Official Review: From Red Square to Main Street
Posted: 15 Apr 2014, 14:35
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "From Red Square to Main Street" by Alisa Mizelle.]
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During the period of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, there was more than a little anti-“them” propaganda spoon-fed to the populace on both sides. From Red Square to Main Street offers a small slice of life from those times and is the true story of a girl born in a small town in Russia during the height of the Cold War, her trials and joys, and how she came to live in the United States.
The story is authored by Alisa Mizelle (the subject of the story) and Linda P. Best. Subtitled "The story of Alisa Mizelle and her Search for love and truth," it reads like a biography rather than an autobiography. The story is written in third person, but from the point of view of the main character. That is, the thoughts, feelings and motivations of the other characters are not discussed or explained, but those of Alisa are. The chronology of the story is completely linear from the birth of Alisa to the time of writing (published in 2013).
Alisa was born in 1965 in the town of Kadikasy, Russia, near the Volga River. On the first page, we are told that her story “is one of great emotional and physical pain in a childhood fraught with abandonment, disappointment and treachery at the hands of both adults and her peers. It is set against a backdrop of parental neglect and omission, with the resulting childhood trauma which inevitably occurs.” This theme recurs often and is offered as justification for the many mistakes and poor decisions made by Alisa throughout her life.
Alisa is born the illegitimate child of a married man who lives in the same neighborhood as her mother. She is raised by her mother and grandmother, and although she knows who her father is, she never has a relationship with him. Her mother is schizophrenic, and there is no warm relationship between the two of them. Alisa is left at home, locked inside, for many hours each day while her mother goes to work at a factory and her grandmother slips away to indulge in schnapps. At the tender age of three or four she has to learn to feed herself, and she often looks out the window at the neighbor children at play, reinforcing the loneliness she feels. At five she discovers that she can crawl through a window, play outside with the other children, and slip back in before mother or grandmother comes home. Thus Alisa learns at a very young age to care for herself and be independent.
At five, neighborhood boys “introduce her to sex,” and this becomes a prominent part of her life from that time on. Her mother has men in the house overnight, and Alisa hears the “moans and groans from her bedroom.” At thirteen, she is raped by a truck driver who offers to give her a ride. Shortly afterward she is raped by her uncle while his wife is in the hospital having their baby. At fifteen she becomes sexually active of her own free will. She has a couple of sexual partners, then is raped by her roommate’s boyfriend.
We follow Alisa from one traumatic or salacious event to the next, from the suicide of her grandfather to more sexual liaisons to adulterous relationships to an abusive relationship to pregnancy to marriage to finding her husband in bed with two women. Alisa gets a job which puts her in company with diplomats and officials, and she indulges in drinking, wild parties, and sex with many of them. This, despite being a married woman with a daughter. She clearly has no self-control, morals, or regard for her husband (although they are separated). At one point, after meeting a “Scandinavian named Erik,” “the inevitability of sex was too much for them both, so they adjourned to her room…and made sweet love.” After that relationship ends, in her mind “there was nothing to do after that but continue to have fun.” In fact, she frequently comes to this conclusion at various points in her life. Affairs follow with Peter, then Antone, then Andre, and then she decides to start having sex for money. She meets an American named Paul (a married man with whom she, of course, has sex), and tries to carry on a relationship with both him and the aforementioned Erik. A trip to Europe with a friend leads to her being kidnapped and gang-raped in Germany. After being rescued, she is put in jail because she doesn’t have a German visa. On the way back to Russia her friend is raped, and after returning to Moscow, Alisa is almost gang-raped by a group of Chechen rebels.
Finally, she starts a comparatively stable relationship with Paul. They decide to go to Las Vegas and get married when Paul’s divorce is final, and afterward they move to Georgia, USA. After a brief period of happiness, Alisa suspects Paul of infidelity, so, logically, she starts going to bars and having sex with other men. One of these is “Chris,” and she becomes pregnant with his child. She has the child - another daughter - and Paul, although knowing it is not his, accepts it as his own. Even so, both of them continue to be unfaithful to one another, with Alisa “having sex with so many men that she had lost count.” She starts to work as a stripper in Savannah and, of course, has sex with many of the men who frequent the club. She rubs shoulders with a few celebrities and appears as an extra in a couple of films.
She tries to find other work, but can’t seem to hold down a job for any length of time. They move to Texas. One day Alisa sees “Paul and his paramour in the car ahead of her” and throws a fit. (This, in spite of her own rampant infidelity!) They separate, but Alisa continues to act the jealous wife. Finally they divorce. A friend of a friend offers to sell her a car on the basis of monthly payments, and she tries to pay him with (what else?) sex. He refuses. (This seemed significant to me, as it seems to be the only man she ever met that she doesn’t end up having sex with.) She meets “Charles” at a gas station, they decide to live together, she becomes pregnant, Charles disappears, and she has an abortion. Her eldest daughter, Tanya, becomes pregnant and ends up leaving home. Alisa finds herself in a psychiatric hospital for two weeks and continues to suffer from panic attacks. She meets “Calvin” and starts to live with him, and this is the relationship she still has at the end of the book, although she doesn’t seem completely content with him. In the end, we are told that she has “not stopped looking for love and the man who would be her soul mate.” Poor Calvin.
