Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Pushkin and the Queen of Spades by Alice Randall - Available

Pushkin and the Queen of Spades

by Alice Randall
Lisa Reneé Pitts
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
2 of 2 copies available

Windsor Armstrong is a polished, Harvard educated, African American professor of Russian literature. Her son, Pushkin X, is an exceedingly famous pro-football player, an achievement that impresses his mother not at all. Even more distressing, however, is that her beloved son has just become engaged to a gorgeous white Russian émigré who also happens to be a lap dancer.

For Windsor, this is no laughing matter. Determined to get to the source of it, she embarks on a journey into her own rich past. As she moves ever closer to the secret that has cast a shadow over her life, she discovers that the half-lies she has fed her son don't add up to the beauty of the truth.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 20, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781624607868
      • File size: 362200 KB
      • Duration: 12:34:34

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Text Difficulty: 11-12

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      It's hard to imagine a better match of novel and narration than this sparkling, dynamic audio exploration of race, motherhood, literature, and identity. Pitts throws herself into this performance, and her energy, wit, and sass seem wholly in sync with a novel of astounding sophistication, insight, and surprise. Windsor Armstrong is a Harvard-educated African-American, a headstrong Russian literature scholar who is forced to reexamine a lifetime of hard-earned conviction when her son, a professional football superstar named Pushkin X, after her most beloved writer, announces his engagement to a Russian lap dancer. The originality of Randall's novel and her confidence are breathtaking. But no less so is Pitts's unstinting, head-long reading. M.O. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 1, 2004
      A starred or boxed review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred or boxed review.

      PUSHKIN AND THE QUEEN OF SPADES
      Alice Randall
      . Houghton Mifflin
      , $24 (320p) ISBN 0-618-45659-7

      Randall made a big splash (and got into legal hot water) with her first novel, The Wind Done Gone
      , a parody of Margaret Mitchell's classic Civil War saga. Her second is nearly as provocative, chronicling the tribulations of an African-American professor of Russian literature whose pro football player son plans to marry a Russian lap dancer. Windsor Armstrong was raped by her mother's white boss just before she went off to Harvard. She named the child she had Pushkin X, went on to get her degree and raised her son almost singlehandedly. Twenty-five years later, she is a tenured professor, trying to adjust to the idea that Pushkin might marry a white stripper called Tanya. Windsor retraces her difficult history to find out how things ended up this way, reminiscing about her Detroit childhood, her glamorous gangster father and her self-centered mother, who took her away from her father and moved to Washington, D.C., and a more privileged life. The novel begins brilliantly, in high satiric mode, with intelligent, unpredictable riffs on Motown vs. D.C., rape and racism, and the difficulty of being a good parent. Windsor's touchstone is the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, who was the great-grandson of an African slave presented to Peter the Great, and her interest in his complicated history is just one instance of Randall's clever, tables-turning musing on black identity. Windsor's self-questioning can be frustratingly circular, but even when her rhetoric runs away with her, her restless search for answers is stimulating. Fittingly, the novel ends with a rap version of Pushkin's unfinished novella "The Negro of Peter the Great," a conciliatory wedding gift Windsor has prepared for her son and his fiancée. With this heady tale, Randall proves decisively that she is more than a parodist. (May 4)

      Forecast:
      An 11-city tour and heavy promotion (this is Houghton Mifflin's lead spring title) should help persuade readers that
      The Wind Done Gone was more than a flash in the pan.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Text Difficulty:11-12

Loading