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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
Nicely written but the plot was so meandering that it never quite worked for me.
This exploration of the value & worthlessness of memory, of past trauma within late C20th Russian society is interesting. It is a fascinating historical era & culturally rich country but being written by an Australian academic who'd only visited Russia once made me a little uneasy. It was almost like a novel written by a robot who has digested a lot of original source material but you do wonder if it quite hangs together. Much of the backing & forthing of the protagonist between 1989 and 1999, between St Petersburg and Moscow, between two dreary relationships, not sure what to do with himself was difficult to engage with and his deliberations rather ponderous and pretentious. However it made me curious to know more & while already lauded with a Vogel, it'd be good to see this writing mature & sharpen.
Probably more a 2.5 than 2, but ultimately this was just too slow for me. The writing itself was of a good quality, but Brabon spends so much time meandering through the narrator's malaise that it just completely lost me and I was waiting for the novel to be over.
A shame, as I was really looking forward to this one, and the topic is one that interests me greatly.
A shame, as I was really looking forward to this one, and the topic is one that interests me greatly.
This book is a hard one to review. It tells the story through the point of view of Pasha. He is an author who has this massive project to record the history of the Gulags but never gets around to finishing it.
The author has researched thoroughly and it shows in her writing. I enjoy this book for the portrayal of the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation. If I ever go there, I'll want to visit the places mentioned in this book as I'm engaged with the history of the place through this book.
My issue with this book is the writing style. It follows a non-linear narrative, where the reader goes back and forth along Pasha's timeline, from when he was a young child, to when he was a young man and when he is an adult. Normally, I can follow sick transitions easily but I left it for a week and once I picked it up again, I lost track of what happened when. This put me off the book a little.
This is a great book for those wanting to know how like was in Russia (and the Soviet Union).
The author has researched thoroughly and it shows in her writing. I enjoy this book for the portrayal of the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation. If I ever go there, I'll want to visit the places mentioned in this book as I'm engaged with the history of the place through this book.
My issue with this book is the writing style. It follows a non-linear narrative, where the reader goes back and forth along Pasha's timeline, from when he was a young child, to when he was a young man and when he is an adult. Normally, I can follow sick transitions easily but I left it for a week and once I picked it up again, I lost track of what happened when. This put me off the book a little.
This is a great book for those wanting to know how like was in Russia (and the Soviet Union).
This is a book worth reading slowly. Brabon has done an excellent job of bringing thoughts into words.
It’s possible this book could have finished sooner, or even gone longer but regardless it’s a worthwhile read into a period where memory was unwanted and difficult.
It’s possible this book could have finished sooner, or even gone longer but regardless it’s a worthwhile read into a period where memory was unwanted and difficult.
slow-paced
This book is painfully slow paced and feels as if there is no driving force behind it, from characters or plot, rather a collection of random reflections that emerge without reason or plan. However, the reflections are beautiful and reveal challenging and powerful perspectives on history. The prose and philosophical questions raised by the book are wonderful, so are aspects of the stories it tells. I just wish it was a collection of short stories, or at the very least had a much lower word count. Still definetly worth the read despite the painful reading experience, I will be thinking about the content and the questions it raised for a long time.
I loved this. It covers the changes that took place in Russia with the transition from communism to whatever they call what they have now. The author managed to impart such history while telling such a compelling story of different stages of a man's life. Beautifully put together. I felt like I was there and definitely want to visit Russia now.
‘With our words we linked our creative futures to the pasts of our parents.’
‘The Memory Artist’ opens in 1999, when Pasha Ivanov (the narrator) learns of the death of his mother. Pasha is a Russian writer, a child of dissidents who grew up in the 1960s in a small Moscow apartment where his parents and their friends gathered. Members of this group were determined to find out and circulate information about the ruthless repressions which had continued under successive governments long after Stalin’s death. Millions of people had been murdered, placed in mental institutions, exiled to remote gulags or had simply disappeared. Pasha’s mother and her friends campaigned for the release of political prisoners. And Pasha remembers the ‘shiny mint-green Latvian radio that was moved to the table for those gatherings’.
