As Viv Groskop knows from personal experience, everything that has ever happened to a person has already happened in the Russian classics: from not being sure what to do with your life ( ), to being hopelessly in love with someone who doesn’t love you back (Turgenev’s ), or being socially anxious about your appearance (all of Chekhov’s work). In , Groskop mines these and other works, as well as the lives of their celebrated creators and her own experiences as a student of Russian, to answer the question “How should you live your life?” or at least be less miserable. This is a charming and fiercely intelligent book, a love letter to Russian literature.