David Bezmozgis – The Betrayers

Tags

Book Review, David Bezmozgis, Israel, Russian Revolution, The Betrayers, Ukraine

Forever homeless, forever searching for the motherland

David Bezmozgis ‘The Betrayers’ is a disquieting, uncomfortable read – and an excellent one, in large part because of the discomfort of its shifting, ambiguous moral territory, and the avoidance of easy, comforting solutions. Life is messy, angels and demons as distinct entities are fairy tale creations, and the best and the worst of us alike are constantly in shift along a continuum of moral high and low ground

Baruch Kotler, one of the two central characters in this book, is a Russian Jew, now living in Israel. Kotler became a hero. He was a dissident in Russia, betrayed by a colleague, a fellow Jew, and spent thirteen years in the gulags, saved from execution (his initial sentence) because of an international outcry. When at the end of his sentence he and his wife were allowed to emigrate to Israel, they were greeted as heroes. Years on, Kotler is now a member of the Knesset, who have narrowly voted to withdraw from the settlements. Kotler is implacably opposed to this, and there have been attempts to twist his arm and get him to toe the line. Something he refuses to do – even when one of the ‘twists’ is to publicly expose the fact that he is having an affair with Leora, a co-worker, daughter of friends, a similar age to Kotler’s own daughter, Dafna – and coincidentally a close friend of Dafna’s

             Yalta, Crimea, 1945 Conference – crucial history

The novel opens with Kotler and his lover on the run as the ‘scandal’ breaks in the Israeli media. They have come to hole up in Yalta, back to Kotler’s roots, till the media furore dies down. Kotler was last here forty years ago.

By happenstance, a mix-up with hotel reservations results in Kotler and Leora having to seek ‘hospitality’ with one of the locals who turn up at stations to offer travellers bed and breakfast, in return for much-needed currency. And it just so happens that Svetlana, the local woman Kotler and Leora choose to lodge with, is married to Tankilevich, the comrade who was a secret KGB agent, and betrayed him. Tankilevich, now seventy, and keen to emigrate himself, will have his own complex story to tell

            Yalta beach – Ukraine, historically central once more

This is, in many ways, a ‘talking heads’ novel. Not a lot happens externally, the drive of the book is mostly set in the cauldrons of the past, how they still burn and fire the present, and how the central characters Kotler, Leora, Svetlana, Tankilevich, and the added history and present complexities of Kotler’s family – wife, Miriam, daughter Dafna, son, Benzion, a soldier in the Israeli army detailed to clear the settlements, and determined to refuse – will play out with each other.

Land! The land!……What dreams (the land) had nurtured and what distortions now obtained. And it was all to do with land. A measure of earth under your feet that you could call your own. Was there a more primitive concept? But nobody lives in the ether. Man is a physical being who requires physical space. And his nature is a prejudicial nature of like and unalike. That was the history of the world. How much earth can you claim with another’s consent? How long can you hold it if you haven’t consent? And is it possible to foster consent where none exists?

Who betrayed whom, who is betraying whom, who will be betrayed? Kotler himself is a wry man, a man with humour, so his observations prevent the book from being unremittingly bleak. Something about the complex subject matter of betrayal, of examination of loyalty – to whom, and to what are we loyal, reminded me of Coetzee.

One of the strengths of the book is that while politics – how it influences the individual, and what the influence of many individuals on politics might be – is central to the book, Bezmozgis is not indulging in polemics – we hear the different stories of individuals, their justifications and viewpoints.

