My 2008 ‘return to roots’ trip to Estonia and Siberia haunts me still, so I was naturally drawn to Maria Tumarkin’s Otherland. Tumarkin is an adventurous, cerebral researcher/writer who couples an exuberant style with a personal frankness that seems to me very brave. I loved her first book Traumascapes, bold and opinionated, and found Courage to be frustrating (I disagreed with her sentiments) but worthwhile. Otherland is more personal, the journey with her teenage daughter back to Russia (Moscow and a lovingly rendered St Petersburg) and homeland Ukraine. Although scathing about conditions in post-Soviet-Union Russia, and its maddening bureaucracy (a couple of lengthy vignettes capture the situation wonderfully), she constantly resists being cornered by clichés. A vigorous stylist with a lovely sense of flow, Tumarkin muses about mother/daughter relationships, the guilt of the prodigal daughter, the dislocation between the Soviet Union she left, the Melbourne she calls home and the Russia of today. Some of the storyline, if I can call it that, is ordinary simply because this was not a trip of huge external drama, but the congruence between her trip and mine ensured that Otherland gripped me throughout.
A road trip book coupled with a nuanced, heartfelt examination of home and family. 3 stars.