Alina Adams is the author of the new novel The Nesting Dolls. Born in the USSR, she moved to the United States as a child, and now lives in New York City.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Nesting Dolls,
and for your cast of characters?
A: I was born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to
the U.S. with my parents in 1977. I have previously written romance novels,
figure skating murder mysteries, and soap opera tie-ins. But, whenever I tried
to pitch a story set in the USSR, I was told, "Russia doesn't sell, no one
is interested."
About three years ago, I was speaking to my agent, and she
told me, “You know, Russia is very hot right now!” (I wonder why!) She also
told me that editors were getting tired of Holocaust books. So I said,
"What about the USSR in the 1930s? You can get all of your Jewish
suffering, but in a new setting!"
As a result, The Nesting Dolls is set in Odessa, USSR in the
1930s, during Stalin's Great Terror; in Odessa, USSR in the 1970s, during The
Great Stagnation and the campaign to free Soviet Jews; and 2019 Brighton Beach,
Brooklyn, where so many Soviet Jewish immigrants ended up settling. (And before
COVID!)
I love to read family sagas, so I made all my characters
multiple generations of the same family. Five generations of women who, because
of the time and place where they lived, had to make very different decisions in
order to survive.
Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify
for you?
A: The book went through multiple titles. I'd initially
called it Love Is Not a Potato. Because that's the first line of the book and
refers to the Russian expression, “Love is not a potato. If it goes bad, you
can't throw it out the window.” (It rhymes in Russian and, as we learned from The
Lego Movie, everything is true because it rhymes.)
My agent thought it
sounded like a children's book. So I changed it to Mother Tongue, because a big
theme in every woman's story is communication, both the political - in the
USSR, saying the wrong thing or even speaking the wrong language can get you
deported to Siberia - and the personal, parents and children not saying what
they mean, or misunderstanding what is said.
My editor thought Mother Tongue sounded like a nonfiction
title. We wanted a title that suggested Russia, as well as love, family, and
relationships.
Unable to think of anything, I turned to Facebook, where one
of my friends offered The Nesting Dolls. Nesting dolls are dolls where one is
inside the other, inside the other, inside the other. It was perfect, since,
inside everyone, are all the family members who came before, and what they
lived through. They're what makes you, you!
Q: Did you need to do any research to write the novel, and
if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: I did a great deal of research for the 1930s
section, especially about what life was like for the entire families who were
deported to Siberia as enemies of the state. The most fun research was for the
1970s Odessa section. I took my own childhood memories, and then combined them
with my parents' recollections, as they were the age then that my characters
are in the story.
My parents would get random emails from me asking about how
public bathhouses worked, or where someone applying to Odessa University would
wait, or what the back of the Odessa Opera House looked like (I found lots of
pictures online of the front, but not the back).
I checked what food was available, what people wore, how
much things cost, and all about life in a kolhoz - which is when
university students were forced to work in the countryside at harvest time. I
think I did a pretty good job, as so many of my parents' friends have told me
reading The Nesting Dolls was like reliving their youth!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm writing a proposal for my next book, also set in the
USSR, but in a different region, with different characters.
I am intrigued by the stories of those who were true
believes, who really thought Communism would be good for Jews and all other
minorities and disenfranchised peoples, and what they thought of how it
turned out, not to mention that, by the end of their lives, they saw what
they'd fought for, what those they loved had died for, completely collapse and
prove to be a total sham.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Even though The Nesting Dolls is my first book actually
set in the USSR, my figure skating mysteries touched upon Russian athletes and
what that system was like, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, when
everyone was left to fend for themselves. It's a less often told story, but an
interesting one.
If anyone would like an autographed copy of the The Nesting
Dolls, email me at alinaadams@gmail.com
with your address, and I am happy to mail you a signed bookplate.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Alina Adams will be speaking virtually at the Bender JCC of Greater Washington on Wednesday, Sept. 9.
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