Pg. 69: Mark Budman's "My Life at First Try"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: My Life at First Try by Mark Budman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this semi-autobiographical debut novel, Mark Budman chronicles the life of Alex, a boy born in Siberia in 1950. Short chapters—sometimes hilarious, sometimes sobering—chronicle Alex’s life year by year as he matures, starts a family, gets a chance to leave the Soviet Union, and then goes on to discover the rhythms, disappointments, and small pleasures of suburban life in upstate New York.

Mark Budman's works have appeared or are about to appear in such magazines as Weird Tales, Mississippi Review, Virginia Quarterly, The London Magazine, Iowa Review, McSweeney's, Turnrow, Connecticut Review, the W.W. Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward, and elsewhere. He is the publisher of a flash fiction magazine Vestal Review.

Learn more about the author and his work at Mark Budman's website, his blog, and his blog in Russian.

The Page 69 Test: My Life at First Try.

--Marshal Zeringue