Early Review: Death of a Past Life
With the summer reaching its apex, and my job-hunting trials reaching that point of stagnation better known as frustrating-beyond-belief, it seems only appropriate that I should return to my LibraryThing duties and post some delinquent early reviews.
The first victim of my too-much-to-read-and-not-enough-time-to-review-until-now streak is Robert N. Reincke's historical novel Death of a Past Life, originally published late last year. I have reprinted my review below for the benefit of those who may be interested.
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Death of a Past Life is an enigmatic book, an epic history that feels much of the time like it doesn't know quite what it wishes to be. Throughout, we get a strong sense of Robert Reincke's passion towards his material--it is, after all, based on his own family history, we are told--but it's hard to figure out what his ultimate plan was. And unfortunately, it's even harder to say whether he executed that plan effectively.
The novel opens with a short, typo-ridden passage "From the Life of Ann K.," which we learn much later was an actual unfinished work, written by Reincke's grandfather. From this, we are transported back to Russia in 1911 and into the daily lives of the bourgeois Katschalin family. As the Bolsheviks, World War I, Stalin, and World War II gradually ravage St. Petersburg and its environs, the family becomes fragmented by circumstance and necessity. While many try merely to stay together, the toll the conflicts take on Nick, Nina, and their daughter Ann become the focal point of the story, as they struggle to merely survive through famine and hardship.
Though the plot sounds riveting, there is a substantial conflict between Reincke's highly-researched historical passages and the details of family life. Domestic scenes are often portrayed as being simple and unassuming--a prime example involves the children at play on the family's dacha--and it's surprisingly hard to get a strong sense of the family's economic status because there is so little detail about their wealth and opulence (or lack thereof). As such, when the political turmoils of twentieth-century Russia begin to take their tolls at the end of Book 1, the depth of the hardship is difficult to fathom. From an historical standpoint, however, Reincke's prose, accurate though not always objective, is clear and precise. It creates an odd disconnect, one even more disconcerting for the fact that the novel is so invested in history's impact on the family and the familiar.
Nevertheless, the novel becomes increasingly more readable and engaging as it goes on. Early scenes of domestic benignity are populated by a very large cast of characters, many of whom play little more than a passing role in the proceedings. It is a very Russian-novel gesture, for certain, and one that I imagine is rooted deeply in Reincke's desire to properly anthologize his own family history, but it doesn't give the reader an opportunity to truly sympathize with many figures. In Books 2 and 3, when the focus shifts far more explicitly onto Nick, Nina, and Ann, the work begins to capture some of that missing emotional impact: we are allowed time with these characters, and as such we feel at last for their plight.
Though Book 3 is the novel's strongest section, it suffers, as does the rest of the novel, from a strange sense of abridgement--as if the book, though almost 500 pages in length, doesn't spend nearly as much time in each year of the life as it should. Particularly in later years, perhaps because of lack of content or particularly focused memories, entire years pass in the span of a few pages, most of the time concentrating on one single conversation between two characters. The result is the sense that the novel wishes to be an epic, but simply does not have the material to sustain it. More focus on particularly powerful (if disparate) moments, rather than on what seems to be the need to cover every year of the family history, would have made the impact of the work stronger.
So too would have been a clearer focus on the novel's intent. I've noted before that the novel seems to want to be historiography, ethnography, family history, and political treatise all in one, but by the time the novel comes to an end, it's hard to decipher what its larger point has been. The epilogue, in which the author lays himself bare as a descendent of the book's characters, reads like an unfortunately cheesy afterthought, with clichéd messages about "learning from the past so that we don't repeat it" obscuring the impact of the family's ultimate triumph. It feels like just another example of Reincke meaning well but trying to do too much, trying to turn it into a "message novel" where a semi-fictional historical novel would have sufficed.
Overall, the book is quite readable and easy enough to digest--even though the copy I received, which appeared to be not a proof but a finished bound copy, featured enough typos that it was rather noticeable. It seems, in summary, to be a microcosm for the work as a whole: a well-meaning, decently executed novel that, despite its best intentions, has more imperfections than I'm sure the author intended. Death of a Past Life tries, admirably, but it doesn't feel destined to enter the pantheon of great Russian family epics any time soon.
