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.