Dear readers,
I’m making the blog public again. It was private for most of the past year because I as I was publishing my serialized novel ‘The Hermit’ here, I found a publisher who asked me to make it private. Now I have deleted all the chapters, and the full novel will be available for purchase in late March 2024. Please check out my publisher’s website for more info.
In the meantime, the novel has been getting some good reviews. Here’s a few words from Meghan Daum, the author of ‘The Problem With Everything’: "A Tom Wolfe for the Instagram age! Katerina Grishakova writes with the assurance of a seasoned novelist even as her pages sing out with the exuberance of a newcomer. The Hermit is a stylish, sophisticated story of how internal turmoil can ravage the soul even as external success can nourish the ego. Ruthless, funny, and dazzlingly sharp-eyed on the details, Grishakova is a thrilling new voice."
And here is an amazing review from the US Review of Books: “This is an extraordinary book, rich in observation and keenly attuned to the inner world of its spiritually impoverished protagonist. The mosaic-like accumulation of physical detail—much attention is paid to food, houses, shoes, and clothes—and the author’s deep understanding of and affection for her wryly comic but wholly credible cast of eccentrics cohere over time into a portrait of a troubled psyche that doubles as an indictment of a troubled nation, one consumed with technology and profits, plagued by demagogues and charlatans, and driving at full speed towards something dark. The final fifty pages—an extended sequence that is at once ominous, dream-like, and achingly sad—is some of the finest writing of the year, calling to mind the films of Martin McDonagh and the Coen Brothers. At once cerebral and melancholy, nimbly balancing metaphysics and the mundane, this is a book to be savored. It is an impressive achievement.”
I’m a bit sad that my publisher didn’t find much use for my artwork which I thought was kinda cool and which I included in some of my chapters to attract attention. Below are some of those pictures, again for your entertainment: