Before I Croak

by Anna Babiashkina

Five women professionals in their 60s living at an old-age home experience their "second youth" as they try to pursue their unrealized literary ambitions and start a literary magazine. This results in intrigues and jealousy, creative plans and frustrations, but also a thirst for life and love, hopes and disillusionments.
Their paths have crossed in the past leaving unresolved problems.

Genres: Fiction, Russia, Russian Literature

210 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Anna Babiashkina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This emotional and ironic written, heartfelt story touches a nerve readers. This is the life story of 5 modern women, born in Russia in early 1980th, whos lifes are connected to each other. They balance between all the trappings of modern success (marriage, house, children, career) and the wish to find, instead, what they truly wanted from life.
The cases of those woman are typical for nowdays Russia and also for woman in other countries and are well known by author, who for many years works for most popular russian woman's magazines. Late and unexpected love, recovering after broken hopes, difficult relationship with growing children, desperate attempt to save a family, seeking consolation in creativity.
By turns rapturous and rueful, this wise and funny story.

[Marja · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I missed something but I didn't know what to think about this. The author made some very good observations about life and people, but I was constantly a little confused by the story and the characters. I don't think I got the humor in the book but it was pretty entertaining nevertheless.

Since this book takes place in 2039 and all the people were in their 60's or approaching it, they would have been born in the 1970's or early 1980's, which makes them just a few years older than me and that was a very strange thing to grasp. It was like looking into my own future.

Weird reading experience but quite enjoyable.

[JC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't let the cover of this book scare you away. I was pretty surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did. The one thing to know going into this book is that it's written by a Russian author - that means it's going to be extremely detailed and wordy (everything that I've ever read by Russian authors is this way). At times it was hard for me to push through some of those paragraphs and details, but overall the stories were quite interesting. The translation was quite good as well (not to say that I've read the Russian version, but I didn't really notice many odd phrases or weird sentences structures). I could recommend this book - especially if you're a fan of classic literature, you'll enjoy the epic feeling going on here.

[Pauline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just wonderful! Part mystery, part comedy, peppered with witty and rather cruel observations on how selfish and irrational people can be, this is a real roller-coaster of a book. Spirited narrator Sonya Arkadyevna finds herself surrounded with "dull old ladies" and decides to upset the balance of the group by investigating the women's lives and finding out what hides behind their demure exterior... And she does - with very unexpected results! Every mystery unravels another one, drama starts hitting very close to home, and total chaos ensues. I really enjoyed the narrator and her shameless disdain for everyone else, her biting wit, and the vivid way she described her increasingly crazy antics. Loved this book!

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This first-person faux memoir is lighthearted and spunky as it delves into the hidden actions that created the life and circumstances of the protagonist. Witty, biting, and painfully honest in some places, it maps out quite a journey. And I enjoyed following the heroine (of her own story) down that path into the past and into the dark places of her own mind and history. Hopefully I will be just as peppy and full of life and fire right before I croak!

This book was won from the publisher through the Goodreads First Reads program. Thank you!

[Debbie Carnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book, I could really relate to the story (being of a certain age lol)

I laughed, I cried. This is a well written book with loveable characters.

I would highly recommend Before I Crook.

[Stephen Durrant · Rating 3 out of 5]

The strange and surprising entanglements among a group of aging residents in a retirement home somewhere near Moscow are amusing, to be sure, but for me the most poignant and enduring topic broached in this novel concerns the privileged status of the retired seniors' hobbies': as is the case of small children, whatever art or literature they happen to produce can only be praised. The narrator of "Before I Croak" is a retired journalist consigned a bit early to a retirement home because her son badly wants the Moscow apartment. She quickly learns that budding writers, scribbling away on short stories and novels, surround her in these new digs and that they would like her "feedback" on their fiction. Unfortunately for her, she is honest: "You have no talent," "your work is no good," she tells them. Such frankness is, of course, against the understood rule stated above and gets her into a heap of trouble--gosh, she is even beaten up! So that's the little I remember several weeks after finishing this novel . . . and perhaps remembered because I, as a senior citizen, would like now to feel myself "beyond criticism."

[Elaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just don't get the humour (??) in this book. Perhaps it just too "Russian" for me.