Scan barcode
A review by b_mcg
The Lying Year by Marian Schwartz, Andrey Gelasimov, Андрей Геласимов
4.0
"The Lying Year" shares many of the ineffable qualities of classic Russian literature in its approach to characters, tragedy, and comedy. The primary setting is late '90's Moscow during the Yeltsin regime and the painful transition to free market economy, but while the setting enables some of the plot points, it is not what really makes the novel. Rather, it is the characters and their various and tangled inter-relationships.
Without being as overtly philosophical as Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, Gelasimov still manages to deal with questions of love, happiness, money, mental health--in general, why do people do the things they do. He is masterful at interweaving comedy and drama, with some of the most intense scenes also being the funniest--the characters Mikhail and Sergei, especially, seem often unable to get out of their own way, landing themselves in ever more ridiculous situations.
The narrative structure also deserves a mention. Gelasimov presents the viewpoints of multiple characters, who each have their own voice, which in turn provides alternative context for events seen from the perspective of another. But rather than just getting different first-person narrations, each character's thoughts are communicated in a manner uniquely suited to their persona, whether that be straight-ahead first-person, journal entries, letters, voicemail recordings, or stream of consciousness. Perhaps most noteworthy, however, is that the character who motivates everyone else's actions never receives her own voice, leaving a satisfying space to contemplate the necessity, or "rightness," of all that has transpired.
Without being as overtly philosophical as Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, Gelasimov still manages to deal with questions of love, happiness, money, mental health--in general, why do people do the things they do. He is masterful at interweaving comedy and drama, with some of the most intense scenes also being the funniest--the characters Mikhail and Sergei, especially, seem often unable to get out of their own way, landing themselves in ever more ridiculous situations.
The narrative structure also deserves a mention. Gelasimov presents the viewpoints of multiple characters, who each have their own voice, which in turn provides alternative context for events seen from the perspective of another. But rather than just getting different first-person narrations, each character's thoughts are communicated in a manner uniquely suited to their persona, whether that be straight-ahead first-person, journal entries, letters, voicemail recordings, or stream of consciousness. Perhaps most noteworthy, however, is that the character who motivates everyone else's actions never receives her own voice, leaving a satisfying space to contemplate the necessity, or "rightness," of all that has transpired.