I enjoyed this coming of age novel set in the 1980s in the Soviet Union. Gorcheva-Newberry really captures both the universality of the teenage experience and the particularities of the setting. Anya's parents can't tell her anything, she has to experience everything herself, like every teenager everywhere, but her parents' work lives and political views, and especially her grandmother's survival of war and famine are specific to the location.

I wonder if reading Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard first would have deepened my reading of this novel?

The present day story line felt a bit rushed to me and the characters less developed, but that's a small quibble with an enjoyable novel.

It was a slow read for me, maybe because of the sadness woven throughout. I found the setting really atmospheric and memorable; I will remember the batches of apple jam cooked in the small dacha set in the orchard!

This was such a beautiful story but I did get lost in it at some parts. It had alot of details and I did learn so much. It made me cry with how heartbreaking it was too. I would definitely recommend. Thank you to netgalley for the ARC.

The Orchard by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry

This story would be depressing at any time but more so right now. Anya and Milka are coming of age in 1980s USSR. Anya, who lives in a tiny apartment with her parents and her maternal grandmother, has grown up on the stories her grandmother tells of barely surviving starvation during the blockade of Leningrad. Anya's four year old uncle did starve to death and Anya's grandmother had to do the unthinkable to save Anya's three year old sister. Anya's parents tell of the hardships of surviving WWII. But what is there to look forward to now? Anya's parents work very long hours and now are being made to work even longer hours, while what meager supplies that they have been able to get are shrinking. Anya has this same future to look forward to, a drab gray existence where the goal is to find a man who works and brings home what little money he makes. Whether he beats her or their children does not matter, having a man is what matters, having babies is what she is supposed to do.

The afterword is an important part of the story, for me. The author lived through this time in the USSR, heard the stories first hand, knows what she escaped and what was really happening then and now. This was not an enjoyable read and this book was especially hard to read against the background of current world events. It seems some things never change or else they just get worse.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for this ARC.

I think the best word I can use to describe this book is melancholy. There was such a deep sadness throughout. While there is sometimes beauty in sadness, I just felt depressed reading this. So yes, technically good, but really had to push myself to get through it.

4.5 STARS

Loosely based on Aton Chekov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD, the story follows Anya and Milka as they grow up in 1980s Moscow and at Anya's family's dacha (country house) just outside the city. The early chapters are filled with childish joy on the girls' part but tinged with the reality of living in Soviet Russia as Anya's parents discuss their history and living situation. When the girls reach high school, the USSR is on the verge of collapse. Joined by two classmates, Trifonov and Lopatin, the friends grapple with the changing political environment in which they live and their own coming of age. When a sudden tragedy strikes and reveals long-held secrets, the foursome fractures.

Part two of the book jumps forward in time and we find Anya living with her husband in America. When her parents tell her that a company headed by Lopatin is trying to force them into selling the dacha and cutting down its orchard, Anya returns home and confronts the past she buried there.

This book is beautifully written, heartbreakingly sad, and also somehow hopeful. If you enjoy coming-of-age stories filled with complicated relationships, I highly recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ebook version of this book for review!

The lives of four teenagers, their intimacies and failures, in Russia, 1980's forward.

Touching, aching grief and loss. I loved this one. The way nature is woven into characterization is immaculate.. Absolutely gorgeous writing and wonderful atmosphere. Recommended to anyone craving something beautiful.

Coming of age in Russia in the 1980’s, we get to know four friends as they navigate their lives amidst a turbulent government. In part two, we are with the narrator 20 years later as she reconnects with a new Russia after living in America.

The first part of this novel meandered. I was drawn to the characters but wasn’t completely captivated by them. I was much more engaged during part two, as Anya comes to terms with her old life and the friends of her youth.

I found myself underlining passages. There are parallels to Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard which were lost on me because of my unfamiliarity. I really appreciated understanding a snippet of the era. Overall, I have mixed feelings about this novel. If you are interested in Russia and are willing to take a journey through some teen years, this could be for you. Must be able to handle dark and depressing circumstances.