Wow.
The writer editorializes at times (whether this is the voice of Alisa or Linda P. Best is unclear), and the immoral and irresponsible behavior of this woman are continually softened and excused. It’s her mother’s fault, Russia’s fault, her first husband’s fault, Paul’s fault – everyone and everything else are blamed for her profligate, licentious, self-centered lifestyle. By all accounts she had a terrible childhood without much love, but does this justify the degenerate, dissolute, debauched lifestyle that she pursued for more than twenty years? At the end of the book, it seems that she begins to own up to the fact that many of her problems were/are of her own making.
Throughout her life in both Russia and the United States Alisa leaves her children for extended periods – to party in Europe, to party in Moscow, to strip & party in America. We are constantly told how much her children mean to her and how her heart aches for them, but her actions belie that claim countless times. Shameful. It is easy to feel sorry for her through her first twenty years or so, but as she continues to make poor decisions and suffer the consequences, it’s a bit of a struggle to feel any sympathy or respect for her. She often laments that her own mother showed her little love and kindness and the lifelong emotional baggage she carries from that; then she does the same thing to her children. Her younger daughter Carol has some serious problems and it is implied that their relationship is not very good.
The picture of her life in Russia is interesting, and offers a glimpse into a time and place that are not well-known to many outside of Russia and alive at that time. But once she moves to the US, and especially Texas, the story becomes far less interesting. I just didn’t care enough to try to keep track of whether Alisa’s daughter Carol was living with her or with her ex-husband (the poor girl seemed to bounce back and forth every few paragraphs), or whether Alisa was living with a boyfriend or not, or frequenting bars again or not, or stripping or not, or what town she was living in at the moment, etc.
A note about the writing: it is quite bad. Aside from typos, bad grammar, arbitrary capitalization, poorly constructed sentences, and a rampant lack of proper punctuation, the writing is flat and uninteresting. The endless use of idioms and clichés doesn’t help: “exchange pleasantries,” “jump at the chance/opportunity,” “chilled to the bone,” “thanked her lucky stars,” “gave her pause,” “add insult to injury,” “became fast friends,” “fell on deaf ears,” “sealed the deal,” “things went south,” “in full swing,” “a good time was had by all,” are some clichés you’ll encounter more than once. There are many others; almost every page is riddled with them. Some are used in a slightly odd manner which makes the writing feel forced and awkward. The writing style is quite unimaginative, and I found it more than a little annoying. Stringing informal, overused idioms and clichés together to tell a story is not quality writing. The writing is about the level I would expect from a student in 8th or 9th grade. (This is not the writing of someone who learned English later in life and doesn't know it perfectly. Rather, it is the writing of someone who speaks English as his/her first language, but has not acquired writing skills. Alas, everyone thinks they can write a book these days.)
Run-on sentences with poor grammar and punctuation abound. Here are two examples (exactly as they appear in the book):
“She thought to herself that she did not even know this man’s name and did not want to know it because knowing it might make him human and he obviously wasn’t if he was going to take advantage of her.”
“She could not really understand the importance of all this preparedness against an enemy she could not see and like most, if not all of her friends at school, she was just concerned with getting by and surviving and definitely not with Communist propaganda about a country she had nothing to do with.”
Yikes. This book is in serious need of a capable editor.
What I thought would be a compelling, moving story turned into the story of a woman who makes one bad decision after another and continually feels lonely and empty, reaping the consequences of her own profligacy, selfishness, and self-centeredness. The writer tries to evoke the reader’s sympathy and understanding. This works for awhile, but as we see Alisa continue to neglect her children (despite the reader being constantly told how much it hurts her to leave them and how much she loves them), sleep with one man after another until she literally loses count, overdrink, prostitute herself, and cheat on her husbands/boyfriends, the feelings of sympathy ebb and we are left with a woman who has played a large role in her own unhappiness and the mess that her life has become. She continues to feel alone, unloved, and empty. Several times we are told that she finally has come to her senses, realizes the error of her ways, and now is resolved to change. But each time, within just a few months, weeks, or even days, she is back to her old ways again. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone who never learns from her mistakes.
Nevertheless, it is a story with potential. If not an exemplary life, it certainly is an extraordinary one. Too bad it was not told by a more capable writer. With the exception of the last chapters, From Red Square to Main Street will hold your interest, if only to find out the next salacious episode in Alisa’s life (don’t worry; you’ll only have to wait two or three pages at the most). But don’t expect quality writing and a well-told story. I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars.