‘The emergence of memory seemed to me like a warped wound, with a welt or bruise that had arrived inexplicably late. ‘
Pasha is in his early twenties when Mikhail Gorbachev comes to power in the 1980s. With glasnost providing the promise of increased openness about the activities of government institutions, Pasha wants to write a book about the stories of killings and oppression he had heard while growing up. He particularly wants to write of those who were forced to undergo treatment in the mental institutions. While many Russians want to forget this period, Pasha believes that the past needs to be acknowledged.
In the 1990s, when the USSR has disintegrated and become the Russian Federation, Pasha is living in St Petersburg. He is teaching Russian to foreigners, but has made no progress with his book. He is seemingly overwhelmed by the past: unable to forget it or leave it behind, unable to treat it the way he thinks he should. In the meantime, his own life is stalled.
‘I thought of my father and all the silent spaces in our apartment where he still lived, despite his death, where every day he still breathed.’
When his mother dies, Pasha goes to a dacha and writes. It is summer, and the endless days provide the perfect setting for Pasha to try to move beyond the past and into the promise (perhaps) of a better present. What does the future hold?
‘I hated to think of how words dissolve like smoke.’
I’ve read this book twice. I kept willing Pasha to succeed, to be able to write the book. As the story shifted between time periods, I could see why he wanted to write, but sometimes had trouble appreciating the various barriers Pasha saw. This is a richly detailed story, one that invites the reader to read carefully, to appreciate the language used as much as the story told. It is also a novel that I might, rarely for me, read a third time.
‘The Memory Artist’ won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 2016.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
‘The Memory Artist’ opens in 1999, when Pasha Ivanov (the narrator) learns of the death of his mother. Pasha is a Russian writer, a child of dissidents who grew up in the 1960s in a small Moscow apartment where his parents and their friends gathered. Members of this group were determined to find out and circulate information about the ruthless repressions which had continued under successive governments long after Stalin’s death. Millions of people had been murdered, placed in mental institutions, exiled to remote gulags or had simply disappeared. Pasha’s mother and her friends campaigned for the release of political prisoners. And Pasha remembers the ‘shiny mint-green Latvian radio that was moved to the table for those gatherings’.
‘The emergence of memory seemed to me like a warped wound, with a welt or bruise that had arrived inexplicably late. ‘
Pasha is in his early twenties when Mikhail Gorbachev comes to power in the 1980s. With glasnost providing the promise of increased openness about the activities of government institutions, Pasha wants to write a book about the stories of killings and oppression he had heard while growing up. He particularly wants to write of those who were forced to undergo treatment in the mental institutions. While many Russians want to forget this period, Pasha believes that the past needs to be acknowledged.
In the 1990s, when the USSR has disintegrated and become the Russian Federation, Pasha is living in St Petersburg. He is teaching Russian to foreigners, but has made no progress with his book. He is seemingly overwhelmed by the past: unable to forget it or leave it behind, unable to treat it the way he thinks he should. In the meantime, his own life is stalled.
‘I thought of my father and all the silent spaces in our apartment where he still lived, despite his death, where every day he still breathed.’
When his mother dies, Pasha goes to a dacha and writes. It is summer, and the endless days provide the perfect setting for Pasha to try to move beyond the past and into the promise (perhaps) of a better present. What does the future hold?
‘I hated to think of how words dissolve like smoke.’
I’ve read this book twice. I kept willing Pasha to succeed, to be able to write the book. As the story shifted between time periods, I could see why he wanted to write, but sometimes had trouble appreciating the various barriers Pasha saw. This is a richly detailed story, one that invites the reader to read carefully, to appreciate the language used as much as the story told. It is also a novel that I might, rarely for me, read a third time.
‘The Memory Artist’ won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 2016.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes