Sentence by Mikhail Iossel is a daring and captivating exploration of memory, identity, and language. Each story—some barely a page, others sprawling over many—unfolds as a single sentence, and Iossel wields this form with remarkable precision. The result is a collection that feels both intensely personal and strikingly universal, capturing the absurdities, fears, and quiet defiance of life under authoritarianism.

What makes this book so compelling is Iossel’s ability to balance emotional depth with formal experimentation. His prose can be both piercingly precise and playfully self-reflective, offering glimpses of childhood in Leningrad, exile across continents, and the dissonance of past and present coexisting in a single consciousness. The narrative voice is wry, intelligent, and self-aware, inviting readers to witness not just the stories themselves but the act of storytelling.

Despite the challenging structure, there’s a heartbeat behind every sentence—moments of tenderness, humor, and resilience that linger long after reading. The brevity and intensity of each piece make the collection feel like a series of sharp, controlled pulses of memory and reflection.

For readers open to experimentation and interested in the power of language to convey the complexity of human experience, Sentence is a haunting, luminous, and unforgettable work.

Thank you for an advanced copy of this collection of short stories but it was not for me and I ended up DNFing. I think it’s great the author wrote a book in one sentence, but I couldn’t really get behind it - especially ones that were a ton of pages. Having the parenthesis throughout definitely threw me off and out of it.

***Arc provided to me by publisher in exchange for review***

This is a perfect example of a book that is for someone, but just not for me. I was expecting Sentence: Stories to be small snippets of fiction that created space for introspection and contemplation. Some of that was present here, but most of the stories were complete short stories told in one long run-on sentence- some 20+ pages long. I realized while reading the first one that I need periods.

There is no argument from me that Iossel is a talented writer. Even though I disliked the structure of the writing in this work, I still grew to enjoy the reading experience at times. For example, I really loved story 2 titled "Timelessness." This was more of what I was expecting the book to hold within its pages. However, story 9 titled "Pen Man Ship" was difficult for me to decipher how everything brought to the surface in this story was wrapped up at the end of this (too long) sentence.

I'm not one to not finish books, particularly arcs, as I realize that authors value feedback. However, when I reached page 80 and realized I still had over 100 pages to go, I just needed to admit defeat. I couldn't go on. I feel I read enough of the book to be able to provide feedback without finishing.

I do see that some people who are able to step outside of what a sentence is typically meant to do in a story and just fully delve into the flow of Iossel's stream of consciousness will be able to find more enjoyment in this work. The structure of the writing just completely took me out of the story, and I didn't find the concentration required to force myself to continue worth the pay off that I wasn't sure I would get in the end. As I said in the beginning, I just have realized the value of punctuation.

Sentence
Author: Mikhail Iossel
Source: NetGalley
Publication Date: August 16, 2035

Sentence is a compilation of 38 stories using one sentence per story. The first story is one running sentence over 25 pages. This is sometimes referred to as flash fiction, and it is a unique concept. The cover was beautiful, but the idea did not fit me. So much is left to the reader’s interpretation of the story because it’s hard to keep track of 25 pages of one sentence, and added to that is the fact that it is primarily set in the USSR post-war. Soviet literature differs from English literature, and adjusting to the different format would take some time. I’m sure some people will find this intriguing, but it was a DNF for me at 39%. I’d love to hear thoughts from any other readers. The cover was beautiful, and I am glad I gave it a chance.

#Sentence #glashfiction #literaryfiction #USSR #soviet #onesentence @netgalley @llp_mtl #DNF

I received a complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own. Thank you to the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for the opportunity to read this novel.

Did I just read a 25-page story composed of one very long run-on sentence? Yes, yes, I did. Is this just one of the stories? Also, yes. Did it work?

Sentence by Mikhail Iossel is a collection of short stories and essays, all written in the form of one long run on sentence. The entries can be as short as one paragraph or a multi-page story. Still one long sentence using interjections, parantheses, em dashes, etc.