Bezmozgis himself was born in Latvia, though brought up in Toronto from the age of 7, after his parents emigrated. I would guess there lies within him, and within family dynamics, a greater complexity about where ‘home’ is, than for most of us who are born and live out our lives in one country. That sense of being both ‘home’ and ‘not home’ which seems to be quite common in people with this experience – a kind of forever longing for the other ‘home’ in whichever place you are – permeates this fine book

The Betrayers Amazon UK
The Betrayers Amazon USA

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Sean Michaels – Us Conductors

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Book Review, Clara Rockmore, Espionage, Gulags, Lev Termen, Russian Revolution, Sean Michaels, Stalinist Russia, Theremin, Us Conductors

Strange, ethereal music : Russia and America, between the wars;  the darkness of espionage and the gulag, leavened by love

Sean Michaels is a Canadian author, though born in Scotland, so maybe he can be claimed North of the Border!. He is known as the founder of a long-standing music blog, Said The Gramophone, and is also North American music correspondent for The Guardian.

Us Conductors, astonishingly, is his first novel, and won Canada’s version of the Man Booker, the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Without having read the other nominations, perhaps I can’t comment : but this is an wonderful book, and I had completely surrendered to it by a handful of pages in, because, however the story was going to unfold, and whoever the characters were going to be, it was blazingly clear that here was a writer using language and imagery with beauty, conveying a lot with economy and precision. It made sense that this is a book about music (among other subjects). I think of notes, and the harmonics which arise from them, and I felt that quality in Michael’s use of language, realising  he was taking about more than one subject at a time :

Lev Sergeyvich Termen is not the voice of the ether. He is not the principle that turned glass into firefly. I am an instrument. I am a sound , being sounded, music being made, blood, salt and water manipulated inair. I come from Leningrad. With my bare hands, I have killed one man. I was born on August 15th, 1896, and at that instant I became an object moving through space toward you.

Michaels teases the reader with the following statement, before the book begins

This book is mostly inventions

Having finished the book, I smiled even more broadly at the clever double meanings in his disclaimer, which is followed by a quote from Tennessee Williams

In memory, everything seems to happen to music

Leon/Lev Termen was a scientist and inventor, whose initial fame came through his invention of the theremin:  ‘ an electronic musical instrument in which the tone is generated by two high-frequency oscillators and the pitch controlled by the movement of the performer’s hand towards and away from the circuit’

Here is Termen demonstrating his invention

Termen was a believer in the Russian Revolution, and in his country. He travelled to America as part of a trade initiative for Russia, between the wars. The theremin, and his other electronic inventions  presented opportunities to demonstrate the dynamism of Russia, the brilliance of its scientists, and to generate capital. Also, it appears that under the aegis of trade, espionage possibilities were possible.

In America, which Termen found an exciting country, and one which welcomed his brilliance, both as someone who was an artist, and as someone who was a scientist, he met a woman who was to completely obsess him – a Lithuanian born violinist, Clara Reisenberg, (later Clara Rockmore).  Clara, in her teens, developed bone problems which cut short her burgeoning career as a violin virtuoso. However her musicality, and her meeting with Termen and the theremin, meant she studied how to play this, not as some kind of gimmick, but as an instrument in its own right.

Clara Rockmore and Leon Termen. Wiki Commons

And I must admit, whilst sourcing media for this review, I listened to many Youtube videos of people playing the theremin, and thought ‘well it’s a bit of a gimmick, really’, until finding some recordings of Clara. Here she is playing Saint Saens’ The Swan.

Although Termen by all accounts proposed to Clara several times, she married another.

Meanwhile, Termen was inventing various security devices as well as refining musical ones, but was probably involved in darker matters. His loyalty to his mother country and those who were ‘minding’ him in his sojourn in America, led to his involvement as an industrial spy for Russia.

And then, in 1938 he was suddenly recalled to Russia, where he found himself regarded as a class enemy, was imprisoned and sent to the gulag.

None of these pieces of information are really spoilers, as they were rather what I gleaned the book was about from the publisher blurb

I decided not to investigate the finer points of biographical truth in Michaels’ astonishing novel, ‘this book is mostly inventions’, till I had finished. And indeed at the end of the book the author does reveal what is true, and what might not strictly be true, but may have been pieced together from research and also from creative imagination

Because it trusts the worker’s own senses, not the knowledge locked  away in the lessons and textbooks of the elites, the theremin becomes a revolutionary device – a levelling of the means of musical production

These are the bare bones of the book, a story of a man with a rather remarkable life, but this is far more than a biography, it is of course a work of literary fiction, a gorgeous thing, a meditation on the power of music and art, on politics, on Russia, on love as a compass needle for a life.

