My Life at First Try

A Novel

By Mark Budman

2008

First Published

3.65

Average Rating

240

Number of Pages

7H19M

Audio Length

This semi-autobiographical debut novel chronicles the life of Alex, born in Siberia in 1950, and his dreams of becoming a writer and of meeting Annie, his distant American cousin. As a child, Alex observes a group of foreign tourists do something that non-drunk Soviet adults seldom do: they laugh. Alex yearns to become one of them—a free and happy foreigner. Those aspirations quickly fade as Alex begins to encounter the absurdities and constraints of living in a society where conformity is institutionalized. Hilarious and sometimes sobering, the book’s short chapters chronicle making it through the army, mastering the English language, sex, and meeting the girl of his dreams. In 1980, Alex and his young family finally get the chance to move to America. There he realizes that he is finally a foreigner—not the happy foreigner of his dream, but an alien. Ultimately, Alex finds his own place in the world, despite the fact that having the right “to vote for an elephant or an ass” does not necessarily guarantee self-fulfillment.

Avg Rating

3.65

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

30%

4 STARS

24%

3 STARS

30%

2 STARS

11%

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Mark Budman

Author · 3 books

Mark Budman is a first-generation immigrant to the US. An engineer by training, he currently works as a medical interpreter. His fiction has appeared in Catapult, Witness, World Literature Today, Mississippi Review, The London Magazine (UK), McSweeney’s, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere. He is the author of the novel “My Life at First Try,” published by Counterpoint, and co-editor of immigration-themed anthologies published by Ooligan Press, Persea, and University of Chester (UK). markbudman.com A trailer for his anthology "You have Time for This." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBfOw1... *** Mark Budman’s "My Life at First Try," is smart and funny and compelling, and in an era when both the immigrant experience and the resurgent aggression of the once-Soviet Russia are central issues, the novel is timely, as well. This is a splendid debut by an important new American voice. Robert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize winner, the author of "Intercourse" and "Severance" *** A review of "My Life at First Try" in Publishers Weekly. http://www.publishersweekly.com/artic...