Review: WE, by Yevgeny Zamyatin

We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Published 1993 by Penguin. Science Fiction. Literary Fiction. Translated from the Russian.

We is one of those books I'd been wanting to read for years but never quite got around to, so it seemed like the perfect choice for a reading challenge. It's a dystopian novel, one of the first of the genre and an important influence on later dystopian works like George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

A criticism of Communist Russia and an important work in the canon of Russian science fiction, the resemblance to 1984 in particular is striking; like 1984, We takes place in a homogenized totalitarian society where people are raised to think of themselves as mere cogs in the machine, units as opposed to individuals- tools of the One State. Instead of names, people have numbers. This One State is established some time in the far future, after war has all but annihilated human society. The remnants of humanity form the basis of this tightly controlled society where everything from rising and sleeping to sexual activity and the chewing of food is rigidly scheduled and monitored, people live in glass houses and "vote" for their dictator, the Benefactor, on the aptly named Unanimity Day.

The protagonist, a number called D-503, is a mathematician and true believer in the One State. He finds himself gradually losing his grip after falling passionately in love with another number, I-330, who is involved with a resistance group seeking to demolish the One State. He begins the book as a testament to the greatness of the One State but the book instead becomes a testament of his increasing confusion and inner conflict. His story, like that of Orwell's Winston, does not end well, though there may be hope for others.

Books like We remind me why I love great literature. More than a mere page-turner, it's a challenging, beautifully constructed and stunning work. It's a diary and a record of inner turmoil, so sometimes it's a little hard to follow but his changing moods and slowly decaying sanity are rendered convincingly. I could feel his loosening grip on himself, his confidence and control petering out slowly, entry by entry. The other characters, especially his beloved I-330 and his lover O-90, are vividly constructed individuals and the plot moves along swiftly to its inevitable conclusion. I wish all books could be like this!

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

TBR Challenge: The Electric Michelangelo, by Sarah Hall

The Electric Michelangelo, by Sarah Hall. Published 2005 by Harper Perennial. Literary Fiction.


I picked up The Electric Michelangelo in a used bookstore sometime last summer; it seemed almost custom-made to lure me in. It's a story about an unusual man- Cyril (or Cy) Parks is a tattoo artist who finds his trade growing up in a seaside resort town in England, and then perfects it in the wilds of Coney Island, New York, in the era between the first two World Wars. It's populated by a variety of eccentric and colorful characters, along with their secrets and stories, especially the ones they wear on their skin.

I feel sort of badly that I didn't like the book more than I did, because it seemed like the kind of book I would normally enjoy. The writing is very skillful and it has about it a very literary patina. The problem for me is that it seems to lack focus. The book is just too long. It's divided into two sections of roughly equal length- Cy's life in England and his life in New York. There may be some artistic reason why the first half is as long as it is, but I think author Hall could have done without it entirely. The love story supposedly at its center takes up just a small portion near the end, and the whole Coney Island section feels compressed, like she's covering too much ground too quickly. She writes page after page after page of narration, eschewing dialog in favor of endless description and exposition. I would have liked to get to know some of these colorful characters better- as it is I felt alienated even from the protagonist Cy. The rest, like the conjoined twins who ran the local bar, to the couple who were Cy's first friends in New York, are little more than collections of adjectives. His lady friend Grace is supposed to be enigmatic but instead she's almost a cypher.

I will say though that Hall's writing, as verbose as it can be sometimes, is beautifully stylized and fluid. She captures the transience of the summer season beautifully in the first section, the resort-town atmosphere of escapism and frivolity, and shows a loving respect for the vacationing laborers and invalids who populate the seaside town of Morecambe, not to mention the people who run it- people like Cy's mother Reeda and his mentor Eliot Riley, who make the town tick but who have secrets of their own. And she certainly seems to have done her homework on the history and practice of the tattoo trade. The sections dealing with Cy's apprenticeship, and his relationship to his customers and his feelings about the deeper meaning of tattooing were fascinating and kept me going. The way the book ends is very satisfying, and I liked finally getting to hear Cy actually talk and interact with another character more than a line or two at a time. I wish I'd been able to spend more time like that with him. I think anyone interested in tattooing or Coney Island would probably enjoy The Electric Michelangelo; I was a little disappointed but still found some things to appreciate.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

TBR Challenge: A Little Love Story, by Roland Merullo

A Little Love Story, by Roland Merullo. Published 2005 by Vintage. Literary Fiction.