The author himself is an ex-Soviet Jew who's since then moved to the US, and then Canada, where he now works as a Professor of English. In one of the entries, he shares that the reason he sees challenging himself with writing these run-on sentences as a celebration of how far he's come from having to use shorter sentences when he first moved from Russia to where he is today.

As such, the stories and entries themselves are to a great extent autobiographical with the author revisiting shaping moments from his past in a chaotic stream of consciousness in the form of run-on sentences.

I must commend him for his creativity. This certainly works and is very successful, in my opinion, when it comes to communicating to the reader feelings of confusion, loss, frustration as well as the transience of memories and emotions.

I especially enjoyed the first story. It didn't actually take me that long to get used to the writing and I enjoyed how the story unfolded and the emotions it stirred.

Unfortunately, from there, it felt like all the following stories or essays became very repetitive. Mixing the style, which requires the writer to hop from statement to another and interrupt their own flow, with the autobiographical subject matter that often had the author repeating elements from his life, caused the whole thing to become more and more exhausting. I ended up having to give up in the last thirty pages or so.

I understand that one major theme of the story is identity. But I think it needed to be covered in a different format. If every story covered a different person, life and voice, I think it'd have been a lot more enjoyable.

But at it stands, it unfortunately became tedious and I couldn't keep going despite enjoying the first couple entries.

How delicious this book was to me! The author's dry wit and quirky perspectives on life had me chuckling while, at the same time, I was pondering the meaning of life and what comes afterward. Primarily set in the USSR, Sentence brought back a part of my personal history as a young girl growing up during the Cold War which I hadn't thought of in years. Overall, I found it very readable and highly enjoyable in a serious and even a bit morose way.

I don't know if I understood this at all but I enjoyed it. I read a lot of Russian literature when my daughter took a class and kept talking about it, and this had the same feel. It was clever to make each section/story one sentence; it added to the meandering, sort of dreamy feeling I get when reading Russian lit. And that felt even more so because the stories were all different lengths.

Unfortunately, I gave up on Sentence by Mikhail Iossel 39% of the way through. This felt much more like a published writing experiment than a collection of short stories. Some of the stories are upwards of 25 pages; some are no more than a third of a page; each of them is one single run-on sentence. Iossel definitely challenged my notion of what a sentence is. I am tempted to (though I would not actually) argue that the stories are not actually one sentence, but rather many sentences strung together through grammatical loop-holes such as parentheticals (which contain totally separate thoughts), em dashes, and ellipses. I did not notice any semicolons or colons, and I wonder if Iossel has drawn for himself some line around what a sentence is.

For what it’s worth (and it’s worth a lot), Iossel is clearly capable of precise, emotionally accessible prose. Read this passage from the story “Pen Man Ship”:

“all that insanely cruel and actually just insane Soviet history, Lord almighty, of which neither I nor other kids living at the apartment are aware of in the slightest, obliviously, blissfully, happy, running up and down the corridor of horror”

You wouldn’t expect that a writer who can write so evocatively would come across as tentative and self-critical as the narrative does at times. In interrupting his own narrative (like this, and he will go one to talk about something only vaguely, if at all, relevant to the subject matter or even criticize his use of a word, and it might last for up to a page and a half) he comes across as unfocused, rambling, and insecure. I assume that he is not, as Iossel has no reason to doubt or undermine the importance and power of his obviously impressive mind, but he did come across that way to me.

I think that this book would be worth reading for someone with well above average reading comprehension, a high tolerance for voicy narrators, and a curiosity about Iossel’s story as “a former Soviet-Jew” (his words). Unfortunately, I could not get past the experimental writing style to really sink my teeth into what he has to say. Still, I applaud him for defying linguistic expectations, trying something new, and committing to it wholly. Only in this way can language be deconstructed and rebuilt into something more universal and inclusive of all truth.

