Nicholas Perez wants to read Mythago Wood

"Goncharov’s swansong is a sprawling monster where an impatient dilettante returns to his country estate and tries his luck with two cousins—the first, a flighty, immature pixie under her Granny’s heel, the second an aloof and headstrong enigma with a gorgeous phizog. Across 500 pages or so, we follow Raisky’s attempt to rouse passion in the first cousin Marfenka, then his tortured attempts to make the second cousin Vera have even the faintest whiff of feels for him. Into the mix is thrown intellectual vagabond Mark, whose loathing for the fetters of tradition and societal norms causes conniptions across the village, especially with the iron-clad materfamilias, the Granny Tatyana. The culmination of two decades� work, Malinovka Heights, aka The Precipice, is an overblown beast of a novel that bursts blood vessels to probe into the innermosts of its personnel, creating an unforgettable cast of infuriating, obnoxious, comical, and mercurial characters, all caught in an era of emotional restraint and religious convention. The heart of the novel is the marvellous Granny, first a figure of amusement, emerging as a compassionate crutch for the whole family, whose emotional intelligence keeps the histrionic mayhem of the madcap family in check. For those comfortable luxuriating in the indulgent soup of the Big Russian Epic, Goncharov’s second masterwork is not to be missed. "