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glenncolerussell 's review for:
Ice Trilogy
by Vladimir Sorokin
Ice Trilogy consists of three novels: Bro, Ice, and 23,000. It appears most readers begin with Ice or read Ice in isolation - reasonable enough since I see several references to Ice as the #1 book of the Ice Trilogy.
This New York Review Books edition starts with Bro then moves to Ice and 23,000. Author Vladimir Sorokin intended this order, although he wrote Bro after Ice.
BRO - VOLUME #1
A new underground comic book could be created based on this Vladimir Sorokin novel: BRO - Ice from the primordial light awakened his dormant heart. And now he seeks other blonde, blue-eyed brothers and sisters chosen by the light to have their hearts likewise awakened
Bro is the true Volume #1 of the author's Ice Trilogy. The title Bro is taken from the name of the novel’s protagonist following his awakening by the Primordial Light. Frequently, Bro is listed as Volume #2 since Vladimir Sorokin wrote this novel after Ice. However, it should be pointed out, Bro precedes Ice chronologically and Bro also provides the needed context for Ice. Therefore Bro most definitely should be read before Ice.
Bro is simply amazing - what starts off in the first few chapters as a work in the tradition of great Russian nineteenth century literature shifts briefly to Soviet-era Socialist Realist scientific exploration before shifting again, this time to the bulk of the novel: a combination new age Gnostic sacred text, science fiction thriller and the adventures of a comic book superhero. Whoa, baby - what a gripping read!
It all starts with Alexander Snegirev relating the facts of his early life: he was born on June 30, 1908 with a clasp of thunder (a critically important date as he discovers at age twenty), his stern, wealthy Russian businessman father and loving mother raised him along with his older brothers and sisters; how, at age ten, his childhood ended with an act of violence during the Russian Revolution that left him roaming from city to city for four years. He moves in with his poverty-stricken old aunt, attends school and finally astronomy lectures at university where he is given the opportunity to join a scientific expedition to unearth and scrutinize pieces of one of the largest meteors ever to reach our planet, the Tungus Meteorite that exploded in Siberia on the exact date of his birth.
Reflecting back on his past life, Alexander notes there was one thing that both frightened and attracted him in childhood, a recurring dream where he is at the base of an enormous mountain. In the dream his body begins to crumble and fall apart and then abruptly “my spine broke and I collapsed into wet pieces and fell backward. That's when I saw the summit. It shone WITH LIGHT. The light was so bright that I disappeared in it. This felt so awfully good that I woke up." Foreshadowing with a vengeance.
Out in Siberia on expedition, Alexander suddenly dreams his recurrent dream, only with a difference: he sees the Light departing and disappearing forever; he cries out to the Mountain not to die. Just at that moment he senses a shift in his heart, that something else lives in his heart connecting him to the Mountain. Thereafter Alexander experiences great joy and feels beckoned forward by an undefined presence.
Then one morning our protagonist sits before a fire and can see his carefree childhood, his tormented life resulting from loss of family and orphanhood, his teenage student years all appear before him as if gathered under glass - they harden and detach themselves from him forever, all instantly becoming the past. Oh, yes, a frequently reported feature of the mystical experience - one's prior conventional identity and concerns appear as colossal illusion to be blown away as if a mere soap bubble.
Not long thereafter Alexander runs away from all the others and their camp. Once alone in the forest he tastes the bliss of freedom: “The absolute silence of the world amazed me. The earthly world froze in front of me in the greatest calm. And for the first time in my life I felt distinctly the vile vulgarity of this world.”
Alexander presses on until he reaches an area covered with ice and is seized by ecstasy. He comes upon a particular mass of ice and moves out on the ice and falls, slamming his chest against the ice. “Then my heart began to resound from the blow of the Ice. And I immediately felt the entire MASS of the Ice. It was enormous. And the whole thing was vibrating, resonating in time with my heart. For me alone. My heart, which had been sleeping for all these twenty years inside my rib cage, awoke. It didn’t beat harder, but sort of jolted - at first it was painful, then it was sweet. And then quivering, it spoke. “Bro-bro-bro . . . Bro-bro-bro. Bro-bro-bro . . . I understood. This was my real name.”
The Ice beneath him vibrates. He feels the Ice and himself hanging alone in the universe. His awakened heart begins to listen attentively to the Music of Eternal Harmony. Bro is told many things about the universe and his place within it, including: in the beginning there was only Primordial Light; The Light consists of 23,000 Light-bearing rays and he, Bro, is one of them; the Light’s mistake was creating this flawed, unstable, disharmonious Earth, leading to the greatest mistake - human beings; this huge piece of Heavenly Ice was sent to open the hearts of 23,000 Brothers and Sisters held hostage by the Earth to help them become 23,000 rays of Primordial Light once again; You, Bro, must find your Brothers and Sisters and come together in a great Circle.
Now that’s extreme! You can see why I said a comic book based on the novel would be fringe or underground. I wonder how many mainstream readers would swallow the place humans are assigned by the novel’s Primordial Light.
We can speculate as to why Vladimir Sorokin wrote this novel. Does he find our modern word disgusting? Is he writing in the same spirit when his countryman Alexander Solzhenitsyn stated: “The human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, exemplified by the revolting invasion of commercialism, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.”