***
Buy "From Red Square to Main Street" on Amazon
Buy "From Red Square to Main Street" on Barnes and Noble
Share This Review
The story is authored by Alisa Mizelle (the subject of the story) and Linda P. Best. Subtitled "The story of Alisa Mizelle and her Search for love and truth," it reads like a biography rather than an autobiography. The story is written in third person, but from the point of view of the main character. That is, the thoughts, feelings and motivations of the other characters are not discussed or explained, but those of Alisa are. The chronology of the story is completely linear from the birth of Alisa to the time of writing (published in 2013).
Alisa was born in 1965 in the town of Kadikasy, Russia, near the Volga River. On the first page, we are told that her story “is one of great emotional and physical pain in a childhood fraught with abandonment, disappointment and treachery at the hands of both adults and her peers. It is set against a backdrop of parental neglect and omission, with the resulting childhood trauma which inevitably occurs.” This theme recurs often and is offered as justification for the many mistakes and poor decisions made by Alisa throughout her life.
Alisa is born the illegitimate child of a married man who lives in the same neighborhood as her mother. She is raised by her mother and grandmother, and although she knows who her father is, she never has a relationship with him. Her mother is schizophrenic, and there is no warm relationship between the two of them. Alisa is left at home, locked inside, for many hours each day while her mother goes to work at a factory and her grandmother slips away to indulge in schnapps. At the tender age of three or four she has to learn to feed herself, and she often looks out the window at the neighbor children at play, reinforcing the loneliness she feels. At five she discovers that she can crawl through a window, play outside with the other children, and slip back in before mother or grandmother comes home. Thus Alisa learns at a very young age to care for herself and be independent.
At five, neighborhood boys “introduce her to sex,” and this becomes a prominent part of her life from that time on. Her mother has men in the house overnight, and Alisa hears the “moans and groans from her bedroom.” At thirteen, she is raped by a truck driver who offers to give her a ride. Shortly afterward she is raped by her uncle while his wife is in the hospital having their baby. At fifteen she becomes sexually active of her own free will. She has a couple of sexual partners, then is raped by her roommate’s boyfriend.
We follow Alisa from one traumatic or salacious event to the next, from the suicide of her grandfather to more sexual liaisons to adulterous relationships to an abusive relationship to pregnancy to marriage to finding her husband in bed with two women. Alisa gets a job which puts her in company with diplomats and officials, and she indulges in drinking, wild parties, and sex with many of them. This, despite being a married woman with a daughter. She clearly has no self-control, morals, or regard for her husband (although they are separated). At one point, after meeting a “Scandinavian named Erik,” “the inevitability of sex was too much for them both, so they adjourned to her room…and made sweet love.” After that relationship ends, in her mind “there was nothing to do after that but continue to have fun.” In fact, she frequently comes to this conclusion at various points in her life. Affairs follow with Peter, then Antone, then Andre, and then she decides to start having sex for money. She meets an American named Paul (a married man with whom she, of course, has sex), and tries to carry on a relationship with both him and the aforementioned Erik. A trip to Europe with a friend leads to her being kidnapped and gang-raped in Germany. After being rescued, she is put in jail because she doesn’t have a German visa. On the way back to Russia her friend is raped, and after returning to Moscow, Alisa is almost gang-raped by a group of Chechen rebels.
Finally, she starts a comparatively stable relationship with Paul. They decide to go to Las Vegas and get married when Paul’s divorce is final, and afterward they move to Georgia, USA. After a brief period of happiness, Alisa suspects Paul of infidelity, so, logically, she starts going to bars and having sex with other men. One of these is “Chris,” and she becomes pregnant with his child. She has the child - another daughter - and Paul, although knowing it is not his, accepts it as his own. Even so, both of them continue to be unfaithful to one another, with Alisa “having sex with so many men that she had lost count.” She starts to work as a stripper in Savannah and, of course, has sex with many of the men who frequent the club. She rubs shoulders with a few celebrities and appears as an extra in a couple of films.
She tries to find other work, but can’t seem to hold down a job for any length of time. They move to Texas. One day Alisa sees “Paul and his paramour in the car ahead of her” and throws a fit. (This, in spite of her own rampant infidelity!) They separate, but Alisa continues to act the jealous wife. Finally they divorce. A friend of a friend offers to sell her a car on the basis of monthly payments, and she tries to pay him with (what else?) sex. He refuses. (This seemed significant to me, as it seems to be the only man she ever met that she doesn’t end up having sex with.) She meets “Charles” at a gas station, they decide to live together, she becomes pregnant, Charles disappears, and she has an abortion. Her eldest daughter, Tanya, becomes pregnant and ends up leaving home. Alisa finds herself in a psychiatric hospital for two weeks and continues to suffer from panic attacks. She meets “Calvin” and starts to live with him, and this is the relationship she still has at the end of the book, although she doesn’t seem completely content with him. In the end, we are told that she has “not stopped looking for love and the man who would be her soul mate.” Poor Calvin.
