay’s death."