Thank you to NetGalley and Literary Press Group of Canada for the advanced reader copy! All thoughts are my own:

While I appreciate the endeavor of writing a book with one sentence chapters like this, I think the form fell flat. Much of the longer chapters tested my patience and made it hard to keep up, or even want to keep up. It felt, at time, aimless, other than the aim of keeping it to one sentence.

Overall, not terrible. It just felt like the only goal was to make each chapter a sentence, but really no true cohesiveness to the book to keep the reader wanting to continue. Just not one for me.

Sentence is a sharp, haunting, and quietly furious collection that left me stunned. Mikhail Iossel distills life under authoritarianism into brief, razor-edged stories that somehow manage to be both deeply personal and universally resonant. Each piece is short—some barely a page—but they land like punches, precise and unflinching.

There’s a bleak humor running through the collection, the kind that comes from living in a world where truth is dangerous and language is always loaded. Iossel captures the absurdity, paranoia, and quiet despair of Soviet-era life, but there’s a beating heart behind every sentence—sometimes defiant, sometimes aching, always human.

What struck me most is how much weight each story carries. There’s no excess here. Every word feels earned, deliberate. And despite the grim subject matter, there’s a strange kind of hope threaded through the darkness—a belief in memory, in resistance, in telling the story no matter the cost.

If you’re drawn to literature that explores power, silence, and survival with literary precision and emotional depth, Sentence is essential reading. It’s a testament to the power of the short form—and to the resilience of those forced to live between the lines.

In a Nutshell: A literary collection of one-sentence stories. Not microfiction, unlike what I had assumed. Stretches the meaning of the word ‘sentence’. Hence this didn’t work that well for me, though I appreciate the creativity.

This book contains 38 entries, each written in a single sentence. In my ignorance, I thought these would be microfiction stories conveying everything in a sentence. This is right and wrong. Every entry has just one sentence, true. But the sentence spans many lines, and often, even many pages.
The collection doesn’t have a fictional feel to it as the entries are based on the authors’ musings and memories of his native Soviet Union and his observations on general human behaviour. The author had emigrated from Soviet Union to USA at the age of thirty, so his reminiscences of his earlier life are from an adult perspective and not necessarily full of nostalgic longing like some people’s fond memories of their home town would be.
A few of the “sentences” truly tested my patience and comprehension. The very first entry is 25 pages long. 25 pages of just one sentence! Creative but also taxing to focus on, all the more as you see just one endless chunky paragraph page after page. Just in case you are wondering how exactly one sentence can extend to 25 pages… there are loads of ellipses, comma splices, and parenthetical interjections in addition to the grammatically correct dependent clauses. These lengthier entries feel like you are listening to someone’s ramblings about something from their past: it might contain interesting moments but overall, it is one messy, unstructured narration.
Some entries are really deep and introspective, but some go too philosophical. Philosophy doesn’t ever work for me, so this further increased my disconnect from this collection.
I attempted to follow my usual method of rating the entries individually, but after just a few pages, I realised that I simply wasn’t able to concentrate on the longer “sentences”. I kept zoning out after every few lines. Only five stories made an impact on me: Road Long, Rain, Birds, Finishing Sentence, and Worded World. Not surprisingly, all of these were relatively minuscule.
Perhaps those who enjoyed Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand would love to give this a try. I still remember how lengthy her sentences were. In fact, one paragraph was nothing but an extended sentence of 1000+ words. (I stopped counting after 1000.) This book isn’t as poetically written as Tomb of Sand, but it is just as meandering.
Not my cup of tea. I appreciate the imaginativeness of this endeavour, but the execution would probably work better with those who enjoy stream-of-consciousness style writing.
2 stars.
My thanks to Literary Press Group of Canada and Linda Leith Publishing for providing the DRC of “Sentence” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book .Sorry this didn’t work out better.

