Gorokhova had been attracted to English words and cadences since childhood - as a pupil in an exclusive secondary school where many subjects were taught in English, and later at Leningrad University, where she studied and then taught it to others. At the age of 24, she left Russia after marrying an American student, and this book was written in her adopted language. This distance is both emotional and linguistic. The Iron Curtain era was like a massive “Truman Show” in which imprisoned citizens were forced to celebrate their collective incarceration, deprived of the basic human right to be a part of the wider world.Īlthough this is her first book, Gorokhova writes from the vantage point of a mature writer who has allowed many years to pass before concentrating her attention on the first two decades of her life.
The 21st century barely remembers the cruelty of the almost comically named Iron Curtain - an invisible yet very real barrier erected by Communist regimes as a way of blindfolding their citizens, an attempt to ward off the dangers of exposure to the sins and seediness, the seduction and success, of capitalism. “A Mountain of Crumbs” (which takes its title from a game Gorokhova’s grandmother invented during a famine in the 1920s) could be taught as a master class in memoir writing: the key is not to collect facts and recollections but to truthfully reimagine one’s life. In “A Mountain of Crumbs,” her exquisitely wrought, tender memoir of growing up in the Soviet Union, Elena Gorokhova relives their brief encounter as a significant experience that may have contained the germ of her later attraction to someone from an “unknowable” world - and her desire to leave her own. But for her, he was the first, unforgettable window into the forbidden freedom beyond the confines of her Soviet bubble. Kevin went back to London the following day, and perhaps never thought of Lena again.
Before saying goodbye, Kevin took a snapshot of 14-year-old Lena and presented her with a silver bracelet from the exclusive Beriozkashop for foreigners they’d visited on the tour - though she might have preferred a forbidden book by Bulgakov, displayed near equally unattainable tins of shrimp and expensive French Cognac.
At his carefree suggestion, they separated from the group and roamed the majestic avenues, rode the metro (he was stunned by its palatial elegance) and even tried to take daringly unflattering photographs of women waiting in line at a shop, just about escaping the attention of a stern policeman.
He managed to form a special friendship with Lena, one of their young English-speaking guides. About 40 years ago, a British teenager named Kevin visited Leningrad with a group of high school students.
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