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brk's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
andrew61's review
3.0
In 300 pages this novel presents a sweeping picture of the complexity or Russian history through the device of a screenwriter producing a script for a film about Catherine the Great. Oleg in early 1980's Soviet Russia , as Brezhnev is on his death bed presents a rambling film idea to the soviet committee who approve film production. Despite his girlfriends mocking of his rambling obsession the film gets made by an esoteric director mirroring the works of Tarkovsky while Oleg assists until he is summarily dismissed.
Skip forward to post wall 1990's when an old friend benefitting from the opportunity to acquire money after the fall of communism asks Oleg to help him make a dramatically different and raunchy TV series on the great Tsar.
Interspersed with this is the telling of Catherine's life and loves which is makes any telling on the screen seem tame.
A read which as it touches on the expansion of Russia in the late 18th century and the fall of the Soviet empire made for much reflection as the world's attention is focussed on Russian military brutality and force in it's annexation of Ukraine.
Skip forward to post wall 1990's when an old friend benefitting from the opportunity to acquire money after the fall of communism asks Oleg to help him make a dramatically different and raunchy TV series on the great Tsar.
Interspersed with this is the telling of Catherine's life and loves which is makes any telling on the screen seem tame.
A read which as it touches on the expansion of Russia in the late 18th century and the fall of the Soviet empire made for much reflection as the world's attention is focussed on Russian military brutality and force in it's annexation of Ukraine.
messbauer's review
1.0
Makine's dreamlike, painterly prose is certainly present here (once again translated by Geoffrey Strachan), but the story he uses it to tell is simply unenjoyable. The setting is quite bleak, the characters oddly flat, and there are way too many convenient coincidences that are obviously contrived to get the plot where it needs to be. I also did not enjoy Makine's depiction of a nymphomaniac Catherine the Great, especially after reading an actual history on her.
arirang's review against another edition
3.0
"Oleg Erdmann turns a pocket mirror over and over in his hand. The back is made of black leather: the dark alcove. The glass: the salon where the Empress receives visitors.
The reflection cuts into segments the cramped room where he lives: a sofa, an old wardrobe, shelves groaning under the weight of books. On the work table a typewriter's metallic grin. Three leaves of paper, with sheets of carbon paper between them - the text of his ....
Of my utter madness he says to himself, anticipating the judgement that will be passed on his screenplay. The worst would be simple contempt. 'So, young man, you've been browsing through a few pamphlets about the life of Catherine II, have you?'"
This is the 13th of Andrei Makine's novels to be translated into English, and the 13th I have read.
Makine's writing, as rendered into English by the excellent Geoffrey Strachan, is amongst the most beautifully lyrical I have encountered, and reading his books is always a pleasure. Indeed I often read them more slowly than I would normally read, savouring the sumptuous prose, which can indeed be a little much in large doses.
But the one criticism would be that many of the books blend into one another, with the same mix of east-meets-west (particularly France and Russia, echoing Makine’s own journey), and dream-like remembered loves from his debut novel [b:Dreams of My Russian Summers|135158|Dreams of My Russian Summers|Andreï Makine|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347769108s/135158.jpg|130243].
In that regard, A Women Loved feels much more of a thematic and even stylistic departure.
Oleg Erdmann is a film director in late-Soviet era Russia, from a family of ethnic Germans that moved to Russia at the time of Catherine the Great: as his late father often laments: "All this on account of that little Princess who decided to come to Russia..."
He undertakes a project to make a film of the life of Catherine the Great, but the intervention of the censors of S.C.C.A. means he loses full control of the final version, which doesn’t achieve what he wanted it to.
The East German actress playing the elder Catherine tells him: "As you know, it's the same old story; on one side of the Berlin Wall the censorship is political, on the other side it's financial.
Then, in the post-Soviet Yeltsin era he experiences this himself, as his artistic vision morphs, in part at the instigation of an old friend but in reality due to the money involved, into an oligarch-sponsored bonk-buster TV mini-series (think The Tudors but with even more artistic licence on historic truth and much more sex), although Oleg tries to include more artistic truths amidst the titillating rape scenes.
In the old days we had to hoodwink our beloved Soviet censors in order to introduce dissident ideas into a film. These days the censorship is commercial. Use our old methods. This series is meant to entertained the masses, but you can always find a moment to express what seems to you to be an essential truth. It's even more exciting than our battles with the S.C.C.A., do you remember that?
The one glaring problem with this book as that large parts of it are made up of brief cinematic glimpses ("history: a gory animated cartoon, in black and red") of familiar scenes from Catherine’s life and from the version in the film and TV series, including all the old favourites (the stallion etc).
These are interesting – Catherine is a fascinating character – but as the opening quote worries, it has been done better elsewhere in fiction and non-fiction.
Erdmann himself admits:
"His script did, in fact, reiterate all the clichés: a Tsarina both enlightened and despotic, a feminist in advance of her time and a nymphomaniac, a friend of the philosophers but hostile to the revolutionary fruits of their ideas."
Unfortunately this is true of much of the novel as well – acknowledging something is a cliché doesn’t make it any less of a one if you repeat it.
The narrative of the post-Soviet era world, contains its moments of poetry, particularly when describing the solidarity of those left behind in the grab for wealth:
These comradely actions recall the collective lives of the older days, though Oleg always detested their poverty. What he is experiencing now is the lingering echo of that life: the humble, patient, solidarity of the losers.
