Leaving Katya

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Paul Greenberg's debut is a melancholy, suspenseful love story, chronicling the relationship between a young American slacker and a beguiling Russian beauty. When Daniel, a traveler in early-1990s Leningrad, first meets Katya, a physical attraction and a shared interest in Bob Dylan are the only elements that bring them together. As the end of perestroika and a building political crisis loom, Daniel returns to New York and the world of temp agencies and low-rent hassles. But he can't banish the vision of Katya, and after a few long-distance calls, finds himself meeting her at the airport.

What follows is an emotional chess match like those between American and Soviet masters, by turns amusing and sinister. Held by a fascination with Katya's exotic sexuality and a sense of obligation, Daniel is drawn into her compelling orbit. A hasty marriage between the two keeps Katya in New York but heightens their differences: Daniel balks at her stern, orthodox worldview; she chafes at their poverty and criticizes his "weak character." As the tension mounts, Katya disappears, and a new job sends Daniel back to Russia. There, he undertakes a darkly comic journey through the chaos and charm of a country in transition, attempting to come to an understanding of himself, the foreign culture that so fascinates him, and the nature of a woman of whom he can't quite let go. As unpredictable as the era it depicts, Leaving Katya is a tale of a cultural struggle that captures the anxieties of a century's end. (Spring 2002 Selection)

Megan O'Grady

When Daniel, an American studying in Leningrad, first beds Katya, he struggles with her complicated, rather industrial underwear, wondering later, "Was this sexy, or just Soviet?" Katya herself is no less enigmatic, and Daniel's deliberation over whether she is the love of his life or merely part of what his father terms "The Russia Phase drives Paul Greenberg's debut novel, Leaving Katya (Putnam). Their courtship cut short by the fall of the U.S.S.R., Katya joins Daniel in New York, where they get acquainted with poverty, immigration lawyers, and, most painfully, each other, their circular conversations conveyed in darkly hilarious dialogue. Greenberg draws few conclusions, but this tale will resonate with anyone whose infatuation with an exotic person or place has revealed dissatisfactions that lie a little closer to home.
— Vogue

RIchard Eder

Paul Greenberg's first novel, Leaving Katya,is not frigidity but passion in a different language.

Daniel, sincere and obtusely inquiring, is narrator and explicator. Katya is tricky, changeable and, until the very end, laconic. Yet she is the more visible and affecting. Mr. Greenberg displays her through Daniel's misperceptions -brightly, that is, through a dark glass.

Instead of America asserting itself abroad, this "abroad" has asserted itself through Katya upon an American. Her last melancholy scene with Daniel illuminates the world's complexities and her own as well. Mr. Greenberg, comic and knowing, has done a rare thing supremely well.
— New York Times

The Washington Post

....Have I said that this is a terribly funny novel? That there are moments in it we're all bound to recognize from the cheap assorted melodramas we acted out in our own twenties?

[T]his romance reflects in miniature the larger, stormy relationship between America and the (former) Soviet Union. The United States bullied; the Soviets sulked. We loved each other in World War II, hated each other for the next 40 or 50 years, and now grudgingly allow as how we're both kind of cute and maybe the marriage is worth saving after all. Still, injustice is plastered all over our national relationship. America is rich, bossy and loud. The Russians can be seductive, exotic and hold grudges for centuries. We produced "Huckleberry Finn"; they gave Western culture "The Brothers Karamazov." We want things our way; they have a disconcerting tendency not to go along with our plans.

There's an extraordinary ring of authenticity to "Leaving Katya." The author's Russia, and his Russian characters, ring as true as his insane psychiatrist paterfamilias trying to hold on to his own sanity.

"Can't we all just get along?" Rodney King once famously queried. We can assume the poor guy has only the foggiest notion of the weirdness of human nature. No, we can't get along! We never have got along and we most probably never will, but at least we can laugh about it, as Paul Greenberg so deftly demonstrates here. &#8212 Carolyn See

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

More memoir than fiction, this strangely affecting, frankly autobiographical debut novel is by a young New Yorker who worked during the mid-1990s as a TV consultant based in Moscow, traveling throughout the East teaching Bosnians, Serbs and Tajiks the rudiments of TV production. In 1991, Daniel, a student studying Russian in Leningrad (soon to be renamed St. Petersburg) is seduced by Katya, an aggressively ambitious Russian woman. Panicked by the uncertainty and upheaval after Gorbachev is deposed, Daniel flees to New York with a vague promise to see Katya again. He plans to live with his college dropout younger brother, Cam, and their paralegal mom in her liveryman's cottage in Connecticut, but upon arriving in New York, Daniel decides to sever the umbilical and takes up temporary residence with two female friends in shabby digs in Chinatown. Working for a temp agency, but unable to get Katya off his mind, Daniel eventually manages to phone her and invites her to New York. Safely inside the U.S., the scheming Katya manipulates ineffectual Daniel into marriage, setting in place the legal mechanism of permanent residence. But all is not wedded bliss as Katya seeks solace with fellow Russian expatriates in the outer boroughs and falls in with cult leader Sri Vishnu Brahmaputra. When she leaves for Utah to explore Mormonism, the passive-aggressive Daniel takes a job in Moscow. All these trips back and forth across the country and the Atlantic might have made the novel seem disjointed; instead, they convey the essence of a late-20th-century cross-cultural relationship, never quite on firm ground. This is a truly engaging first effort from a writer of promise. Agent, Jack Horner. (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-A bittersweet love story set against the collapse of the Soviet Union. Daniel, a young American studying in Leningrad, sleeps with the enigmatic Katya and wonders if her cumbersome and poorly made underwear is "sexy or just Soviet?" He is, as his psychiatrist father phrases it, in his "Russian phase," and a stormy, awkward, and at times poignant relationship begins. He returns to the U.S., finds that his separation from Katya feeds his obsession, and invites her to visit him in New York. They find a small apartment, marry, and live on the proceeds of his temporary jobs. Poverty and "temporary" become the hallmarks of their lives. Searching for religion, she travels to Utah, and as she journeys deep into America, Daniel accepts a job that takes him to Russia, where his idealized views of both that country and Katya clash with the realities he faces. This debut novel offers insight into life's intimate and difficult relationships; communication and cultural differences contribute to the crumbling of Daniel and Katya's brief marriage, as do their unrealistic expectations of one another. Greenberg writes with clarity, compassion, and humor, and the recent history that forms a backdrop for this tale contributes to its relevance.-Susanne Bardelson, Arvada Public Library, CO Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.