I read Makine’s Music of a Life several months ago and concluded that despite the “exquisite writing” I couldn’t help but conclude that “somehow, and I’m honestly not quite sure how to explain it, ultimately I found the book left me wanting.” It was impressive but it didn’t stay with me. So I decided perhaps I ought to read this one, his fourth, but the one that brought him to the world’s attention and won both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis. The writing is, again, quite impressive (though, truth to tell, I liked it better in Music of a Life), and so is the story. But this time he’s answered my objections. This one has more weight, more gravitas. It is, on the surface, a work of memory, an adult looking back and recalling his “Russian summers.” Summers spent with his grandmother in a remote Siberian village overlooking the steppes, summers spent listening to her stories of another world: Paris at the turn of the century. Stories of Proust, of Tsar Nicholas's visit to Paris in 1896, the great Paris flood of 1910, and of the death of French president Felix Faure in the arms of his mistress. Her stories aren’t all good and happy and filled with nostalgia and wistfulness. She also recounts the story of her husband and his fate—a victim of Stalin’s purges. She tells of famine and of misery, of the chaos of war. As someone wrote on GoodReads, this is a search for self through someone else’s memories. The book contains much more than my short summary suggests and though it can, at times, be a bit overwrought, I ultimately found it more affecting and more powerful than I had anticipated. ( )

This is a beautifully-written novel about a young man who spends the summers in Siberia with his French grandmother, Charlotte Lemonnier, along with his sister. The narrative is told as a semi-autobiographical story by Andrei Makine, who fled the Soviet Union in 1987 when he was thirty years old. Charlotte, who became trapped there following the death of her Russian husband, shares a world of memories with the children, including memories of France before World War II. Charlotte's sheer Frenchness raises serious suspicions in the eyes of her neighbors and the authorities in the very paranoid realm of Soviet Communism.

The boy is divided as he grows up between his love of his grandma and the lovely world she conjures and his urge as a young child to fit in and embrace his Russian heritage. In his perspective, the French aspect of his character reflects a gauzy humanism and a love of beauty, while the Russian aspect of his character comes to represent a type of barbarism and a potential for violence. His perception, however it may be flawed, convinces him that the Soviets have good reason to be afraid of their Frenchness.

"I became aware of a disconcerting truth: to harbor this distant past within oneself, to let one's soul live in this legendary Atlantis, was not guiltless. No, it was well and truly a challenge, a provocation in the eyes of those who lived in the present."

Living in the West, it is casually assumed that progressives are often the only ones whose souls contain humanism and the good. For Makine and his narrator, the exact reverse is true; at that time, it was necessary to look to the East to find ideals and a culture that exalted human beings, whereas the Soviet Union's progressives did everything in their might to put them out of existence.

It is not surprising that Makine's story occasionally comes out as being somewhat vague and opaque given how deeply personal memory is. He sometimes leans a little too heavily on Proustian and Nabokov connections; a few fewer references to cork-lined chambers and moths wouldn't hurt; we get the point. Furthermore, I'm not enough of a Francophile to find it funny rather than emotional when someone speaks fondly of France. However, I would recommend the book due to the beauty of the writing, a few striking pictures, and the way the plot alludes to the tragedy of 20th-century Russia. ( )

This book won two top French awards, the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis. (1995, 1997). This is the fictional story of a young Russian boy and his sister, who visit their grandmother every summer. Grandmother Charlotte lives on the edge of the Siberian steppe. Charlotte reads to her grandchildren, anything she can get her hands on: old newspaper articles, magazines, etc. She also goes through family pictures by the hours. Her goal is to overwhelm them with a love for French culture. It was unclear to me, how the family ended up in Russia. With the death of the grandmother also comes the death of what the young man considers "civilized and graceful" France. The young boy is the narrator of the story and remains nameless, except for two episodes in the story; once when his school friends call him "Frantsuz", the Russian word for Frenchman and once his grandmother utters the name "Alyosha."

A second story line revolves around the harshness of the Stalinist regime and how often brutal choices had to be made to stay alive.

I'm not ready to say if the book is pretentious or more Proust-like. Time and perhaps a re-reading will answer that question. I understand this is book one in a series, but I've been unable to substantiate that.

It's interesting to note that the author was a Russian school teacher who participated in a teacher exchange program and was sent to France, where he defected. 256 pages ( )

This fellow knows how to write. His words have a certain "terrior" to them. ( )

Thought this was a beautiful book...about an adolescent (for most of the book) navigating being French and Russian, how language and culture color his perspective, set against the backdrop of 20th century history.

I suspect Grace would like this book very much... ( )