Every once in a while, a book comes along that impacts you heavily and makes you really feel something. I don't know what I did to deserve this book coming across my NetGalley explore page, but god, I'm glad it did.

Thank you to NetGalley and Linda Leith Publishing for the ARC in exchange for my review. And thank you to Mikhail Iossel for writing something that spoke to my soul (yes, I know that is dramatic, but I stand by this). I have never stopped reading an ARC halfway through to purchase myself a physical copy, but I did for Sentence.

Five enthusiastic stars from me.

I added this book to my NetGalley shelf completely on a whim - the cover was pretty and the author had a Russian name and that was enough for me to feel interested. For context, I lived in Russia during a formative time in my youth. For me, Russia oscillates between a nostalgic dreamland and a looming global threat. The feelings around my happy memories and terror of Putin are complicated.

This book is experimental and unique - each chapter is one sentence long. Sometimes this is a rambling sentence with self deprecating interjections from the author, and sometimes it's a poetic snippet. For someone who fought her way through Mrs. Dalloway, you'd think this wouldn't work for me, but it really did.

Iossel masterfully captured the nature of memories - the more you dwell on memories, the more memories come to you. There is a hovering theme of life and death and the human experience. There were moments where I genuinely laughed out loud, moments where I was hit over the head with nostalgia, and moments when I had tears in my eyes.

Perhaps this book resonated with me so strongly because I am dealing with feelings of listlessness and disenchantment with the country I happened to be born in. Maybe it's the bittersweet memories of my beloved Russia. Maybe it's because I have been contemplating the banality of life, the poshlust of humanity, the never-ending conundrum of my "purpose."

I don't know that Iossel will ever read this review, but if he does, I hope he knows that I am so glad he wrote this and shared it. It was therapeutic and poetic and important to me. To quote a Russian song (though it was tragically not sung by Mark Bernes): "Трудно высказать и не высказать
все, что на сердце у меня."

I eagerly await my physical copy of the book.

Iossel is, without a doubt, great at playing with form. This novella several creative methods to make each chapter one sentence. However, form fell to function here. Despite reading several linguistically styled books, I found myself consistently lost here, grasping at the central message.

The conceit of Sentence by Mikhail Iossel is, of course, that each story is one sentence. There are some virtuoso performances here--stories that go on for pages, weaving past and present, personal and political, memory and plangent observations of America's current political scene along with Russian historical event.

Most of the stories, however, are very short but vivid depictions of observed scenes or glimpses of the past.

The stories appear autobiographical and metafictional. The narrator comments (repeatedly) on what he has just written. I felt like I was watching a dance performance, with pirouettes and movement motifs. The narrator recounts memories of his childhood--which he describes as happy since children are predisposed to being happy and unaware that they way they live is anything but normal.

The narrator is self-deprecating with a wry sense of humor, misses his beautiful city of Leningrad, is an exile (several places, which correspond with the author's life (San Francisco, Montreal, and Kenya) as his homes--attached while simultaneously detached from wherever he currently is. Actually, my feeling is that he is always living in two places--the past and the present, memory and the moment. He distances from his emotions which range from sad to wistful.

In the first story, we meet two travelers on a train--an older man who is dying and a younger man who is fleeing Russia. The story sets the tone for the rest of the book. The past and present weave into and out of each other constantly--the narrator is himself the older and the younger man.

Although the tone of the book is melancholic the author's comments on everything he feels as he writes it (as well as on the quality of his writing as well) as well as the imprewssive intelligence of his thought process kept me from being overwhelmed by sadness. Sadness underlies all of the text but the literary performance is so impressive that I never felt overwhelmed by it.

A wonderful, wistful, fascinating book.

Sentence will be published on August 16 2025. I want to thank NetGalley, the publihser Literary Press Group of Canada | Linda Leith Publishing, and the author for giving me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed reading the little one liners in the book. They were great snippets and reminders. Thanks for a wonderful read.