Reviews for Travels in Siberia

The average rating for Travels in Siberia based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-03 00:00:00 Randolph Tolentino "Sometimes travel is merely an opportunity taken when you can." ― Ian Frazier, Travels in Siberia A gifted narrator, Ian Frazier for me seems to occupy a genetic/literary lovechild space somewhere between Bill Bryson (mother: Midwestern appetites) and John McPhee (father: New Yorker affectations). Like Frazier, I too have been drawn to Russia. I remember traveling to Moscow and St. Petersburg shortly after the wall came down (and before the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis). There is something magnetic (both attractive and repellant) about the people, the culture, the geography, that sucks a certain type/flux of person in. Both a travelogue and an historical review of Siberia, 'Travels in Siberia' never once disappoints. Frazier hits all the major markers about Siberia: its size, the cold, its history, language, food, the cold, gulags, the cold, transportation, hot women, resources, food, language, hot women, the cold, politics, people, the cold, and hot women. Seriously, the women in Siberia are apparently really hot. Other things I enjoyed while reading this: 1) All the books referenced by Ian Frazier (check out the selected bibliography. Some books just have a sexy bibliography). There is now a whole slew of Siberian exploration books, Russian novels, and Decembrist history that I want/need to read. 2) Frazier's simple, spare drawings were perfect for this book. 3) The dynamic arc created by this book being written over the last 15+ years. It reminded me of certain Impressionist paintings done at different times of the same exact scene. The colors, light, and shapes shift because of shifts in time and season. The same is true of Frazier's book. You exit the book with a significantly different view of Siberia from which you entered it. That large and desolate country changed in 15 years, certainly, but more than that Frazier changed by both his experiences in and his experiences THRU Siberia. Now that Pussy Riot* have been released from their own stint in a Siberian penal colony, the book seems like a perfectly timed pre-read for the Olympics. While Sochi is more Caucasus/Black Sea than Siberia, it is still Russia in the way it seems focused on the repressed, totalitarian cold. Gays are to stay away. Stray dogs are being round up and shot. Pussy Riot is freed to garner some PR goodwill. It all seems like some 21st century match-up of Siberian protesters (gays and Pussy Riot) vs the modern Russian Tsar (Putin, obviously). I'm waiting for a whole new set of protesters gearing up for their slow train ride to a Penal Colony. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. * I should disclose that I am really attracted to Pussy Riot. Not that ooh they are sooo pretty attracted, but in that singular way you (Yes you faithful reader) are attracted to people with a sharp purpose, excess energy, the ability to capture a moment perfectly, and a willingness to go badasshard against institutions as big and strong as the Russian Orthodox Church and the Putin Totalitarian State. Pussy Riot did everything the Decembrists did, but they did it in heels and backwards. Plus they have the name Pussy Riot, which is kinda silly, but still also makes my tongue swell, and eyes dart back and forth (looking for Mom) when I say it out loud.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-01-21 00:00:00 Russell Lowke Ian Frazier, the author of Travels in Siberia, wants people to know that Siberia is filled with mosquitoes and isn't always cold. Russian women are also, in his estimation, among the world's most beautiful. And apparently there are huge trash heaps spread along many of the roads. But this book is more than the sum of its travelogue plus history plus reflective essay parts. Frazier researched Travels in Siberia for a couple decades. He integrates the past, the landscape, and daily observations with admirable literary grace. He's not afraid to admit he's freaking out when driving over frozen lakes or worried that he didn't explain pain reliever directions well enough to an older Russian who may have passed out in the front seat. His guides piss him off when they refuse to visit abandoned prisons. I would have hated these trips. He eats cottage cheese and sour cream sold by random women on the side of the road and sleeps in a tent while his guides wander away from the campsite to pick up women. Fuck that. But Frazier also sees the good, the alien, and the familiar in those same guides and comes to call them friends. Frazier masters Russian enough to travel on his own and marvels when he connects stories of the Decemberists (not the shitty band, the real Decemberists) with the concrete cities on his path. The Russian spirit fascinates him; these Siberians who live in a middle of nowhere that sometimes looks like rural Ohio in February but way, way colder are complex and wonderfully portrayed. And his spooky walk through an abandoned gulag mixes masterfully with his narrative of that dark stretch of Russia's story. Frazier knows when to modulate scope. He'll describe his notes for a three hundred mile car ride in two paragraphs then spend four pages on a city's museum and the curator's fascination with the local geological history. Not only can Frazier write, he understands that when he's writing about Siberia he's writing as much about the mythical otherness associated with the word as the people he meets and the places he visits. When he describes the chaos of the Trans-Siberian railway he adds small details about the dust and garbage while outlining the broad, swirling pressure to make sure his guide bribes the right guy so their car can get on the right train. Siberia is funny and horrible and unrecognizable and filled with hot women. And Frazier does a brilliant job addressing an expanse that compromises one-twelfth of the earth's surface. Travels in Siberia left me appreciating a professional writer, a man who knows and respects his craft. I didn't expect to love a 460 page book on what I perceived as a really big Midwestern cornfield, just in Russia, but I did. Erik Simon, upon whose recommendation I read Travels in Siberia, called the book "riveting". Erik's dead-on accurate. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to read sublime travel literature.