A Little Love Story will feel like familiar territory for fans of Roland Merullo, author of the novels Breakfast with Buddha and Revere Beach Boulevard, among others. The protagonist is a regular Boston-area guy, a carpenter as a matter of fact, privileged by upbringing but carrying some guilt. In Breakfast with Buddha, Merullo's protagonist dealt with his bourgeois ennui by trying to be a good liberal; in this case, the main character, Jake Entwhistle, deals with it by rejecting a career in medicine for the less glamorous (but still remunerative) life of a successful tradesman and artist.

When Jake meets Janet Rossi, a beautiful and whip-smart political aide with a difficult chronic illness, it's a year after his girlfriend Giselle has died on the plane over Pennsylvania in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The book chronicles Jake's efforts to forge a relationship with Janet with death always close at hand, as well as deal with his lingering sadness and the after-effects of 9/11. In that way, this book is similar to Perrin Ireland's Chatter, another story of post-9/11 angst among the bohemian bourgeoisie. The terrorist attacks are a metaphor for instability and the fragility of life- not that we need a metaphor since we have Janet, who weakens before our eyes.

It probably sounds like I didn't like the book very much; actually I'm ambivalent. As always with Merullo I admire his writing- he's a superb craftsman- and his compassion and respect for his characters. Even the slimy governor, Janet's former lover and the key to her survival, is treated with a certain amount of dignity. As in Breakfast with Buddha, Jake relies on a quasi-religious figure (this time his brother) to help him stay focused; in fact, sometimes A Little Love Story read almost like a rough draft for Breakfast with Buddha, a much better novel. I can't say I liked Jake very much, although he acts with great love and devotion towards Janet. I just found him to be almost too good, and I didn't find their relationship, their great romance, very convincing either. Merullo doesn't show any ambivalence in Jake, any complications to his personality, or to Janet's. Jake keeps telling us how smart Janet is, but I didn't see much evidence of that either. They both just came across as bland. Maybe it was too workaday, too ordinary- an ordinary story about ordinary people, where what appeals to me sometimes are stories with greater narrative flourish. They're both supposed to be wildly admirable people, and I guess they are, but the whole saint thing didn't work for me.

Well, it's not a bad book. It just wasn't that great. If you're interested in cystic fibrosis or a decent novels about the heroics people are willing to undergo to hang on to a lover, you'll like A Little Love Story, probably more than I did.

Rating: BORROW

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

TBR Challenge: Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief, by Stephen Alter

Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief, by Stephen Alter. Click on
the cover to buy from your local Book Sense-affiliated independent bookseller.

I got Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief as a gift, and having only seen two Bollywood films I'm definitely a newcomer to those phenomenally successful and popular movie musicals from India. The book is about the making of the film "Omkara," a remake of Shakespeare's Othello; author Stephen Alter, a writer and former MIT writing professor who lives and works in India, is probably as good a guide as any to this colorful world.

But sometimes, through no fault of its own, a book just doesn't work out.

I read this book for the TBR Challenge, but I was unable to finish it, at least for now. I got about halfway through it when I just had to admit that I have more compelling reading to do at the moment and for the foreseeable future. I'd like to see the movie, and perhaps then I'll come back to the book but for now I have to call it quits and move on.

There's nothing really wrong with the book, and it's gotten good reviews elsewhere. Personally I just found it busy and a little hard to follow, but I think my reaction is due to my overall lack of familiarity with Bollywood in general and the film in question in particular. Fans of the book seem to be fans of the movie as well. I enjoyed references to the few Bollywood films I do know, but I think I just don't know enough. I've heard other people say it's too light for real Bollywood aficionados, but it struck me as a touch confusing for newbies as well. The writing is pretty solid and I'm sure its good reviews are merited.

I have a lot on my plate right now but I'll hang on to the book for now and who knows, maybe over the summer I'll get back to it.

TBR Challenge: Death in the Truffle Wood, by Pierre Magnan

Death in the Truffle Wood, by Pierre Magnan. Published in 2007 by St. Martin's. Fiction. Crime Fiction. Translated from the French.

