The Last Chicken in America: A Novel in Stories

by Ellen Litman

"[An] elegantly constructed web of stories about Russian-Jewish immigrants....Warm, true and original."― New York Times Book Review In twelve "pristine, entrancing" ( Booklist ) linked stories, Ellen Litman introduces an unforgettable cast of Russian-Jewish immigrants trying to assimilate in a new world. Tender and wryly funny, these stories trace Masha's and her fellow immigrants' struggles to find a place in a new society―lonely seniors, families grappling with unemployment and depression, and young adults searching for love.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Russia, Jewish, American, Literature

236 pages, Paperback

First published September 17, 2007

About the author

Ellen Litman's first book, The Last Chicken in America, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A native of Moscow, she teaches writing at the University of Connecticut and lives in Mansfield.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Big Thanks to Dov Zeller for turning me on to author Ellen Litman.

I enjoyed Litman’s sassy, stylistic, scintillating prose. She adds freshness to the term comic-tragedy. I thought the stories were mostly hilarious and truthful.
I saw a few very negative 1-star reviews and I couldn’t for the life of me understand.
But —-I ‘think’ I do now. Apparently- several readers recognized real people( names changed), in this book and didn’t like Litman’s interpretation of their community and circumstances.
But...I don’t know the inside gossip about what’s true - or not. This book is written as a novel in stories.

These connecting stories had a quality - unique - but different - that I haven’t seen since reading “The Wonder Garden” by Lauren Acampora. ( another book of connecting stories where characters pop up again), that I loved.

The way Litman described the Squirrel Hill neighborhood- the location where the Russian Jewish immigrants have assimilated - was so vivid, I could totally imagine it. I’ve never been.
The universal human themes - struggles, family ,marriage, the complexities of adulthood, and how we are going to make through the day, unemployment, depression, divorce, wishing to get ahead, searching for love, etc. apply to all of us,
so these stories are not limited to being Russian Jewish immigrants. They could be about any one of us.....
However we get a great taste of the Jewish Russian sub-culture— it’s not all pretty - but there are fascinating characters - written with compassion ( I didn’t see any hatred at all) —making for wonderful contemporary reading.

Ellen Litman’s writing has an edgy energy to it - and I’d love to read more of her work.

[Dov Zeller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a quietly brilliant novelistic collection of connected stories. The stories take place in Pittsburgh, PA and focus in on Russian Jewish immigrants trying to build new lives there.

The prose is taut and yet conversational. It has a casualness and an intimate way of moving down the page, and yet it is razor sharp with its own kind of observational wit and philosophical wisdom.

There are twelve stories in all, some narrated by Masha, who could, I suppose, be considered the focal character. She and her family come to the states when she is in high school. Her mother suffers from depression or she is bipolar or has break downs because of trauma. It's unclear, but what is clear is that Masha and her father are left to do a lot of care taking and Masha's father, though he worries about her and what the repercussions will be of the difficulty of their lives, is often cruel and abrasive to her. Masha wants to study literature, but feels it is more responsible to study computer programming. She struggles to find ways to detach from her parents and yet sometimes the distance between them is painful and confusing.

Some of the stories are narrated in first person, some in a close third person, one is narrated in the second person. It was a bit confusing navigating time and space in this world and I think my experience of reading the book would have been improved quite a bit if the narrators and dates were included at the beginning of each story. But, even with a fair amount of confusion around characters and chronology, I'm in awe of the writing and storytelling, the hard honesty and startling tenderness.

Some of the themes of this book: marriages/romantic relationships and how strained and mediocre and messy they can be, and how hard it can be to stay, and how hard it can be to leave; immigrant parents trying to make sense of the lives of their kids, immigrant children trying to make sense of their often strained relationships to their parents; the inflexible expectations of immigrant parents; the immigrant struggle of not fitting in with one's 'birth' culture or the culture of one's newfound home; building a life and making choices between love/happiness and practicality/propriety; trying to find ways to remain involved with and/or to separate from a community that your parents are connected to but that you feel alienated from; watching your parents suffer and age/seeing their vulnerability; brokenness in many forms and repair in unexpected places and moments...

