A strong collection of interconnected stories. Marra excels at exploring the many ways people deal with adversity in an authentic, moving way. There is a lot heavy material covered here (war, the consequences of environmental degradation, the psychological scars of communism and the false hope of post-Communist Russia) but it is expertly leavened with humor. I laughed out loud reading this book repeatedly, even though it is often very tragic. 
 Marra is a very insightful writer. He can cut to the heart of a complicated emotion or issue with an expertly crafted sentence. His prose is sneakily great. 
 I enjoyed this thoroughly and read it in a day. I was only a little frustrated that these great stories, that created such a complex and compelling world, were not chapters in a truly epic, doorstopper novel. Every time we transitioned from one tale to another I felt a loss (despite how plotlines and characters recur) that I was being forced out of an expertly crafted miniature world before I was ready. Ironically, the only story I did not feel this way about was the title tale, the longest by a significant margin but my least favorite (excepting the short space coda which I wasn't crazy about either and I don't even really count as a story). 
 If the worse you can say about a book is that the author left you wanting more I say that author is doing alright for himself. Check this out.