I was, often, breathless reading this, particularly those sections set in the gulag

The winter came quickly, in place of fall. I lived only barely, by coincidence. At the end of every workday, wrecked, ruined, we trudged back into the camp. We queued for our evening mean: a morsel of herring, a spoonful of pea soup, bread. Someone might steal the soup or fish, but never the scrap of limp brown bread. The prisoners had made this rule themselves. This is humanity, at the end of the world: the refusal to tear away a piece of bread

I was delighted to be offered this as an ARC from the publishers, via Netgalley. It is already published in the States, but UK publication is not till 16th of July

My digital ARC was a little littered with formatting signs and instructions such as physical page numbers mid text. But the formats included one, strangely apposite one. In place of symbols which might indicate a change of scene or subject matter, a shift of emphasis within a chapter or to indicate page and chapter breaks, was the use of the letter A

A is of course the note the orchestra tunes to, taken from the oboe. This typo sent a shiver up and down my spine, as it rather echoed the ‘true North, or the true note, of Clara, which Termin, in this novel, pitched to, over that complex life

I know i have failed to do justice to this book. It is, sure, a gripping and immersive story. The central character is wonderfully expressed, and the reader rather wants to stay with him, and listen to the narrative and the meaning of his life, as he tries, in various ways, to make sense of himself to himself, and his sense of the world he lives in, both its geography, its politics and culture, and the times themselves. What I found here is what I always yearn for – a kind of beauty. That doesn’t mean ‘pretty’ – beauty, in Yeats’ marvellous phrase, can also be ‘a terrible beauty’ But it will always mean what Keats said

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

Us Conductors Amazon UK
Us Conductors Amazon USA

And finally, nothing at all to do with this thoroughly wonderful book, but I found ithis curious, weird, irresistible Youtube theremin extravaganza It’s certainly not beautiful, and you do have to sit through a speaker addressing the world’s largest theremin orchestra event in Japanese, and break through the boredom of ‘Is anything going to happen?’, but for your unbelieving delectation and delight :

Helen Rappaport – Four Sisters : The Lost Lives Of The Romanov Grand Duchesses

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Biography, Book Review, Four Sisters: The Lost Lives Of The Romanov Grand Duchesses, Helen Rappaport, Russian Revolution, The Romanovs

Uneasy Lies The Head……………..

Helen Rappaport’s book examines the lives of the four Romanov daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, from their births to their grisly end in the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg

I was delighted to be offered this as an advance copy for review purposes, and am full of praise for Helen Rappaport’s ability to handle her complex, large cast of characters, often with confusing and similar names (oh those patronymics, and the recycling of various names deemed acceptable for royalty – the Alexandras, Victorias, Nicholases, Alexanders et al doubling and trebling in busy profusion)

It is obvious, reading all the citings,  that Rappaport researches profoundly, but what I really appreciate is her writer’s ability to put what can sometimes be a little dusty into living, breathing fascination.

Giving absolutely short and peremptory shift to all the Anastasia pretenders – citing past and more recent research, this book is not just about the four princesses, but focuses very much also on particularly Alexandra and the relationship between mother and her five children

She recounts a very personal story of what seems to have been a fairly bourgeois, close knit family – except that of course they weren’t because of accidents of birth. Mr and Mrs Romanov might have done quite well as a modest bourgeois couple, but as Tsar and Tsaritsa circumstance and character were explosive combinations.

