There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories

I have to say that I do not have mush experience reading Russian books or authors. However I have read authors from other countries and I can tell a difference in the writing styles of these authors to U.S. authors. They are a little more vivid in their details, black humor can be borderline crude, and then there is the language. U.S. authors use more words to get their point across whereas other authors from other countries use less works and it can be like reading from a cue card.


The reason I wanted to check this book out was because of the title. Plain and simple. I thought the title was interesting and I wanted to know how you could get love from a girl who seduced her sister’s husband and hanged herself. Well I learned all about it in Hallelujah, Family!

These tales of love are not all about a happy ending. Some tales are kind of meant to shock you. Others may make you think the woman gets around a lot. In other stories the guy is a bastard. Like for example in A Murky Fate, a unmarried woman falls for a guy who commutes between his mother and his wife’s house. He is a womanizer. He talks about himself, gets himself some and then leaves the woman. The ending line goes like this “There was nothing but pain in store for her, yet she cried with happiness and couldn’t stop. “

While, I found these stories short and out of the ordinary, after a while I had to stop because I also found them somewhat depressing and dreary. Also, some of the stories I liked but then they would stop suddenly. This book is a unusual collection of love stories.