Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 07/01/2025 *Starred Review* Self-exiled to Siberia to avoid Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, locked away for days evading the soldiers hunting him down, and eventually consigned to a mental hospital, young artist Yevgeny Yelchin pleads not to be given their memory-stealing injections. “Calm down, Yevgeny,” the doctor says, “there’s nothing to remember.” Perhaps this is the most nightmarish moment in a 432-page nightmare, the culmination of an identity-destroying journey that, moment to moment, is as banal as could be. A continuation of Yelchin’s autobiographical The Genius under the Table (2021), this effectively stand-alone piece chronicles his burgeoning adulthood, still crammed into an apartment with his Jewish family, creating sets for theatrical productions, and falling in love with American student Libby—at first a curiosity, then his girlfriend, his fiancé, and (with state approval) his wife. Maybe no one expected authoritarianism to be experiencing such a renaissance since the late twentieth-century fall of the Soviet Union, but this proves a detailed, poignant, and gut-wrenchingly relevant elucidation of life under a government whose autocratic practices are particularly oppressive for the humanitarian pursuits of art and love. This is in no small part due to award-magnet Yelchin’s art, the gray palette capturing the never-quite-numbing-enough psychological oppression while the limber, idiosyncratic figures—along with the author’s indispensable humor—hold tight to the humanity struggling beneath it all. - Copyright 2025 Booklist.