Here is my understanding of each story's narrator:

The Last Chicken In America - Masha
What Do You Dream Of, Cruiser Aurora? - close 3rd person, going about with Liberman.
Charity - Masha
In the Man-Free Zone - Natasha
Russian Club - Masha
Dancers - 3rd person close narrator, Tanya’s pov
Peculiarities of the National Driving- Masha
When the neighbors love you - Anya speaks in the second person
Among the Lilacs and the Girls - 3rd person close to Tolik (Masha's father)
The Trajectory of Frying Pans - Misha/Mike
About Kamyshinskiy - 3rd person, jumps around from family to family
Home - Masha

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of the way through this book I felt I was going to give it four stars, withholding a star for the downbeat nature of all the tales. The last three stories, and the grace-note at the end, pulled it up to five. They also made clear to me that this really is a "novel" and not just an anthology of related stories. (The subtitle is "a novel in stories" which assertion I've learned to be doubtful of. True, in this case.)

These are stories of the Russian immigrant community in Pittsburgh; and more specifically that of the Squirrel Hill neighborhood where I live. Many of the characters are Russian Jews, but once they had established a community in the neighborhood, other Russian speakers followed, and that's in here too. The stories focus on the disappointments and tensions in the characters, in the families, in the immigrant community, and between the immigrants and other Americans. They illustrate, with sometimes painful accuracy, the way we drift into major life decisions; the way depression and demoralization undercut our hopes; the various ways in which we have to "settle" in our negotiations with life. These elements turn most of the stories into tragic slices-of-life, fill them with the appropriate dose of Russian gloom.

There's a trick to the book, though. The positive bits happen between the stories, so the moment of despair in this story turns out to have been a minor sidetrack from the perspective of several stories later, when we'll discover that someone did get that impossible job after all ... though we'll learn it as a footnote to somebody else's moment of gloom. Oh, now those people own the house they used to rent two rooms in. Oh, she did go to Harvard after all. Oh, that couple got back together. Oh.

The main thread of the collection [and the opening and closing stories] are first-person stories from the POV of Masha, a teenage girl from Moscow, Jewish. About 17; and the last story seems to be about ten years later. Other stories are in third person, and one is in second person. The characters and stories overlap, but not too tightly. There's a lot of anxiety, failure, depression and gloom. There are also flashes of success, much of it very hard-won. What I especially admired was the capturing of the destructive, teasing, insulting, ever-ever-ever-arguing way the Russians have of talking to each other. (I've been listening to it for almost four decades now, and it's a delight to read it from inside, as it were.) Litman shows us its corrosive nature, but also the longing behind it, the teasing that it's often meant to be.

Speaking of the stories as stories, there are two in the middle ("The Russian Club" "Dancers") that are classics, and should be widely anthologized. Say I.

There are also wonderful little set-pieces of writing, some of which I've copied out to use as examples of How To Do This Right. For instance, take this characterization of a secondary character, in a single paragraph; from the story "The Trajectory of Frying Pans":

And then it was October and I was trying to date Sveta Metsier from Slavic Languages. We had met back in August but only gone out four times, due to Sveta's torturous suspicions. I called her to make dates, and later she called me to cancel them, because, she explained, I didn't really like her. She had a turned-up nose and light chubbiness, which I thought was sweet and earthy. But she hated it. She was angry at herself for her chubbiness, she was angry at Slavic Languages for being such a perfect yet impractical pursuit, and she was angry at America for anything she couldn't blame on Slavic Languages.

and here's the opening paragraph of the short story "Dancers"

They were tall, good-looking, and careless. They arrived unexpectedly, descended upon Tanya's life, took up residence in her apartment. They seemed instantly comfortable there, as if it were the most natural thing for them to settle on the living room couch of somebody's apartment in Pittsburgh. They were dancers and nothing could be done about it.

and in the last story there's a very memorable paragraph beginning, "Russian weddings are not like American weddings." which I will not quote because, really, you ought to consider getting a copy for yourself.

I respected the craft of these stories greatly, and increasingly admired them as I moved through. I ended up planning to teach from it, so, clearly, this is recommended.