Or is the author targeting religion? Although there’s next to nothing included about Christianity or any other religion, Bro does begin with two quotes, one from the Bible and this from Gregory Palamas, a great Saint within the Eastern Orthodox Church: “And so, brethren, let us lay aside works of darkness and turn to works of the light.”
Or many other possibilities. Such a bizarre, quizzical work but a work of tremendous imagination and philosophical depth. I can see why Vladimir Sorokin has many fans among young readers. I mean, having his protagonist refer to “ordinary” humans as meat machines and seeing World War II as a battle between the Land of Order and the Land of Ice is, if nothing else, unique - and that's understatement.
ICE - Volume #2
Riveting. Absolutely riveting.
And this riveting, spellbinding novel comes in two different flavors. You get to choose which one might suit your taste.
Flavor number one is to read Bro before Ice. Flavor number two is reading Ice without having read Bro. Permit me to elaborate.
Bro is Volume #1 of Vladimir Sorokin’s Ice Trilogy. Bro is the first person account of how a young Russian by the name of Alexander Snegirey has his heart awakened by Primordial Light in 1928. As part of his awakening he is given the name of Bro and told he must find his Brothers and Sisters who have also been chosen to likewise have their hearts awakened. The novel takes readers on Bro’s breathtaking adventure up until 1950. Ice continues the thread of the story beginning in the year 2000. Thus Bro provides not only historic context for Ice but puts the reader in the know about those who come to have their hearts awakened.
I'm glad I read Bro prior to reading Ice since I generally like to follow a story chronologically. Added to this, I would make the world's worst detective - much better for me to know the basic facts of what's going on rather than being kept in the dark.
British critic Michael Froggatt disagrees. In his review for Strange Horizons Mr. Froggatt judges Ice the strongest novel in the trilogy and goes on to say how reading Bro lessens the mystery and suspense of Ice. He concludes by suggesting a reader who is interested in tackling Vladimir Sorokin's Ice Trilogy begin with Ice and work outwards.
Either way, Ice possesses an intensity, a surging drive right from the first pages. The narrative voice is detached, hard-edge, objective, as if a journalist recording the nitty-gritty of combat in a war zone. We encounter drug dealers, drug addicts, prostitutes, bottom of the barrel ruck and their coarse, crude, brutal, blunt way of speaking and dealing with one another – a novel not for the squeamish.
Many of the men and women are given a special call-out. Two examples: “Ilona: 17 years old, tall, thin, with a lively laughing face, leather pants, platform shoes, a white top.” - “Borenboim: 44 years old, medium height, thinning blonde hair, an intelligent face, blue eyes, thin glasses in gold frames, a dark green three-piece suit."
There’s mystery afoot, a stroke of Vladimir Sorokin infusion of radical myth mixed in with cosmic science fiction: these denizens of Moscow’s concrete canyons wonder what the hell is going on with the ice and all those primitive looking ice hammers. And the shift in their feelings. The contrast between the scummy day-to- day lives of these people and what they eventually feel in their hearts is quite striking: hard-as-nails drug kingpin Borenboim talking about his tender heart; likewise Nikolaeva the prostitute - very funny in an odd, offbeat way.
Two glimmers of refinement in this dank, cesspool world: Boremboim has a collection of Borges stories in his briefcase and Mozart is playing softly at a rehabilitation center. In Moscow 2000 overflowing with hard rock and liquor, gadgets, computer games and Hollywood posters, to know at least somebody appreciates Borges and Mozart is most refreshing.
Part Two switches to an old lady’s first person account retracing her childhood in a poor Russian village under Nazi occupation and her joining others villagers herded off to Germany to work in a factory. But then something remarkable happens. She’s singled out since she has blonde hair and blue eyes. What follows thereafter ties her to a strange brotherhood. Her worldview is forever transformed – from 1950 right up until 2000, the grueling, gritty details of her earthbound, everyday routine take a distant second to her true identity and mission.
One of the most stimulating dimensions of Ice is the way in which the story raises a number of philosophical issues. How bound are member of a particular religious cult or sect by their beliefs? Jim Jones and the mass suicides/mass murders in Jonestown, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians going up in flames in their compound in Waco, Marshall Applewhite leading Heaven’s Gate members in mass suicide - we need only think of these events to know that sects and cults can be closely linked to violence and death.
And considering the frequent instances of torture, imprisonment and murder throughout history perpetuated in the name of religion, how far are the major religions removed from sects and cults? Any time members view others through the lens of “us versus them” watch out. Brutality and viciousness of one stripe or the other usually isn’t far behind.
What are we to make of the fellowship in Ice? Those initiates speak of opening the heart but how open is their heart to those outside their fellowship? Referring to “ordinary” humans as meat machines unworthy of life has a frightening ring. And this reference to libraries; "Thousands of meat machines were always sitting there, engaged in silent madness: they attentively leafed through sheets of paper covered with letters." Sounds like a rant spouted by a semi-illiterate thug.
Witnessing the horrors of twentieth century totalitarian governments is hardly less disturbing. And how about the omnipresence of contemporary multinational corporations? Perhaps Vladimir Sorokin in his sly way is commenting on the dangers of all forms of power and coercion reducing individuals to hungry consumers or meat machines.
Even if Ice is the only novel within the trilogy one reads, it is well worth it. For fans of the author, both old and new, nothing short of all three volumes will do.
Note: I posted a separate review of Volume 3 - 23,000. Link to my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2395783980?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1