I remember how excited I was when I heard that the "bug lady" would be visiting my daughter's preschool. Bug, lady, ladybug — a metamorphic marvel! Of course, she turned out to be an ordinary lady with a modest bug menagerie. But this novel is the real thing, with its cast of simultaneously insect-human characters straining against the chemical constraints of their curious life-cycles in the irrational landscape of the former USSR. Their stories interlink but are equally effective on their own: the tragic hemp bugs/stoners who crawl inadvertently into a "papyrosa" joint; the cockroach who digs for victory and is rewarded with a new life as a cicada; the mosquitoes, post-Soviet hucksters on the make, sampling the sanguinary diversity on offer at a Black Sea resort. The saddest story arc though is surely that of Marina the ant and her daughter Natasha, who rejects her mom's identity, wills herself a new one as a fly, and meets a sticky end.

There are so many ways of reading this (existentialism, post-Communist koan, modern nursery rhyme); perhaps too many. I think I prefer the more tangible satire of the stories in "The Blue Lantern" and "A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia", and most of all in Pelevin's classic novel of disillusion "Omon Ra". But as bug novels go, this is one of the best. ( )

La scena di quello che, all'inizio del libro si lancia dal balcone è da piegarsi in due dalle risate (per non parlare della zanzara yankee con la 24 ore, o della famigliola stercoraria)

There’s an allegory that could be teased out of this book but suffice it to say Brezhnev would have had the author sitting in a gulag for the rest of his short life while Stalin would have had Pelevin shot. There are two resorts by the sea; Magadan on the Sea of Okhotsk and an unnamed one (Sochi) on the Black Sea across from Turkey. Isn’t it just too coincidental that we are reading this book that takes place in Sochi while the Winter Olympics are taking place there at the same time? In the Soviet Union, Sochi was a holiday spot for the workers who were guaranteed a yearly vacation. Could the comments on insects being poisoned by calcium cyanide since the wives need foreign currency, refer to the artificial famine (Holodomor) that took place in Ukraine? Stalin needed foreign currency to buy machinery for industrialization and got it by forcibly removing grain from Ukrainian farmers and selling it on world markets. Marina is impregnated by Major Nikolai from Magadan. Magadan was an infamous gulag on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk in Siberia. Marina and Nikolai are ants which represent the military and the KGB. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 which allowed Russian soil to become Ukrainian soil again. Seryozcha the cicada represents prisoners in the gulags who laboured in mines or digging canals. Could the cannibalism by Marina and Natasha the ants represent the cannibalism that took place all over the Soviet Union during WWII or Holodomor? Do the dung beetles personify a slaving population? I enjoyed the book for I took a degree in Russian literature, language, and history at university and was constantly reading between the lines. On the other hand, if you don’t follow Soviet/Russian history, then you’ll probably be in the dark. ( )

I really enjoyed these short stories that are all intertwined in their own ways. As much as social commentary on Russia as a novel, this is an intriguing book that deserves more time. It's also very strange... essentially it's about a number of different insects, each of whom have their own characters and journeys to make. More than that would be a spoiler but I definitely recommend it. ( )

I should start off saying I detest Kafka, so there wasn't a ton of hope that Victor Pelevin's novel "The Life of Insects" was going to get a high rating for me. Pelevin takes Kafka's ideas from "The Metamorphosis" and elevates them to another level.

In the book, people are bugs. There are quite a few clever bits woven throughout the stories, which I liked. You would probably get more out of the book if you know more about modern day Russia... I felt like there were a bunch of inside jokes that I never really understood.

An interesting read overall, but not one that I particularly enjoyed. ( )