Meet Sofi Stambo
Her Freewheeling Sketches Superimpose NYC Life and Bulgarian Origins
If heavy times have you looking for light, if the headlines are bringing you headaches, then you probably want to meet Sofi Stambo. You can start by ordering her collection of stories, People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much, just out from Restless Books.1 If you’re anything like me, you’ll find in its tart humor, free associations, and close observations—of our species and of immigrant life in New York in particular—a source of energy and insight, and welcome laughs.
In the coming weeks New York folks can also meet her in person at a reading upstate or at one of four independent bookstores in Brooklyn. (Four independent bookstores? Bronxites like me can only sigh….) You’ll find ticket links and more about Sofi on her website.
FIND SOFI AND HER BOOK AT THESE FINE STORES
BROOKLYN, NY
May 27 7PM
Books Are Magic 122 Montague St.
May 28 7PM
WORD 126 Franklin St.
June 2 7PM
POWERHOUSE Arena 28 Adams St.
June 3 7 PM
Unnameable Books 615 Vanderbilt Ave.
HUDSON, NY
June 20. 3 PM
Time & Space Limited 2434 Columbia St.
Each of the book’s stories, delightfully illustrated by her daughter Yana Mihaylova, welcomes us aboard Stambo’s fast-switching trains of thought. We toggle between her then and the now, her there and here, the details of her childhood in Sofia and Varna, with its many deprivations and comforts, and her experiences in New York, in all their strangeness and wonder. Taken together, these 34 short-take reels from her reeling mind make for a wild and freeing ride.
She recently described to me what good storytelling means to her:
“I feel the most interesting and the most understood when I am with a group of friends at a party, talking and joking around. Somebody tells a story, and then somebody else tells one, and you get into this flow of telling stories and laughing. In my brain this is how a story should be: short, concise, to the point. It makes a splash in the end if it can. And it makes someone laugh.”
In “Any Bird Will Tell You,” for instance, she introduces us to an “office dog” named Nelly. Unlike the imaginary “Lilly la Chienne,” invented by the receptionist Phil as a name to take annoying sales calls on voicemail, Nelly
“is the real deal. She likes to fly lying on her back, like a hairy figure skater, high up in Phil’s hands. She has a huge smile and her long ears wave in the air. Swooping around in this pose, which suggests Tchaikovsky playing in the background, is her favorite thing to do. There’s always someone in the mood to fly her around the office on her back.
The only weird thing is that window blinds freak her out.”
With its deadpan tone and absurdist high drama, with the phrase like a hairy figure skater, this description hits Stambovian offbeats. But there’s more, much more. To understand why Nelly barks whenever someone opens the blinds, we go inside canine consciousness, where, in an imagined flying dream, Nelly soars out the window, beyond the Empire State Building, and off into space, amazing the crowds. But then we quickly come back to earth:
“Nelly doesn’t feel ready to live her grandest life yet. We all understand this perfectly well in the dark office. Every half hour or so one of us pairs up with her for the next training session. It will take more work and dedication, but this is why we are here. Soon, soon, we whisper in her ears. It’s one thing to have a dream and a whole other ballgame to fly on your own when you were born to walk, pee, and bark at the blinds.
By implication, Nelly carries on her hairy back all the restlessness and stifled yearnings of the human workers in that “dark office.” Descendants of Bartelby the Scrivener (but with more humor) and Gogol’s clerks, they all bark at life’s blinds, putting aside New York’s infinite possibilities for the humbling realities of their day-to-day.
I’ll share more soon about Sofi and her stories. For now, fly off and fetch this book!
The independent nonprofit Restless Books, headed up by Amherst professor Ilan Stavans, also published Lana Bastašić’s Catch the Rabbit ( Here’s my post from almost two years ago: Fresh Tales from a Broken Home). They have published first books in English by some 33 authors from around the world. For a full list, visit their website here.
Thank you so much for the great review and support!!!