And one last thing. I was sitting in a coffee shop in Squirrel Hill reading this book, when the fictional characters in "Peculiarities of the National Driving" must have driven up Murray (fictionally) past where I was reading (actually). It was an amusing realization, and then it occurred to me that I'm not sure I've ever had that happen with fiction before: where I was reading in the spot where the fictional event took place. Oh, I've been in the same city (I was reading Paris novels in Paris last September), or had Science Fiction characters look down on my continent from space, but passing me on the street?? I'm not sure it ever has, and I've been reading voraciously since the Khrushchev Administration. Hunh.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gotta be careful what you wish for, I guess.

I read this collection as part of my Chanukah celebrations! I have an annual tradition of reading one Jewish short story per each of the eight nights. In years previous, some of my reading has ventured into surrealism and such, and I haven’t enjoyed it. It’s part of the reason that this year, I chose a book more grounded in reality (it was also nearing the top of my GoodReads tbr. :P) That being said, I guess overall I found this collection to be mediocre. Probably the writing is more impressive than I give it credit for, particularly since English is Litman’s second language. I even have a specific example of something I liked down below. Maybe it’s just the repetition and the minutiae that I found to be grating after awhile.

I’ve been looking at a bunch of indie press short story collections lately, and they veer into either the surreal or the experimental. This collection, on the other hand, is a little bit of a plodding tale of Masha and her family, Russian Jewish immigrants who live in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. A couple of stories aren’t about Masha, and they are likely among my favorites…

…like “The Trajectory of Frying Pans,” about the flirtation between two Russian immigrants—one who is married to an American and the other who left his lover behind in Russia. This story, like a lot of the stories in here, is about the push and pull between two different cultures, and what it is like to exist in between them.

…and also “When the Neighbors Love You,” which introduces us to a protagonist much like Masha (teenage immigrant who far outstrips her parents when it comes to American assimilation…and yet she finds she can’t quite leave her insular community behind, even when her dreams might pull her in other directions.) I dunno, maybe it’s because this protagonist was a fresh face. Or the second person gave it more of a sense of relatability.

When it comes to the Masha stories, I probably like the final one, “Home,” the most. Maybe because so many of her other stories were moving at a snail’s pace, and in this one she’s finally out of Squirrel Hill, grown up and doing something different, if turbulent (and yet drawn back to that community for her best friend’s wedding.)

Judaism features into a few of these stories, particularly when the Russians go to the local JCC to learn English or partake in other social activities. There’s a definite foreignness, to forgive my word, when it comes to how they are Jewish vs the way Americans are Jewish, because Russian Jews couldn’t practice the religion. Litman brought it the most to bear in “Charity,” when a Jewish American woman hires Masha to be her underpaid babysitter. At one point she explains to her kids how American Jews “saved” Soviet Jews so that they could freely be Jewish…and yet this woman doesn’t even think to invite Masha and her parents to their Passover seder. Some well-deserved, subtle shade thrown there, Litman.

At the end of the day I don’t think these will stick with me. Though it had been awhile since I read contemporary Jewish Russian immigrant novel-in-stories, which seems to be a subgenre. Always glad to dip an occasional toe in.

[Trey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to come.

[Matthew Berg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The word that comes to mind in describing the construction of a "novel in stories" is delicate. The over-arching narrative structure unfolds slowly and skillfully over the course of the book and by the end feels not only natural but necessary. By switching perspective and focus, the author gives us a view of the characters not only internally, but in how they present to and are perceived by the world.

Taken individually, each story is incomplete. While one might end with a tender moment, the reader implicitly knows that tensions always return and the stresses of life will come crashing in again.

Taken together, the stories are still incomplete. Loose ends are left untied. Fates remain untold. Characters remain lost in their particular circumstances. But this, after all, is the human condition. Even death is not a resolution; our stories extend beyond us.

There is much to learn about the immigrant experience in this book, but perhaps the most important thing to learn is that there is no "the" immigrant experience. Rather, each person takes their own journey, with their character and their circumstances and their luck shaping it.

That is not to say there are not certain commonalities, though. While reading this I noted a number of similarities to other experiences I've read or had related to me. For example, how the freedom of religious exercise is something Americans are privileged enough to take for granted, or how the greater degree of acclimation by a younger immigrant can lead to an inversion of dependency - and by extension, authority - in the parent child relationship.