A fascinating, intimate look at "Generation Perestroika" that came of age as the Soviet Union collapsed. This novel vividly portrays a teenager, Anya, and her three friends as they get into mischief and navigate life in a changing Russia, struggling to understand their place in the world. Ultimately, their mischief leads them to dark ends, just as the world feels like it is crumbling around them. Though this novel wrestles with heavy events, the writing is not very sophisticated and was largely driven by dialogue. Overall, I wish there were more literary elements and a more subtle treatment of growing up, but I still enjoyed learning more about Russian culture, outlooks, and ways of life.

Thanks to Ballantine/Random House and NetGalley for providing me with the ARC!

This was a beautifully written coming of age story but I did get bogged down in some areas. I learned a lot about Russia and it’s people. It was heartbreaking at times.
Many thanks to Random House Publishing and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Orchard by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry

This captivating story will draw you in and not let go until the end. A bonus is that the writing is phenomenal. An inside view of growing up in Russia in the 1980s is narrated by Anya, a young girl like any other.

Anya and her three friends go to school, hang out, experiment and are inseparable. Dreams are shared. Lives are compared. Life in Russia is hard. There is little food or comfort, but then everyone is poor. Rulers come and go with new promises which are never kept. Regimes make no difference.

The author creates in depth characters and scenes readers can visualize. Anya’s family dacha, or summer cabin, has an apple orchard which is a central focus in the story.

This novel will not disappoint, but rather, will enrich your knowledge of a country and life unlike your own.
#Ballantine#NetGalley

𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐑𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐬, 𝐰𝐞’𝐝 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐭 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐬𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐨𝐧.

Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry has become one of my favorite authors. I loved her stories in What Isn’t Remembered, it’s a book worth adding to your reading collection. Kristina’s debut novel The Orchard, is about four teenagers, thick as thieves, on the cusp of a new world. The Soviet Union is on the verge of collapse, a whole new life is about to unfurl before them. One where you don’t just marry, grow old and die loyal only to your country. Anya narrates from childhood and introduces us to her friends and family. A grandmother who knows the country is ‘too old and stubborn’ for change, that war wiped the land clean. She is one of the strongest voices in the novel. Milka is Anya’s best friend, no matter what the future brings, the only constant she is sure of is sweet Milka. Her parents often argue, her father full of patriotism loyal to the empire that chased the enemies out, suspicious of the West and if you believe in God, you’re a fool, blind to the horrors no higher being would allow to happen. Her grandmother believes in God, but at least Anya’s father respects her. Anya’s mother is disgusted by the state of things, hungry for progress and all things new. She is of the belief that one should be free to travel, own things they earn, not be kept in the dark. And don’t get her started on Stalin! Anya and Milka are a quiet audience to the fight that has always existed between them, it doesn’t matter. They are too busy with awakening sexuality and all the curiosities of the adult world that occupies the young.

They represent the youth of the Soviet Union, their desires, hopes, struggles. They are a generation moving alongside the ones before them dealing with the aftermath of constant wars. Everything is the same, people do not voice dissent nor openly behave differently, and certainly never question things. To Anya, everything is colorless. It seems their future is set- when the slow, old, worn-out women die, they will be replaced by girls like Anya and Milka and on and on until the end of time. That is their future, the only prophecy the people seem to be promised, a country without individuals. They dream about love and enjoy escape at her parent’s Dacha in springtime, where her parents care for an apple orchard. Anya is fascinated by an American girl, who writes a letter to their communist leader, and the culture of the united states. The children all have ideas of what Americans are like, how much happier and spoiled their lives must be by comparison to their own in a country of heavy censorship. What must it be like to live in a country that doesn’t live under strict adherence to a dictatorship? Is the West evil? But they are a strong people, capable of surviving the meanest turns of fate born out of nature or man.

When two classmates are invited into the girls lives, an intimacy forms. The strong, handsome Aleksey Lopatin, whose family is well connected members of the Communist Party and bookish, fragile Petya Trifonovis whose pursuits are of enriching the mind. Listening to rock music, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, exploring each others bodies, pairing up, reaching towards the future with wonderment of what will happen if it all collapses, they spend all their time together. As for the possibility of their country falling, it’s only a matter of when. Where will that leave all the people who remained loyal supporters? It is a story of powerlessness, hope and fear of change, a coming of age behind the iron curtain and what comes to pass when they are finally free. Anya’s future is in America as an exchange student, but not before deep grief enters her soul. She marries and remains in the USA. Years pass in America, she must return to help her parents who are being bullied into selling their dacha but it is the past the greets her and we learn what happened in her absence. Author Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, like the characters in her stunning novel, knows what it means to see her country and it’s purpose crumble. She is a Russian-Armenian émigré. How much of this novel, one wonders, is based on her own life experience? It is an interesting time, with so much happening globally, to be reading about people living in fear of their leaders and outside threats. Gorgeous writing. I can’t wait for her next novel.

