The Scent of Pine: A Novel
Unhappily married Lena meets Ben at an academic conference, and when he offers her a ride home to Boston, she impulsively asks to join him at his remote cabin in Maine. Gradually, Lena unfolds the story of her ill-fated summer as a camp counselor in Soviet Russia, where the boys were told to sleep with their hands on top of the sheets, and Lena and her best friend, Inka, tried to get dates with the soldiers stationed at the camp. But every boy Lena dates disappears. This is no ghost story, at least not in the spooky sense. Instead, Vapnyar gives us a modern Scheherazade, weaving literary allusions, sexual repression and awakening, and Ben’s own pathetic story into a darkly funny, lonely love story evoked by the landscapes of Russia and Maine. Lena’s story is especially vivid, bringing to life a summer-camp experience that is at once universal (smelly kids, awkward flirtations, and the close bond formed in the counselors’ cabin) and uniquely iron curtain (banned books and soldiers). Readers of literary fiction will want to try this surprisingly quick read. --Susan Maguire