Wow.
The writer editorializes at times (whether this is the voice of Alisa or Linda P. Best is unclear), and the immoral and irresponsible behavior of this woman are continually softened and excused. It’s her mother’s fault, Russia’s fault, her first husband’s fault, Paul’s fault – everyone and everything else are blamed for her profligate, licentious, self-centered lifestyle. By all accounts she had a terrible childhood without much love, but does this justify the degenerate, dissolute, debauched lifestyle that she pursued for more than twenty years? At the end of the book, it seems that she begins to own up to the fact that many of her problems were/are of her own making.
Throughout her life in both Russia and the United States Alisa leaves her children for extended periods – to party in Europe, to party in Moscow, to strip & party in America. We are constantly told how much her children mean to her and how her heart aches for them, but her actions belie that claim countless times. Shameful. It is easy to feel sorry for her through her first twenty years or so, but as she continues to make poor decisions and suffer the consequences, it’s a bit of a struggle to feel any sympathy or respect for her. She often laments that her own mother showed her little love and kindness and the lifelong emotional baggage she carries from that; then she does the same thing to her children. Her younger daughter Carol has some serious problems and it is implied that their relationship is not very good.
The picture of her life in Russia is interesting, and offers a glimpse into a time and place that are not well-known to many outside of Russia and alive at that time. But once she moves to the US, and especially Texas, the story becomes far less interesting. I just didn’t care enough to try to keep track of whether Alisa’s daughter Carol was living with her or with her ex-husband (the poor girl seemed to bounce back and forth every few paragraphs), or whether Alisa was living with a boyfriend or not, or frequenting bars again or not, or stripping or not, or what town she was living in at the moment, etc.
A note about the writing: it is quite bad. Aside from typos, bad grammar, arbitrary capitalization, poorly constructed sentences, and a rampant lack of proper punctuation, the writing is flat and uninteresting. The endless use of idioms and clichés doesn’t help: “exchange pleasantries,” “jump at the chance/opportunity,” “chilled to the bone,” “thanked her lucky stars,” “gave her pause,” “add insult to injury,” “became fast friends,” “fell on deaf ears,” “sealed the deal,” “things went south,” “in full swing,” “a good time was had by all,” are some clichés you’ll encounter more than once. There are many others; almost every page is riddled with them. Some are used in a slightly odd manner which makes the writing feel forced and awkward. The writing style is quite unimaginative, and I found it more than a little annoying. Stringing informal, overused idioms and clichés together to tell a story is not quality writing. The writing is about the level I would expect from a student in 8th or 9th grade. (This is not the writing of someone who learned English later in life and doesn't know it perfectly. Rather, it is the writing of someone who speaks English as his/her first language, but has not acquired writing skills. Alas, everyone thinks they can write a book these days.)
Run-on sentences with poor grammar and punctuation abound. Here are two examples (exactly as they appear in the book):
“She thought to herself that she did not even know this man’s name and did not want to know it because knowing it might make him human and he obviously wasn’t if he was going to take advantage of her.”
“She could not really understand the importance of all this preparedness against an enemy she could not see and like most, if not all of her friends at school, she was just concerned with getting by and surviving and definitely not with Communist propaganda about a country she had nothing to do with.”
Yikes. This book is in serious need of a capable editor.
What I thought would be a compelling, moving story turned into the story of a woman who makes one bad decision after another and continually feels lonely and empty, reaping the consequences of her own profligacy, selfishness, and self-centeredness. The writer tries to evoke the reader’s sympathy and understanding. This works for awhile, but as we see Alisa continue to neglect her children (despite the reader being constantly told how much it hurts her to leave them and how much she loves them), sleep with one man after another until she literally loses count, overdrink, prostitute herself, and cheat on her husbands/boyfriends, the feelings of sympathy ebb and we are left with a woman who has played a large role in her own unhappiness and the mess that her life has become. She continues to feel alone, unloved, and empty. Several times we are told that she finally has come to her senses, realizes the error of her ways, and now is resolved to change. But each time, within just a few months, weeks, or even days, she is back to her old ways again. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone who never learns from her mistakes.
Nevertheless, it is a story with potential. If not an exemplary life, it certainly is an extraordinary one. Too bad it was not told by a more capable writer. With the exception of the last chapters, From Red Square to Main Street will hold your interest, if only to find out the next salacious episode in Alisa’s life (don’t worry; you’ll only have to wait two or three pages at the most). But don’t expect quality writing and a well-told story. I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars.
***
Buy "From Red Square to Main Street" on Amazon
Buy "From Red Square to Main Street" on Barnes and Noble
