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goblintrash's review
1.0
I have a pretty dark sense of humor sometimes and yet I found nothing in this redeeming or amusing. The narrator is a narcissistic alcoholic who cares little about people or animals. Gave up after he described letting a dog be strangled on stage.
vorpalblad's review
4.0
Mind Bending
This is not a light read. Combining elements of the absurdist and the darkness that seems to come naturally to artists from the coldest climes (definitely thinking Bergman films), Gelasimov takes the reader through different stages of the thickening fog, metaphorically and literally. Filya, a famous stage director returns to the far North to deliver some bad news to his collaborator, in person. The first half of the novel follows the underdressed Fillipov on a drunken trip through his hometown as it experiences the failure of all heating and electronic infrastructure during an extreme cold (think 40 and 50 below 0). His increasing drunkenness and confusion color the perspective of the action, with interspersed flashbacks of clarity to explain who he is and why he's here. His guilt over multiple episodes increases as his confusion grows until finally he passes out. The third part of the book finds our protagonist sober and on a mission. Suddenly the relationships of the people around him become clear and he sees his own life reflected in the emotions, or lack of, in those around him, and he doesn't like what he sees. A difficult, yet beautiful novel, the following passage from the third section is a lovely representation of the writing and Filya's increasing clarity, even as the weather outside continues to deteriorate:
"Filya recognized this indifference. Not even indifference but the desire to shift emotional pain into the physical sphere, to make his suffering perceptible bodily. A naive desire. Anger, dismay, and the feeling you’ve been betrayed have no physical analog. If they did, there’d be nothing but invalids crawling through the streets."
This is not a light read. Combining elements of the absurdist and the darkness that seems to come naturally to artists from the coldest climes (definitely thinking Bergman films), Gelasimov takes the reader through different stages of the thickening fog, metaphorically and literally. Filya, a famous stage director returns to the far North to deliver some bad news to his collaborator, in person. The first half of the novel follows the underdressed Fillipov on a drunken trip through his hometown as it experiences the failure of all heating and electronic infrastructure during an extreme cold (think 40 and 50 below 0). His increasing drunkenness and confusion color the perspective of the action, with interspersed flashbacks of clarity to explain who he is and why he's here. His guilt over multiple episodes increases as his confusion grows until finally he passes out. The third part of the book finds our protagonist sober and on a mission. Suddenly the relationships of the people around him become clear and he sees his own life reflected in the emotions, or lack of, in those around him, and he doesn't like what he sees. A difficult, yet beautiful novel, the following passage from the third section is a lovely representation of the writing and Filya's increasing clarity, even as the weather outside continues to deteriorate:
"Filya recognized this indifference. Not even indifference but the desire to shift emotional pain into the physical sphere, to make his suffering perceptible bodily. A naive desire. Anger, dismay, and the feeling you’ve been betrayed have no physical analog. If they did, there’d be nothing but invalids crawling through the streets."
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