Olga, Maria, Nicholas II, Alexandra Fyodorovna, Anastasia, Alexei, and Tatiana in 1913

I found myself ever more firmly convinced of the inherent cruelty of monarchy as an institution – to monarchs themselves. To be born with the stifling weight of inherited duty with no get-out – except of course abdication, but if you have been reared and indoctrinated that this is your duty from the start, I would imagine walking away from your destiny would be quite a struggle. Being a ‘good king’ for the demands of the time must be a pretty impossible task. Imperial Russia had had strong autocrats, Nicholas was essentially, at least from the books I have read, a decent family man, but lacked the grit needed to rule. In fact, he and Alexandra tried to raise their children in a more everyday, less imperial way – and they had flack for that from some quarters, and of course flack from other quarters because the family tended to keep themselves to themselves and did not participate in glittering public displays – because of the secret of Alexei’s haemophilia.

I recently read a much older text on the Romanov’s – Robert Massie’s. Rappaport brings a female, sensibility into this, and has delineated the contrast between changing and more enlightened views around female succession in the rest of Europe and America, with the implacable autocracy of male succession, at that time, in Russia.

Rappaport focuses much less on the twists and turns of Russia’s political history than Massie, her aim is to give individuality and identity back to each of the four sisters, who were always rather marginalised by history because succession resided in sons, not daughters. History rather treated them as an interchangeable job lot. Rappaport has breathed posthumous life into them, so the reader senses each of them as a unique being, who had the misfortune to be brutally sacrificed on the alter of a political ideology, some of  whose leaders seemed far less motivated by the heart of egalitarian politics, and far more acting out evidence of their own psychopathology.

Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana in captivity at Tsarskoe Selo, 1917

I have one cavil with this book – it reinforces how unfit for purpose the digital format is for non-fiction books, particularly source and research heavy.

Admittedly, my review copy was not fully functional, so that chapter notes did not link to their relevant references – but even when this is properly done, it is a much more fiddly and long winded operation to locate the reference as you read, something so easily done with strategically placed bookmarks in a ‘real’ book. Likewise, referring back to the cast of characters with all their many names, at the beginning, was far more challenging than it should have been.

Rappaport also likes using footnotes at the bottom of pages, as well as ‘Harvard’. Personally, I prefer in-text notes like this, rather than at the end of the book, but even this is rendered ridiculous on the Kindle, where one page of a book may be spread over 3 or 4 pages of the reader, so that the footnote inexplicably appears in a disconnected fashion within the text.

My ARC had no photographs. I am assuming that this, and the footnoting and the in-text referencing problems will be addressed in any post-publication eReader version, but still, dear reader, do yourself a favour and buy the physical book, for a more seamless, engaging read!

I like the warmth, dedication and passion Rappaport puts into her book, her communicative style, and the clearly extensive, scholarly research

This book will be published on March 27th

Four Sisters : The Lost Lives Of The Romanov Grand Duchesses Amazon UK
Four Sisters : The Lost Lives Of The Romanov Grand Duchesses Amazon USA

Robert K. Massie – Nicholas and Alexandra

Tags

Biography, Book Review, First World War, House of Romanov, Nicholas and Alexandra, Robert K. Massie, Russia, Russian Revolution

Everything is always more complex

This is a re-issue of a book originally published in 1967, later made into a film in 1971. Like any book, (indeed like any event) it is of its time, and of the subjectivity of its writer in its time.

Written therefore while the Cold War was still extant, it may show the fact that what we know/knew of Russia at that time will have certain aspects hidden, and also that how America itself perceived Russia will be of a certain aspect. We are all affected by the view from where we are.

Given the title of the book, the focus lies particularly upon the last Romanovs, vilified, at the time from within, just as the revolutionaries were at that time vilified from without. We all have our views to defend.

History and historical analysis must also be partial, as the historian also has a partiality.

What emerges from Massie’s interesting, rather sympathetic account of the Romanovs is a view of history which inevitably focuses on personalities in time.