Publication Date: March 15, 2022

Ballantine Books

Random House

I feel like this could have been a really important book. I would love to know more about the Soviet Union and the ideologies behind Communism. This book seemed as if it would provide me an opportunity to gain some of those ideas. However, this was so full of teenagers being teenagers and an unnecessary obsession with sex that I just cannot bring myself to read it anymore, It's not that I'm a prude and I get that the author was trying to show that live continues to be "normal" even in the midst of troubling times, but it was so over the top and didn't contribute to the story at all. It felt like the author missed a great opportunity.

A wonderful portrayal of the trials and tribulations of life in Russia as a teenager. This book will make you laugh and cry.

A breathtaking account of life in Russia. It has moments of joy and quiet acceptance. You are reminded of the disparity of lives caught in a country devoid of extravagance. It takes an ordinary outing of family and exhaults it to a celebration. It’s a moment away from the everyday. An everyday of sacrifice that we as westerners have a hard time reconciling. A rare opportunity to see a world in the eyes of a young person still eager to move forward. It was a revelation.

A searing and sorrowful novel about four teenagers during the fall of the Soviet Union.

Loosely based on Anton Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, this book, like his play, is a symbol of something that belongs to the past. A memory. A soul-aching loss. Whether it's the loss of a family member, a friend, a country, an ideal, or an apple orchard, it's the kind of loss that is intangible to all the characters in the story, but especially Anya, as societal change continues to usher its way through the 1980's and devastates everything that was familiar about Russia. About life and sex and love. About themselves, too.

This is a book which explores how not all change is good. How memory is indelible, treacherous, its echo embedded in the past even as it ripples ahead into the present and future. How coming of age can be crushing, cruel, tragic, unjust. How we mourn that which is gone from our lives and will never return again.

All in all, I'd characterize this as a fatalist story that stings with its blinding spurts of snow and melancholy. However, it's also a raw and beautiful rumination on how our feelings, our experiences, never die.

As Trifonov himself says, "Like our souls, they float somewhere in the universe."

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC!

3.5 stars

The Orchard covers four teenagers in 1980s Russia and beyond. It’s supposedly loosely based on Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. But having never read that story, I can’t comment on any similarities.
What I can say is that while Gorcheva-Newberry does a good job of defining the time and place, it’s a hard book to read. The writing was beautiful but dense. And the story is slow moving. And very, very sad.
As befits a story about teenagers, there’s a lot of talk about sex as it seems to consume a lot of their thoughts and actions.
I would say I appreciated this book more than I enjoyed it. I felt I learned a lot about Russia, especially the mindset of the people, both in the 1980s and in 2005 when Anya returned from America to see her parents.
It speaks to the loss of country and what it means for all of the characters, not just the teenagers but also Anya’s parents.
Make sure to read the Author’s Note, as she drew on her own life for this book.
My thanks to Netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Instagram!

This is an interesting look at the lives of 2 young girls coming of age in the 1980s in Russia. The author was inspired by speculating about her friends' lives. After noticing a parallel with Chekov's Cherry Orchard, I believe that she played up the similarities, but this honestly did not feel like a retelling. It stands pretty solidly all on its own. I really enjoyed this. It's dark, but not as dark as classical Russian literature. I definitely recommend this one.

Four teens in the 1980’s are all living in the last days of the USSR. However, none have the exact same experiences.

Told by Anya, whose parents have a dacha and an apple orchard and food to eat. Best friend Milka has nothing but an abusive step-father and whatever she can find to eat. Together with their friends, Trifonov and Lopatin, they make the best of the situations they are in. They may fight and bicker but they have each other’s back.