I got a galley of Death in the Truffle Wood at the 2007 annual conference of the American Library Association; it was one of several advance-reader copies I picked up on the exhibit hall floor and then left in a pile. Trouble is, I don't really read mysteries, but I couldn't resist the premise- black humor in Provence, peppered with truffles, scandal, and murder.

Starring Magnan regular Commissaire Laviolette, it's a fun book. Laviolette is a (typically?) dry investigator; he arrives in the small village of Banon to investigate a series of unusual disappearances which are quickly revealed to be a series of unusual murders. Actually there are two sets of murders, and two murderers, but one of the murderers is known and the suspense lies in whether this individual will get caught. Banon seemed like a pretty typical French country town- a little isolated, a little inbred, and very, very old. The characters are divided between indistinguishable townies and a few principals who dominate the action- Laviolette (of course), truffle farmer Alyre Morelon, his unfaithful, jewelry-loving wife Francine and his treasured truffle-sniffing sow Roseline, buxom innkeeper Rosemonde and Lavoisette's friend Bredes. Clues are scattered throughout like the truffles in Alyre's woods, and you don't need to be Roseline to sniff them out.

The tone of the book is dominated by a kind of blasé black humor. Roseline's travails are an important part of the plot and the murders, while somewhat gruesome, have a comic aspect as well, especially the where-and-when of the discovery of the first body. There is some real suspense as the net closes around the killers although the action lagged now and then. Magnan includes a lot of great descriptions of the local color- the food, customs and geography of Banon are described with affection and attention to detail. Overall it's a fun, entertaining light read. If I ever have time I'd love to read more of Commissaire Laviolette's adventures outside the Truffle Wood too.

Rating: BEACH

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

TBR Challenge: The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, by P.D. Ouspensky

The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, by P.D. Ouspensky. Originally published: 1915. Published 1988 by Penguin.


The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin by P.D. Ouspensky is a thin little novel I picked up in a used bookstore a long time ago, because I like Russian literature and it just looked interesting to me. I'd never heard of the author- no surprise, since The Strange Life was his only novel- but it looked intriguing, so I took it home.

And then it sat on my bookshelf for a long time. Since it is so small I always figured if I wanted to, I could read it quickly. And indeed it turned out to be a quick, satisfying and fascinating little book.

Ivan Osokin's life is made up of a series of disappointments- mostly of a man disappointed with himself as he manages to throw his opportunities away one by one. He comes to a crossroads after losing his lover and asks a magician to send him back in time so he can live his life again and correct all the mistakes he made that lead up to this final, colossal mistake, letting the woman he loves leave him and marry someone else. But will it make any difference? Will he change? Does he have the will to avoid the pitfalls he knows are coming? Or will he do everything the same way?

Overall the novel is characterized by a sense of despair and inevitability; Ivan is a sweet but feckless man who tries to get out of his own way and just can't seem to do it. In that way he's a lot like many people. He means well, and he tries hard, and sometimes that's enough, but most of the time it's not and he's always stuck with himself at the end of the day. I felt Ivan's frustration and his ennui and thought that Ouspensky did a good job of creating a likable character with whom it's easy to identify. Ouspensky was a philosopher and I think he wrote the book intending to espouse a particular theory about human behavior but the book never felt heavy or weighed down by an agenda. It's a bittersweet story that would appeal to Russian literature buffs or anyone who might like a book that is both brief and challenging.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

A New Challenge- The TBR Challenge

The goal of the TBR Challenge is to dig into that pile of books I've been piling up and actually read some of them. It's hard, between what I read for work, for review and for fun, to balance it all out, and it's not like I ever stop buying books. So here is my list:

The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, by P.D. Ouspensky (done)

Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief: Inside the World of Indian Moviemaking, by Stephen Alter

Scarlet and Black, by Stendahl

Death in the Truffle Wood, by Pierre Magnan (done 3/5)

A Little Love Story, by Roland Merullo

We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Fatelessness, by Imre Kertesz

Klezmer, by Joann Sfar

The Electric Michelangelo, by Sarah Hall

The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

The Fairy Gunmother, by Daniel Pennac

Shosha, by Isaac Bashevis Singer

I think there is a good variety here- long books, short books, classics, new books, a graphic novel, some nonfiction too. I'll keep the pile near where I read, and little by little go through them. Should be a fun year!