SOURCE: "The Soviet Union Is No Joke," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 13, 1989, pp. 2, 10.

In the following review, Zinik, a novelist, points out the autobiographical aspects of Say Cheese! and faults the novel for its use of 1960s Russian jargon.

Vassily Aksyonov tells his story of Moscow life of the 1970s as an adventure yarn about a group of dissident photographers who, in spite of KGB schemings, produce an "underground" photography album, Say Cheese! and, having failed to publish it officially, smuggle it to the West. In flashbacks between the actions we learn life stories of all the participants of this enterprise, spearheaded by the ringleader of the group, Maxim Ogorodnikov, who walks recklessly through life on a tightrope between his seven ex-wives, his numerous lovers and colleagues, some of whom are KGB informers. His mother's apartment on Gorky Street is full of old Bolshevik memorabilia. His...