There is a heavy influence going on with Chekhov and his The Cherry Orchard. Anya’s parents talk of the collapse of the government and how bad things are going to be and have been since WWII. There seems to be a great divide in this country. Those who have it all and those who don’t. Even after the fall, there is so much more food and luxuries, however, only a few can afford them.

When an unspeakable event turns their lives upside down their friendships fade. Anya will move to the US and marry a good man and not return for 20 years. And when she does, not much has changed, just the players.

This was a very good story. Fiction, but not. Russia is such a secretive place and we know very little firsthand about life there. And they have their perceptions of other countries as well. This beautiful book made me laugh, it made me cry and I would read it all over again. These women were strong and made something out of nothing. I was very impressed.

NetGalley/March 15th, 2022 by Ballantine Books

THE ORCHARD
BY: KRISTINA GORCHEVA-NEWBERRY

From the very beginning there are beautiful prose with a sense of solitude to the Russian countryside where the narrator Anya describes with breathtaking language the apple orchard where her parents have a dacha. I wish I had highlighted the paragraphs about the many different varieties of apples the trees yield and the imagery of the many shades of red. Breathtaking! From the very beginning Anya describes her best friend Milka who is always by her side. The two listening to their only cassette of Freddy Mercury of the group Queen singing Bohemian Rhapsody and "We are the Champions of the World." The two of them singing along. Since first grade these two have been joined at the hip and they spend all of their time together at Anya's family Dacha during the Summer months in the orchard, swimming in the river and taking baths together. And they are also at the dacha sometimes weekends in the Winter months. I wouldn't quite classify this as a Coming of age story because in the background there are Anya's parents bickering about Russian history from the Bolshevik's murder of the Czar throughout Hitler's Nazi Germany and Stalin. How Anya and Milka read a newspaper clipping from a young girl from the United States, who innocently writes a letter to a Russian leader that gets published asking why does the Soviet Union want a nuclear war? Anya and Milka write a letter to Ronald Reagan asking questions. It never occurred to me before that their Country grew up fearing a nuclear war during the Cold war and that they viewed America from the identical lenses that we viewed the Soviet Union. The two grew up highly sexually curious and it isn't until 31% in does the two boys that they invite from school Lopatin and Trifonov over to Anya's. Never do they spend time at Milka's because she is embarrassed about her living quarter's. But really everything anybody owns isn't really theirs. It can be taken by the Soviet Union at anytime. Anya is reminded by her parents that any talking done in the home stays private and behind closed doors. Her Grandmother lives with them, but she is mostly quiet and except preserving food for Winter consumption she stays neutral and doesn't talk about politics like Anya's parents. The two boys and Anya and Milka become become a party of four. They experiment more sexually and become inseparable. This is classified or marketed as Historical Fiction and Literary Fiction which I suppose it's both. My favorite parts were the quiet prose describing the pure and frozen undisturbed snow flakes drifting off the trees and the food which describes making a delicious apple paste to the ripe apples being harvested. I have a better understanding of Russian culture when the Soviet Union was crumbling and disintegrating. From the Revolution to the possibility of being able to travel to all the places Anya and Milka have dreamed about.

Part Two: Anya moves to the United States and gets married and has a PhD and has to travel back to the U.S.S.R to sort out Lopatin's trying to buy the land that her parents Dacha sits in the Apple Orchard. He has become a business man. Everything is different in the Motherland. This is a jump twenty years later. I loved the writing and enjoyed the culture but I don't see this as anything that I could think of anybody that I know who would be grateful for me recommending it to them. I am not anywhere near a prude, but I think that the beauty of the writing gets a bit diminished by the sexual descriptions and some of the language being coarse which for me personally, weakened the parts that were poetic. This is supposed to be inspired by Anton Chekhov's, "The Cherry Orchard," but having read it I didn't see its parallel to his play, but that is just my humble opinion. Read other reviews before deciding on my interpretation as it could just be me. Solid Four stars!

Publication Date: March 15, 2022

Thank you to Net Galley, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry and Random House Publishing Ballantine- Ballantine Books for generously providing me with my ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.
All opinions are my own.

#TheOrchard #KristinaGorchevaNewberry #RandomHousePublishingGroupBallantineBallantineBooks #NetGalley