Humanity is fascinating, but complicated and often frustrating. This book illustrates that exceedingly well.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

Having emigrated from Moscow as a teenager in 1992, Ellen Litman has lived the life she so vividly describes in her debut, and she adroitly depicts the stress, underemployment, isolation, and sense of loss commonly suffered by new immigrants. Though English is her second language, Litman's writing style is graceful and clever. She paints a colorful portrait of a vibrant community, and Masha makes a charming, observant narrator whose subtle appreciation of the ironies of the American Dream provides a cohesive filament throughout the book. A few of the stories read "less like fiction than like notes for a longer work" (New York Times Book Review), but critics unanimously praised this collection of fresh and engaging stories from a promising new writer.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet collection of short, related stories about immigrants with varying degrees of ambition (romance, school, work), experiencing various types of failure. At times it was difficult to remember or figure out which character I was reading about. The same secondary characters and plot elements figured in almost everyone's story, and most of the characters have the same blunt, resigned tone. There are also some chapters that go a few pages before someone uses the main character's name. I don't really think the confusion was intentional, but it did give a sense of the claustrophobia of the mini-universe the characters inhabit.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a collection of loosely connected stories with the same cast of characters appearing/being mentioned throughout the book. Sure, I had to flip back to previous stories a few times to find out how various characters were connected to each other, but I found that charming rather than annoying. I disagree with other reviewers - I really felt that this was "a novel in stories." And I loved these stories.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. It's true that I liked the stories with Masha the best - the others just didn't seem as frank, personable, and funny (perhaps b/c of the change in narrator) - but I also like that this collection is about a whole community instead of a single character. I liked that the characters come and go in the stories, alternately as friends or daughters or whatnot depending on whose story was being told in that particular chapter.

[Marissa Morrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories really capture the joylessness of living in Pittsburgh! It was interesting to read a book with copious references to such Squirrel Hill locales as Giant Eagle, Schenley Park, and Hillel Academy (where I used to work)--not to mention shopping areas like Monroeville and the Edgewood K-mart.

[Renée · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Litman's first book, a "novel in stories" (which is more a collection of linked stories), she writes with grace, precision and compassion. Her rendering of Squirrel Hill, a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, and the Russian immigrant community that comes to this area presents an important texture to the collection, making the neighborhood itself like a character.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

a charming, sweet, sad, touching book. a novel in short stories about russian immigrants in pittsburgh. written by a russian immigrant, but the elegance of her language would never give it away. it's her understanding of the culture and the experiences that show it. really well done.

[LeLe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellen Litman gives us the ultimate difference between American and Russian values; the Russian immigrants in her stories are torn between their small community fatalism and the larger American optimism that overwhelms them.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the way each chapter could stand alone as a short story but also wove together to form one solid novel. It is worth a read for it's themes on personal and familial relationships, as well as what it means to be a new member of a foreign group merging with American society.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hovering between three and four, some stories much stronger than others. Would not call this 'a novel in stories,' just linked stories. But I realy got fond of a lot of people in this Pittsburgh Russian immigrant community.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Things that I like include good prose, Squirrel Hill, linked short stories, writing about the Russian-Jewish community, and chickens. You can see why this would be a winner. Realizing that Ellen Litman's first language is not English makes me feel terribly shabby about my own writing style.

[DilanAc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A writer with talent. A good first book. although I am a little tired of immigrant coming to age stories there was something especially touching about the family relationships, the earnest attempts at intimacy, the squabbles.

[Gila Gila · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to this collection of short stories expecting to love it; perhaps that’s something I should watch out for. Isn't disappointment the most likely result? Still, when I read that The Last Chicken in America wove a connecting thread of stories about a community of Russian Jewish immigrants now living in an American suburb, I was immediately in. I thought of Natasha, David Bezmogis’ unforgettable debut collection on a similar theme, I thought of certain Nathan Englander stories. I thought about my Russian Jewish ancestry. Favourite stories, my entire familial history, that’s not too much to heap upon a book by an author I’d never read is it? Nu?

H'okay, so maybe my reaction to the stories is unfair. With a quick apologetic glance over my shoulder, here goes: I didn’t entirely dislike The Last Chicken in America, but I found it an extremely frustrating read. There's an overwhelming repetition of theme and story arc. Time and again, whirling in the combined Pittsburgh and Moscow snow, we have the existential Russian Loneliness and Sorrow, the depth of which cannot be compared to any other (an expat professor tells his admiring immigrant student, Masha, of how he misses the “Russian brokenness … the core of the Russian soul.” In Russia, he tells her, "We live on the brink of being destroyed." She knows immediately what he means.) End scene. On to story arcs - or arc, as they rarely differ.

