An all but forgotten, little-translated Russian writer emerges from the shadows with this sometimes-bleak, sometimes-surreal tale.
Piotr Alekseevich Marakulin is a bookkeeper so meticulous in his work that his colleagues in a turn-of-the-century, pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg brokerage call him “the German.” Alas, one day the books don’t balance, and though Marakulin thinks it’s a practical joke, he’s fired. Being sacked first gives him the bracing realization that “a man is as indifferent as a beam to the fate of another,” then plunges him into the existential doldrums. A leading proponent of modernism, Remizov (1877–1957) often took themes from Russian folklore and religion and worked them into his fiction; here the story of Marakulin is less folkloric, though, and more a mashup of Dickens and Gogol, the poor clerk as a sad sack of an Everyman, the ratty tenement in which he lives a microcosm—and a kind of living museum of every kind of suffering. The “sisters of the cross” of the title are the women of the building, who, since the men are off at work, are the exemplars of the world’s soul-trying harshness; one, for instance, is the widow of a famed general who, by dint of that connection, has a nicer apartment than most and invites the fate of Aliona Ivanovna of Crime and Punishment; she winds up, in one of several unpleasant scenes, “lying on the pavement with her spine shattered and her face pushed into the stones.” Since Marakulin has inherited a kind of dumb innocence from his ethereal mother, who “was moved and tormented by everything,” it’s easy to play him, all the more so when he is smitten by a fallen actress, Verochka. The narrative is sometimes fusty, the echoes of the passion a little evident, but the out-of-the-blue ending is worth the price of admission.
Dark and beguiling; Remizov is a writer worth knowing about, and this slender volume makes a good start.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-231-18542-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION
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When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus run over a longtime acquaintance of hers—Barbara Baker, a woman she doesn't like very much—it's only the beginning of the shake-ups to come in her life and the lives of those she loves.
Astrid has been tootling along contentedly in the Hudson Valley town of Clapham, New York, a 68-year-old widow with three grown children. After many years of singlehood since her husband died, she's been quietly seeing Birdie Gonzalez, her hairdresser, for the past two years, and after Barbara's death she determines to tell her children about the relationship: "There was no time to waste, not in this life. There were always more school buses." Elliot, her oldest, who's in real estate, lives in Clapham with his wife, Wendy, who's Chinese American, and their twins toddlers, Aidan and Zachary, who are "such hellions that only a fool would willingly ask for more." Astrid's daughter, Porter, owns a nearby farm producing artisanal goat cheese and has just gotten pregnant through a sperm bank while having an affair with her married high school boyfriend. Nicky, the youngest Strick, is disconcertingly famous for having appeared in an era-defining movie when he was younger and now lives in Brooklyn with his French wife, Juliette, and their daughter, Cecelia, who's being shipped up to live with Astrid for a while after her friend got mixed up with a pedophile she met online. As always, Straub (Modern Lovers, 2016, etc.) draws her characters warmly, making them appealing in their self-centeredness and generosity, their insecurity and hope. The cast is realistically diverse, though in most ways it's fairly superficial; the fact that Birdie is Latina or Porter's obstetrician is African American doesn't have much impact on the story or their characters. Cecelia's new friend, August, wants to make the transition to Robin; that storyline gets more attention, with the two middle schoolers supporting each other through challenging times. The Stricks worry about work, money, sex, and gossip; Straub has a sharp eye for her characters' foibles and the details of their liberal, upper-middle-class milieu.
Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59463-469-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Categories: FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | LITERARY FICTION
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In Kidd’s (The Invention of Wings, 2014, etc.) feminist take on the New Testament, Jesus has a wife whose fondest longing is to write.
Ana is the daughter of Matthias, head scribe to Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee. She demonstrates an exceptional aptitude for writing, and Matthias, for a time, indulges her with reed pens, papyri, and other 16 C.E. office supplies. Her mother disapproves, but her aunt, Yaltha, mentors Ana in the ways of the enlightened women of Alexandria, from whence Yaltha, suspected of murdering her brutal husband, was exiled years before. Yaltha was also forced to give up her daughter, Chaya, for adoption. As Ana reaches puberty, parental tolerance of her nonconformity wanes, outweighed by the imperative to marry her off. Her adopted brother, Judas—yes, that Judas—is soon disowned for his nonconformity—plotting against Antipas. On the very day Ana, age 14, meets her prospective betrothed, the repellent Nathanial, in the town market, she also encounters Jesus, a young tradesman, to whom she’s instantly drawn. Their connection deepens after she encounters Jesus in the cave where she is concealing her writings about oppressed women. When Nathanial dies after his betrothal to Ana but before their marriage, Ana is shunned for insufficiently mourning him—and after refusing to become Antipas’ concubine, she is about to be stoned until Jesus defuses the situation with that famous admonition. She marries Jesus and moves into his widowed mother’s humble compound in Nazareth, accompanied by Yaltha. There, poverty, not sexism, prohibits her from continuing her writing—office supplies are expensive. Kidd skirts the issue of miracles, portraying Jesus as a fully human and, for the period, accepting husband—after a stillbirth, he condones Ana’s practice of herbal birth control. A structural problem is posed when Jesus’ active ministry begins—what will Ana’s role be? Problem avoided when, notified by Judas that Antipas is seeking her arrest, she and Yaltha journey to Alexandria in search of Chaya. In addition to depriving her of the opportunity to write the first and only contemporaneous gospel, removing Ana from the main action destroys the novel’s momentum.
A daring concept not so daringly developed.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-42976-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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