I have Marie (aka The Boston Bibliophile) to thank for my latest graphic novel find, Siberia, a memoir of growing up and living under the Soviet regime. She had listed it in her ‘Best of 2009′ post as her favorite graphic novel that year. I’ve only started reading Marie’s blog in the last few months, but I realized early on that if she recommends something, chances are better than not that I will enjoy it. So of course, after reading her review, I had to get my hands on a copy and luckily, I was able to get one through library loan.

Siberia is Nikolai Maslov’s experience as a young man in a remote Siberian village, through his military service as a conscripted Soviet soldier, to his days as an art student, to a period of hospitalization for depression and eventual relocation to Moscow. These scenes from his life are depicted in the organic, unfinished style of pencil sketches, and the shadowy nuances make the work all the more fresh and disturbing. What comes through in this work, from the very first page, is the hopelessness and cynicism that permeated Soviet life, fueled by rampant alcoholism, even as the vodka deadened their spirits. This is a book that shows the ravages of that despair on one man’s life, one that seems sadly representative of a period in history and the people caught up in it.

This was a very powerful book and Maslov’s story is compelling, no less so because of the straightforward simplicity in which it is depicted. But reading this right on the heels of Laika, another Soviet-era graphic novel, has given me my fill of life in the USSR for the time being.