No Words to Say Goodbye: A Young Jewish Woman's Journey from the Soviet Union Into America--The Extraordinary Diaries of Raimonda Kopelnitsky

Publishing teenager Raimonda's emigre experiences in the form of her diary is at once the book's power and its limitation. In 1989 an ambivalent Kopelnitsky family--parents Klavdia and Igor, both engineers; Simon, b.1970; Raimonda, b.1977--emigrated from Ukraine to Brooklyn, leaving a comfortable lifestyle for economic uncertainty and emotional displacement. The earlier sections of the diary are the most affecting, as when the Kopelnitskys sell their possessions and 11-year-old Raimonda observes, ``our pasts are dying in our present.'' When the family encounters the West, she marvels at ``how much of everything there is!'' Yet, Raimonda soon faces a truism: ``Refugees--without this word we wouldn't know who we are.'' The later sections, overdramatized with prepubescent moodiness, note frequent family squabbles without an awareness of the poignant dynamics, and take note of Raimonda's progress in school. In New York City, the Kopelnitskys are aided by Jewish groups and befriended by coauthor Pryor, who arranged for publication of this diary. One hopes that in her newfound celebrity Raimonda doesn't continue to style herself as Anne Frank, or take so seriously the adults in her life who liken her to Anna Akhmatova (the book's title is taken from one of Raimonda's poems). (Jan.)