From one piece to the next, we are met with the bitterness of attachment. For the women, to love is to lose – or, in almost every chapter, to find hope, and then lose, give up entirely. For the men, to love is to belittle or to leave (at best, to ignore). There are a couple of older characters who have outlived their spouses, but for the most part, the stories take the same snapshot in different houses. Wives or girlfriends whose days are void of happiness, who would leave if they could, should leave for the way they are treated. Egoist husbands and other men appearing and vanishing, with either straying eyes or a complete lack of understanding or even interest in the women they’re attached to (or not attached to). The married couples have kids, a group of Russian immigrant teens mostly going nowhere. The exception is Masha, as close to a narrator as the book will get, and clearly based upon the author’s younger self. She’s the only obvious linear link, appearing in every other story. Thankfully, she’s often clever and sometimes quite endearing but it’s increasingly grating that the empathy Eleanor Litman grants her autobiographical character eludes her in the other portraits.

I’m the last reader to insist on happy endings (literally, THE LAST, go look at the queue, I’m waaaaay in the back, thumbing through paperbacks in search of Loss, Regret, Death – bring it). That said, the only story that provoked honest, unexpected emotion came close to the end. About Kamyshinskiy initially seems to be more of the same, opening with a man who lost his wife to cancer now taking his rage out on their daughters, then quickly moving on to a cheating husband plotting escape. But then the plot detours to a third couple, surprisingly tender. If their lives are more difficult than happy (the wife is going through cancer treatment, her husband’s nerves are frayed to the bone) the bond between them is tangible. The final page of this story is heartbreaking, beautifully written, and unlike any of the others. It risks, however tenuously, the possibility of lasting love.

[Karen Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Litman’s linked-story collection (the publisher decided to market it as a novel in stories) does a nice job of introducing us to a community of Russian Jewish immigrants in Pittsburgh through several different characters. We discover that, while there are some common threads, each of them has different challenges and different approaches to life in America.

FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.

[Alycia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The names were a little confusing for me, but that's my problem. I kept trying to piece together who was showing up in which story from a previous story but it was difficult. The final story did bring it bring it all together nicely.
Who knew there were so many Russian bankers in Pittsburgh?

[Gloria Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it very depressing. I don't know how true to life it is. Also I found the characters very confusing as to who was who as each chapter had different people. A list of all the characters at the beginning of the book would have been helpful.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

“…Squirrel Hill never really changed…Every once in a while, someone’s teenager would do something extravagant, like get busted for drugs, or join the Peace Corps.”

This is the truest statement in a book full of true statements.

[Steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel in stories is about Russian immigrants to Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. It tells of people's experiences trying to assimilate into the new world.

[Diane]

Set in Pittsburgh!!

[RO✿ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read this for a class, but ended up really enjoying it! It had a good story overall

[Катя Слу]

Compelling!

[Felicity · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an easy to read collection of related short stories (the same characters reappear in each of them) about the Russian immigrant experience in Pittsburgh in the 1990s. As a number of the stories deal with universal themes--teenage angst, single motherhood, finding a suitable partner--they appeal to a broad audience, whilst adeptly conveying the experiences particular to Russian immigrants. Personally, I found the stories appealing as they grappled with the idea of negotiated ideas about what it meant to be "American." To what extent is becoming "American" and assimilating a betrayal of the culture and heritage you have left behind?

[Robbie Bashore · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I read this book. Since I work in Squirrel Hill (the setting) I often see Russian immigrants like the main characters. The stories were engaging enough. My main complaint is that the format of using stories made it somewhat disjointed. Most of the characters have some relationship with at least some of the others, but rarely do the same characters appear in consecutive stories. I had trouble keeping track of them--this was probably exacerbated by the fact that the names were (appropriately) Russian and unfamiliar to me.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the short story format and liked following the same character a couple of different times. It was difficult to remember who some people were (they would frequently pop up in each other's stories). Quickly realized it didn't matter. Russian names difficult to follow as well - tough to remember who they were of if they were male or female. Depressing stories, but also interesting. Liked the setting in Pittsburgh and following them around the city.