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2nd out of 31 books
—
5 voters
How to Get into the Twin Palms
by
Karolina Waclawiak (Goodreads Author)
"Just as Anya reinvents herself, Waclawiak’s novel (her first) reinvents the immigration story... At its most illuminating, How to Get Into the Twin Palms movingly portrays a protagonist intent on both creating and destroying herself, on burning brightly even as she goes up in smoke."
-New York Times Book Review
It was a strange choice to decide to pass as a Russian. But it...more
-New York Times Book Review
It was a strange choice to decide to pass as a Russian. But it...more
Paperback, 192 pages
Published
August 14th 2012
by Two Dollar Radio
(first published July 10th 2012)
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This book reminds me of John Fante's Bandini writing - the loneliness that is constantly on the verge of despair, the sense of Los Angeles as a main character. It also has Fante's immigrant desire to be someone and something else and then getting frustrated when everyone else doesn't see what you are trying to be. However, Waclawiak definitely has her own voice.
When we are introduced to the main character we discover she immediately wishes to be anybody but herself, for about 5 or 6 reasons. We...more
When we are introduced to the main character we discover she immediately wishes to be anybody but herself, for about 5 or 6 reasons. We...more
A weirdly funny, yet strangely tragic story about an unemployed 20-year old single white female living off Fairfax in West Hollywood. This immigrant girl's sole ambition is to pass as Russian so she can enter the Russian club, the Twin Palms. She dyes her Polish blond hair all kinds of cheap ugly and then curses the yellow roots growing back. She buys lots of thin cigarettes that seem like Russian women, smokes a ton, and runs around a track until she barfs all over it. From her apartment balcon...more
I could not put this book down. I loves the voice and the feeling of aloneness and alienation and the added layer of despair from Los Angeles. It felt real and not made-for-tv. Every part of the story was believable, the characters made me like them and hate them and care about them.
I know this novel was purposefully dead-pan. Still I'd say that I was exasperated along the course of the read, for the protagonist's clueless idling presented in the mere accumulation of artless sentences. And now readers have to adore this as some sort of the hipsterdom in its height? At least that is how the novel is marketed. I really don't understand why, but if it really is, I just want to be counted out.
Waclawiak has a very visceral literary style, that feels refreshing and real. She describes very intimate details of sex and life vividly and unflatteringly. After reading How to Get Into the Twin Palms, I felt I had taken a journey in Anya’s body. I could feel her raw, burnt hands, her cut vagina lip, and her losing battle with her newly grown in roots, exposing her artificial hair color. However, as familiar as I was with Anya’s body I never reached the same closeness with Anja’s mind and her...more
This book looked at me from the shelf of my neighborhood library and whispered; "psst, hey, hey...you wannna read me" I took it home with me and dove right in. The story was intriguing to me, having lived briefly on the edge of the Russian district in West Hollywood, I felt like this story would provide me with some insight to the Russian American experience in L.A.
The narrator of the story is trying herself to be part of the Russian American experience, because we find out she is in fact Poli...more
The narrator of the story is trying herself to be part of the Russian American experience, because we find out she is in fact Poli...more
Our heroine, Anka (alias), seems uncomfortable with everyone and everything, especially herself. It makes for a rather uncomfortable read. It's a sad trip through a couple of weeks where she's unemployed and lost, with her only goal a rather strange one - getting into the Russian nightclub (Twin Palms) across the street. There are a few reasons she's denied entry, that she's the worst kind of outsider - she's too Americanized and she's also not Russian, she's Polish, which is even worse than bei...more
I have to say that I was intrigued by this book when I signed up to win it on TNBBC's blog. That intrigue made this book a quick read. I read it in about a day, as it really is a fast, easy, and fun read. It's a crazy story about Anya (not her real name), a Polish-American who isn't comfortable in her own skin. She wants to pass for a Russian (hence the name Anya) and get into the Twin Palms, an exclusive Russian night club.
