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A review by oat_cakes
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
2.0
This book had many ingredients that could have made for a great absurdist satire, but they failed to come together for me.
A big problem is the flimsiness of the central premise. Viktor is a struggling writer (sigh!) who takes a job writing pre-emptive obituaries (obelisks) for the great and the good of 90s post-soviet Kiev, so that the newspaper can have them on file. He is given lists of people to work on, and biographical information to include. Each obelisk hints at past misdeeds, suggestive that when these people do meet their ends, it was perhaps not too soon. The implication fairly early on is that Viktor’s obelisks are not kept in reserve to respond passively to death, but are somehow a part of the very machinations of it: once written up, the subject of an obelsik’s fate is sealed.
Perhaps I’m being too literal but this doesn’t seem like an efficient way to run a militia hit squad. If I had a list of targets I don’t think I’d wait around for some insipid doormat like Viktor to write an obelisk for them before calling in the cleaners. The idea that the list of obelisks is the hit list is suave and mysterious but for me not quite suave enough to carry off the lack of coherent logic (if there was a list of people given to Viktor to create the obelisks, surely that is in fact the hit list, so why not just write the obituaries when they’re dead?). This may be the point: this absurdity may be all a part of the satire, and maybe my lack of knowledge of the context in Ukraine at the time is to blame. But for me the whole premise of the novel is just too weak to hold my interest.
Then there is the main character, Viktor. He is, clinically speaking, a wet blanket: coasting along and doing as he’s told by these shady forces with a subdued resignation. I appreciate this could make for an interesting exploration of living in the chaotic and corrupt post-soviet landscape, and how it grinds down one’s ability to make choices or have agency. But the nauseating helplessness of this man simply makes the reading experience extremely frustrating. Circumstances contrive that he ends up caring for a young girl, and her nanny becomes his common-law wife without either fuss or passion. Again I can see that this comes very close to being darkly humorous or even poignant, but something about Viktor’s depressive dullness means it just misses its target for me. Attempts at a character arc in the final pages are unsuccessful.
The soul of the book, Viktor’s pet penguin Misha, who stares blankly at these strange humans around him, also doesn’t seem to go anywhere. As an empty absurdist symbol, he is emblematic of the problems with this book. I remain suspicious I’m missing something, but I fear that in this case the absurdity isn’t contributing to an intelligent satire.
Other reviewers have pointed out a lack of a contextualising forward to the English translation. I agree that more context on this little-understood (to anglophone readers) period of Ukraine’s history might remedy many of the problems and allow the book to work as a piece of satire rather than a gangster story that just doesn’t quite come off. I also find the translation strange: the characters talk in a rather old-timey way when rendered in English. This adds to the stuffiness and detracts from my ability to place the action in a context that would make it more intelligible.
Overall I’m disappointed this didn’t quite come off for me, as there were elements promising of a morbidly humorous absurd romp.
A big problem is the flimsiness of the central premise. Viktor is a struggling writer (sigh!) who takes a job writing pre-emptive obituaries (obelisks) for the great and the good of 90s post-soviet Kiev, so that the newspaper can have them on file. He is given lists of people to work on, and biographical information to include. Each obelisk hints at past misdeeds, suggestive that when these people do meet their ends, it was perhaps not too soon. The implication fairly early on is that Viktor’s obelisks are not kept in reserve to respond passively to death, but are somehow a part of the very machinations of it: once written up, the subject of an obelsik’s fate is sealed.
Perhaps I’m being too literal but this doesn’t seem like an efficient way to run a militia hit squad. If I had a list of targets I don’t think I’d wait around for some insipid doormat like Viktor to write an obelisk for them before calling in the cleaners. The idea that the list of obelisks is the hit list is suave and mysterious but for me not quite suave enough to carry off the lack of coherent logic (if there was a list of people given to Viktor to create the obelisks, surely that is in fact the hit list, so why not just write the obituaries when they’re dead?). This may be the point: this absurdity may be all a part of the satire, and maybe my lack of knowledge of the context in Ukraine at the time is to blame. But for me the whole premise of the novel is just too weak to hold my interest.
Then there is the main character, Viktor. He is, clinically speaking, a wet blanket: coasting along and doing as he’s told by these shady forces with a subdued resignation. I appreciate this could make for an interesting exploration of living in the chaotic and corrupt post-soviet landscape, and how it grinds down one’s ability to make choices or have agency. But the nauseating helplessness of this man simply makes the reading experience extremely frustrating. Circumstances contrive that he ends up caring for a young girl, and her nanny becomes his common-law wife without either fuss or passion. Again I can see that this comes very close to being darkly humorous or even poignant, but something about Viktor’s depressive dullness means it just misses its target for me. Attempts at a character arc in the final pages are unsuccessful.
The soul of the book, Viktor’s pet penguin Misha, who stares blankly at these strange humans around him, also doesn’t seem to go anywhere. As an empty absurdist symbol, he is emblematic of the problems with this book. I remain suspicious I’m missing something, but I fear that in this case the absurdity isn’t contributing to an intelligent satire.
Other reviewers have pointed out a lack of a contextualising forward to the English translation. I agree that more context on this little-understood (to anglophone readers) period of Ukraine’s history might remedy many of the problems and allow the book to work as a piece of satire rather than a gangster story that just doesn’t quite come off. I also find the translation strange: the characters talk in a rather old-timey way when rendered in English. This adds to the stuffiness and detracts from my ability to place the action in a context that would make it more intelligible.
Overall I’m disappointed this didn’t quite come off for me, as there were elements promising of a morbidly humorous absurd romp.