Nicolas, Alexandra and their children

Massie puts the whole vastness of Russia, its mysticism, its reactionary, god-fearing backwardness in many ways, as well as the cauldron for revolution-in-reaction, under a microscope, but the Romanovs are viewed more closely. His conclusions place the haemophilia of Alexis (knowledge hidden, at the time, from the Russian population at large, who therefore had certain views about Alexandra’s coldness which perhaps may have been interpreted differently) as central to what transpired, since it placed her under the influence of Rasputin, and meant, when Nicolas was focusing on Russia at War, that Ministers were being promoted and sacked with dizzying frequency based purely on the relationship between the Minister and the Starets. He concludes history would have been vastly different without the Heir’s haemophilia. Massie’s own son was also haemophiliac, so the centrality of this may also have been filtered through the writer’s viewpoint. We all filter from where we stand.

There is a view of history which says that if these particular people had not existed at these particular times then the times itself would have thrown up others who fulfilled their exact function or place. Whilst its true that there is a culture which begets us which we, as masses, absorb, so that history can be seen as mass, rather than individual movements, it is also, surely, true that individuals do leave their mark upon history, and shape it, for good or ill.

What I found fascinating was the picking apart of the inevitable drive to the Great War, the shifting alliances which occurred between the European countries which were in part down to the alliances of blood and marriage between European rulers – and how autocracy itself is problematic, (whether the autocrat inherits his autocracy or wrests it by force of will, drive and ideology)

Russian Soldiers, Sarikam Front, World War 1

In Massie’s account the Romanovs were not the monsters painted by the Bolsheviks, who of course had good reason to foster a painting of monstrosity, rather, autocracy itself, whoever is at its head, is problematic. The brutality of the murder of the Romanovs shows a mind-set of ends-justifies-means which continued in the autocracy which came after.

History, (not to mention literature) is littered with examples of:

                                                 I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er

This was a rather difficult book to read on Kindle, where (quite common with non-fiction) it becomes less easy to search an index than in a paper book. At least this is the case with my Keyboard Kindle.

Keeping up with the rapid changes of Ministerial power, and the similar struggles by members of the Duma and the holders of power amongst the various revolutionary factions became a little dizzying (as no doubt it was to live through!) Having taken in many ways a personal psychology and personality driven view of history as far as the Romanovs were concerned, I would have liked more of this individuality on ‘the other side’ which might have kept me a little clearer. But I am sure much more information exists about the great and good or not so good than about the apparatchiks of history

Nicholas and Alexandra Amazon UK
Nicholas and Alexandra Amazon USA Kindle Edition

Marcus Sedgwick – Blood Red, Snow White

Tags

Arthur Ransome, Blood Red Snow White, Book Review, Marcus Sedgwick, Russian Revolution, Young Adult Fiction

Spare clean language, beautiful layered tale

This is a beautifully written novel, combining various motifs – myth and fairy story, the search for true love, the Russian Revolution, the childrens’ writer Arthur Ransome (Swallows and Amazons) and espionage.

As each and every one of these motifs are appealing or fascinating to me, I didn’t see how this book could fail me. And it didn’t!

The story of how the children’s writer Arthur Ransome had a life as a spy, initially going to Russia to research folk-lore and fairy, and becoming a sympathiser of the Bolshevik cause was something I had no idea about – Sedgwick’s marriage of subject matter is pretty perfect!

The book is marketed at I guess an early teens reader with an interest in a few of the above motifs, But his writing is too good to let his teen audience have him all to themselves; like Ransome himself, and more modern ‘childrens’ writers’ like Alan Garner, Philip Pullman etc there’s great pleasure for us ‘well grown up readers too’.

In fact I sometimes prefer really good ‘childrens’ writers’ – some ‘good’ adult writers can be too self-consciously turning a fine phrase, or trying to impress their peers; intelligent writing for children is often without artificial ‘cleverness’

Blood Red, Snow White Amazon UK
Bloood Red, Snow White Amazon USA