I liked how this book wasn't really a happy story, but shows the darker...more
I liked how this book wasn't really a happy story, but shows the darker...more
This book stinks, and by that I mean only that odors permeate the page: Onions mixed with cheap cologne. Dried saliva. Dill and boiled potatoes. “Food smells from the neighbors tumbled through the walls. Chicken fat from soup and dried sausages mixed with urine from the pipes in the bathroom. The smells seeped into the beds, the sofa, and the carpet.”
A vivid sensory experience told by an outsider equally ill at ease in mainstream Los Angeles, in her pan-Slavic neighborhood, and with regard to h...more
A vivid sensory experience told by an outsider equally ill at ease in mainstream Los Angeles, in her pan-Slavic neighborhood, and with regard to h...more
Anya was a very interesting character. I could feel her desperation and her claustrophobic existence. I could not relate to her means of escaping that existence, but to her, living in the shadow of the Twin Palms, it must have come to symbolize her escape and she was willing to do anything to get there. I understood symbolically what Waclawiak was trying to do with the ending, but I always have a hard time believing extreme behavior from otherwise fairly normal characters. Yes, Anya was deperate...more
I'm not sure whether the brilliant cover art and the gorgeous rough cut pages biased me towards this book. I recently read The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson and questioned whether I would have liked it if someone other than Winterson had written it. Would I have enjoyed this book if it had grotesque cover art and was typeset in an ugly font? Maybe not as much.
Books this well designed makes me realise how important it is to ... design books this well. I liked closing it and enjoying the cov...more
Books this well designed makes me realise how important it is to ... design books this well. I liked closing it and enjoying the cov...more
I've been fortunate this year as far as good luck with first-time novelists. That luck continues with this book. Waclawiak has a spicy, humorous style of writing that worked well with this Polish immigrant surrounded by Russian immigrants story.
The main character of the story becomes obsessed with getting into a nearby Russian nightclub, the Twin Palms. She isn't allowed in by the doorkeeper in spite of her efforts to gain entrance. What follows is the story. But...lest you think this is a shal...more
The main character of the story becomes obsessed with getting into a nearby Russian nightclub, the Twin Palms. She isn't allowed in by the doorkeeper in spite of her efforts to gain entrance. What follows is the story. But...lest you think this is a shal...more
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Very mixed feelings on this one. Waclawiak does a heartbreaking job of depicting loneliness. Whether it is "Anya's" loneliness passing the time while unemployed in her apartment or driving around LA or Mary, the woman at the BINGO parlor where Anya "calls numbers" some evenings. Many of my favorite scenes from the book take place in or surrounding the BINGO games.
I didn't really like the staccato writing style of the novel - I found the jarring nature of the prose detracted from the story. Anya...more
I didn't really like the staccato writing style of the novel - I found the jarring nature of the prose detracted from the story. Anya...more
This was the type of book that I get to the end of and say "so?". What was the point? The last chapter recounting a story that the narrator's immigrant father told her about his marriage and leaving the village. How he and his wife walked through fields that had been burned after picking. How this meant a preparation of the soil for new growth. But to equate this with the narrator's story of her arson in the California forest or with her life was impossible to fathom. There was absolutely nothin...more
I love LA fiction but I think think this novel strained the bounds of the disaffected loner aspect of the genre. Not that there aren't disaffected loners in LA (and perhaps at a higher ratio than in other places), but the kind of alienation Anya possesses is bigger than her reaction to the environment.
Is it about being an immigrant? Could be. I suppose the irony was intentional but the fact that her approach to fitting in was to join in another immigrant group--one with more presence--was funny....more
Is it about being an immigrant? Could be. I suppose the irony was intentional but the fact that her approach to fitting in was to join in another immigrant group--one with more presence--was funny....more
from the publisher
Read 7/5/12 - 7/7/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers who have always wanted to be someone else and will do just about anything to become them
Pgs: 194
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Releases: July 17, 2012
Have you ever slept with a man that sort of disgusted you just to get something you want? Anya, a Polish-born, Russian-wanna-be will stop at almost nothing to get into the exclusive Twin Palms. Including pulling a man who smells like sour milk and may or may not be a local...more
Read 7/5/12 - 7/7/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers who have always wanted to be someone else and will do just about anything to become them
Pgs: 194
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Releases: July 17, 2012
Have you ever slept with a man that sort of disgusted you just to get something you want? Anya, a Polish-born, Russian-wanna-be will stop at almost nothing to get into the exclusive Twin Palms. Including pulling a man who smells like sour milk and may or may not be a local...more
This book was decent, but not great, or even good. It provided an interesting look at an immigrant struggling to fit in, as well as a look at LA, but overall, it didn't feel like it had much meat. The narrator is unsympathetic, and speaks frequently of unpleasant smells and tastes, largely related to her environment and the men in her life. When the end comes, little is resolved, and her actions seem unjust.