The first victim of my too-much-to-read-and-not-enough-time-to-review-until-now streak is Robert N. Reincke's historical novel Death of a Past Life, originally published late last year. I have reprinted my review below for the benefit of those who may be interested.
------------------------
Death of a Past Life is an enigmatic book, an epic history that feels much of the time like it doesn't know quite what it wishes to be. Throughout, we get a strong sense of Robert Reincke's passion towards his material--it is, after all, based on his own family history, we are told--but it's hard to figure out what his ultimate plan was. And unfortunately, it's even harder to say whether he executed that plan effectively.
The novel opens with a short, typo-ridden passage "From the Life of Ann K.," which we learn much later was an actual unfinished work, written by Reincke's grandfather. From this, we are transported back to Russia in 1911 and into the daily lives of the bourgeois Katschalin family. As the Bolsheviks, World War I, Stalin, and World War II gradually ravage St. Petersburg and its environs, the family becomes fragmented by circumstance and necessity. While many try merely to stay together, the toll the conflicts take on Nick, Nina, and their daughter Ann become the focal point of the story, as they struggle to merely survive through famine and hardship.
Though the plot sounds riveting, there is a substantial conflict between Reincke's highly-researched historical passages and the details of family life. Domestic scenes are often portrayed as being simple and unassuming--a prime example involves the children at play on the family's dacha--and it's surprisingly hard to get a strong sense of the family's economic status because there is so little detail about their wealth and opulence (or lack thereof). As such, when the political turmoils of twentieth-century Russia begin to take their tolls at the end of Book 1, the depth of the hardship is difficult to fathom. From an historical standpoint, however, Reincke's prose, accurate though not always objective, is clear and precise. It creates an odd disconnect, one even more disconcerting for the fact that the novel is so invested in history's impact on the family and the familiar.
Nevertheless, the novel becomes increasingly more readable and engaging as it goes on. Early scenes of domestic benignity are populated by a very large cast of characters, many of whom play little more than a passing role in the proceedings. It is a very Russian-novel gesture, for certain, and one that I imagine is rooted deeply in Reincke's desire to properly anthologize his own family history, but it doesn't give the reader an opportunity to truly sympathize with many figures. In Books 2 and 3, when the focus shifts far more explicitly onto Nick, Nina, and Ann, the work begins to capture some of that missing emotional impact: we are allowed time with these characters, and as such we feel at last for their plight.
Though Book 3 is the novel's strongest section, it suffers, as does the rest of the novel, from a strange sense of abridgement--as if the book, though almost 500 pages in length, doesn't spend nearly as much time in each year of the life as it should. Particularly in later years, perhaps because of lack of content or particularly focused memories, entire years pass in the span of a few pages, most of the time concentrating on one single conversation between two characters. The result is the sense that the novel wishes to be an epic, but simply does not have the material to sustain it. More focus on particularly powerful (if disparate) moments, rather than on what seems to be the need to cover every year of the family history, would have made the impact of the work stronger.
So too would have been a clearer focus on the novel's intent. I've noted before that the novel seems to want to be historiography, ethnography, family history, and political treatise all in one, but by the time the novel comes to an end, it's hard to decipher what its larger point has been. The epilogue, in which the author lays himself bare as a descendent of the book's characters, reads like an unfortunately cheesy afterthought, with clichéd messages about "learning from the past so that we don't repeat it" obscuring the impact of the family's ultimate triumph. It feels like just another example of Reincke meaning well but trying to do too much, trying to turn it into a "message novel" where a semi-fictional historical novel would have sufficed.
Overall, the book is quite readable and easy enough to digest--even though the copy I received, which appeared to be not a proof but a finished bound copy, featured enough typos that it was rather noticeable. It seems, in summary, to be a microcosm for the work as a whole: a well-meaning, decently executed novel that, despite its best intentions, has more imperfections than I'm sure the author intended. Death of a Past Life tries, admirably, but it doesn't feel destined to enter the pantheon of great Russian family epics any time soon.
posted by Dave at 7/16/2009 12:56:00 PM
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