Reviews

Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov

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tomaxhull's review against another edition

slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Slow-paced, but always interesting, with a dry understated wit and some lovely turns of phrase in the translation. It takes a while to work out where (if anywhere) this story is going, but you do feel at ease matching the pace of Kurkov's placid protagonist and the small happenings of his life. The book nicely skirts painting a picture of war on some overwrought grander scale, there are no daring heroes or awful villains; it stays within the lives of real people, and the skilful metaphor it's building towards only emerges when it's earned its place.

peachyteachy's review against another edition

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3.0

This book is very slow moving. It is bleak. It is definitely 'grey' with very few, if any, shades of anything else. Made me glad I live where I live when I live - so there's that.

camillekantor17's review against another edition

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4.0

Andrey Kurkov found that place between danger and peace that exists when life goes on during a time of war, that grey area where what is right and wrong, happy and sad is blurred. He capitalized on the moments of silence and on daily routine. A book about a man living alone whose sole purpose is to protect his bees while the human world crumbles around them.

smofkin's review against another edition

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3.0

This was a nice read that left you with thoughtful reflections on the impacts of the callous invasion of Crimea. Sergey was a standout protagonist - his way of orienting to the world, and his connections with his bees was beautifully expressed throughout the story. Maybe there was something about the whole novel that I didn't "get", maybe I'd get it with another read - but overall it felt slow and almost like it was pulling punches. It never moved to to the point where I felt totally invested in the story, and there were times I was thinking I wouldn't mind for it to end now instead of dragging on, but I was happy enough to stick with it 'til the end anyway.

anneofgreenplaces's review against another edition

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4.0

3.5 rounded up. This was a different narrative experience than I'm used to, and I'm not sure if that's due to a difference in literary culture, the eccentricities of the writer, or the style of the translation; I'm also undecided about whether I liked that difference, on balance. The story and its ambience somehow managed to be simultaneously placid and mundane, and laced with moments of adrenaline or tension or sinister incursions of violence and oppression, the evidence of which in the protagonist's psyche seem to recede as quickly as it arose. Most of the time I could accept this overriding placidity as inherent to the character and possibly an ironic undercurrent or deliberately understated contrast to the conditions of war--and in hindsight that aspect of it is very powerful; those moments stand out like flint in sand. While I was reading, however, I was bored and/or taken out of the narrative by strangely wooden narration or dialogue a bit more often than I would have liked. Again I'm not sure if this is down to a lack of familiarity with the style or translation. But usually, just as my attention was slipping, something would happen that moved the needle or left me intrigued enough to keep reading, or a particularly good personification of the setting sun would slip in (I would have enjoyed more of that language). When the surreal imagery that I gather Kurkov is known for became more obvious toward the end, mixing those states of being more insistently, I thought the book gained some dimension (and maybe some things went over my head before this). In any case, I did gain some context for the landscape (both political and physical) and people of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which was one of my goals in reading the book. It was surreal in itself to read a book set during a war that was ongoing on the time and has escalated nightmarishly since; there were some chillingly prescient moments. At the same time the detached tone and my perosnal remove from the situation sometimes made it hard to process that it wasn't some fictional or past setting, separate and over with now. By the end, though, I had imagined enough times how the future of this narrative would be so bleakly disrupted--helped along by the ongoing lack of resolution in the narrative--that the reality of it sank in.

filaret526's review against another edition

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4.0

This book is a gem. Wonderfully written and great insight to the grey zone between Russia and Ukraine. Also sheds light on the awful and unjust treatment of Tatars in the Crimea.