Not a bad book, but nothing I found special.
Not a bad book, but nothing I found special.
Bleak, this story of a lost young woman in the Russian enclave of Los Angeles during fiery Santa Ana season. Why, you keep asking yourself. Why does she do what she does, want what she wants? Very interesting.
Now, either I missed something or I'm dumb or there's a misprint (there are a couple of little ones) but there's a section in the middle, an episode in Poland with a family member, that comes on so surprisingly, I wonder if there's an introductory paragraph or sentence missing. Someone play...more
Now, either I missed something or I'm dumb or there's a misprint (there are a couple of little ones) but there's a section in the middle, an episode in Poland with a family member, that comes on so surprisingly, I wonder if there's an introductory paragraph or sentence missing. Someone play...more
1 like · like · see review
This is a remarkable immigrant story about how a desire for belonging can blind you. It's written in deceptively simple prose. The precision of the imagery, which never comes as effortlessly as it seems to here—the sense that a brilliant writer/editor must have pared down the writing to choose the spot-on detail—make this book especially stand out for me among the novels released this year. I wasn't immediately seduced by this book (perhaps because it was on so many end of the year lists that it...more
A wacky, wild book about a young woman with some serious self-esteem issues who has an affair with a wildly inappropriate Russian man. Very interesting portrait of a person caught between two cultures--the old world and the new--who can't seem to find her place in either. Also interesting was the portrait of a Los Angeles that few outside the Eastern European immigrant community know, and the heroine's very ambiguous feelings about the City of Angels.
This is an interesting book. It's easy to get frustrated by the narrator - which I think was part of the point. I spent the first two thirds of the book frustrated, then had to re-read the last third. But it did make me think, which is always good.
Really interesting to me considering I'm in Poland, and the narrator is a Polish immigrant. I was disappointed in the ending, her emotional response to the consequences of her illegal act.
Ahhh! I can't articulate why I loved this book so much, but I did. Read it in two sittings. It was short, fast, and took me to places I had never been before.
Very entertaining at first. This book probably merits four stars, but it left me with such a nasty, gritty feeling in the end (and that is probably why it deserves four stars, but I don't like nasty feelings, so I give it three stars!). You can't help but empathize with the main character at first, but as the story drags on, you realize the manipulative brat is responsible for her own sorrows.
1 like · like · see review
This book wasn't what I expected but I still enjoyed it. That being said, I didn't really understand Anya's obsession with the Twin Palms.
Maybe another time I would have enjoyed this book but not now. But I did finish it.
This felt different than other books I've read, and though I liked it, I think it's one that I have to read again to get the little details I missed the first time.
pretty terrific novel of longing and looking for a place to be, a person to be. our character anya, or is that REALLY her name, tries to pass, as russian, her being polish, but really her being usaer. so already things are turning upside down, passing being black passing as white, shhh, don't tell, and "polish", even though she's not "polish" anymore, she could never go back even if she wanted to.
so the twin palms is just down the street, and spoiler, she does get in.
but then she does burn down...more
so the twin palms is just down the street, and spoiler, she does get in.
but then she does burn down...more
Captivating debut novel! Finished it in one day.
I devoured this book - brutal, vivid and tragic.
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Karolina Waclawiak lived in Los Angeles for ten years, and while there, received her BFA in Screenwriting from USC. She moved to New York in 2008 to pursue an MFA in Fiction at Columbia and completed her first novel, How To Get Into The Twin Palms. She is currently the deputy editor of the Believer and is working on a second novel and several screenplays, including one in development.
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