But this is not a world where the author himself lived, and other Goodreaders have suggested his portrayal of Russia is not particularly insightful. Certainly his tale of unbridled crony capitalism is rather clichéd, full of sinister oligarchs with silicone enhanced teenage nymphets, orgies of conspicuous consumption, and gangs of thugs intimidating or even assassinating rivals.
Between all of this, there are some genuinely moving observations on Erdmann’s own family history and what they suffered “on account of that little Princess who decided to come to Russia” particularly when Germany and Russia went to war.
Makine does acknowledge the theatrical nature of history as it is told in books, plays and films:
If History can be acted out this way, does it have the weighty import that is attributed to it? Perhaps it is no more than a stage set, one upon which wars, conspiracies, dramas of love, the marriages of tsars, and the fading of glory are all played out.
[...]
I've studied the language Catherine uses ... What's astounding is how often she used the word 'theatre'. For her everything was theatre: diplomacy, wars, the airs and graces of her courtiers ... And even love. A Drama acted out by her lovers.
Makine’s real point is that all the accounts of Catherine in the history books give us no real insight into the person herself:
It is the Tsarina entombed on her sarcophagus of words of whom we are truly ignorant, for not one of these volumes captures the freshness of a winter's morning as Catherine one day lived it.
And Erdmann’s ultimate quest, both in Catherine the Great’s life story, but also his own personal life, is true love, where the lover seeks no material gain. In Catherine’s case Erdmann identifies this with Alexander Lanskoy, the only one of the anointed lovers who sought no material gain or power, and he hypothesis that the lovers planned secret journey across Europe to Italy, to escape at least temporarily from the strains of power, one he himself recreates with his own true love at the novel’s end.
“A moment to express an essential truth ... Oleg pictures it with great simplicity: a light night at the start of Summer, a road leading out of St Petersburg, the silhouettes of two riders, the dull sounds of horses' hooves.“
Overall, Makine is always worth reading. However, the most successful parts of this novel are those that are more classically Makine, operating at the level of personal loves and losses, whereas the meta-story of the film of Catherine the Great’s life and, particularly, the portrayal of post-Soviet Russia are much less compelling. I would therefore point anyone new to Makine elsewhere, e.g. to [b:Dreams of My Russian Summers|135158|Dreams of My Russian Summers|Andreï Makine|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347769108s/135158.jpg|130243], as a starting point.
The reflection cuts into segments the cramped room where he lives: a sofa, an old wardrobe, shelves groaning under the weight of books. On the work table a typewriter's metallic grin. Three leaves of paper, with sheets of carbon paper between them - the text of his ....
Of my utter madness he says to himself, anticipating the judgement that will be passed on his screenplay. The worst would be simple contempt. 'So, young man, you've been browsing through a few pamphlets about the life of Catherine II, have you?'"
This is the 13th of Andrei Makine's novels to be translated into English, and the 13th I have read.
Makine's writing, as rendered into English by the excellent Geoffrey Strachan, is amongst the most beautifully lyrical I have encountered, and reading his books is always a pleasure. Indeed I often read them more slowly than I would normally read, savouring the sumptuous prose, which can indeed be a little much in large doses.
But the one criticism would be that many of the books blend into one another, with the same mix of east-meets-west (particularly France and Russia, echoing Makine’s own journey), and dream-like remembered loves from his debut novel [b:Dreams of My Russian Summers|135158|Dreams of My Russian Summers|Andreï Makine|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347769108s/135158.jpg|130243].
In that regard, A Women Loved feels much more of a thematic and even stylistic departure.
Oleg Erdmann is a film director in late-Soviet era Russia, from a family of ethnic Germans that moved to Russia at the time of Catherine the Great: as his late father often laments: "All this on account of that little Princess who decided to come to Russia..."
He undertakes a project to make a film of the life of Catherine the Great, but the intervention of the censors of S.C.C.A. means he loses full control of the final version, which doesn’t achieve what he wanted it to.
The East German actress playing the elder Catherine tells him: "As you know, it's the same old story; on one side of the Berlin Wall the censorship is political, on the other side it's financial.
Then, in the post-Soviet Yeltsin era he experiences this himself, as his artistic vision morphs, in part at the instigation of an old friend but in reality due to the money involved, into an oligarch-sponsored bonk-buster TV mini-series (think The Tudors but with even more artistic licence on historic truth and much more sex), although Oleg tries to include more artistic truths amidst the titillating rape scenes.
In the old days we had to hoodwink our beloved Soviet censors in order to introduce dissident ideas into a film. These days the censorship is commercial. Use our old methods. This series is meant to entertained the masses, but you can always find a moment to express what seems to you to be an essential truth. It's even more exciting than our battles with the S.C.C.A., do you remember that?
The one glaring problem with this book as that large parts of it are made up of brief cinematic glimpses ("history: a gory animated cartoon, in black and red") of familiar scenes from Catherine’s life and from the version in the film and TV series, including all the old favourites (the stallion etc).
These are interesting – Catherine is a fascinating character – but as the opening quote worries, it has been done better elsewhere in fiction and non-fiction.
Erdmann himself admits:
"His script did, in fact, reiterate all the clichés: a Tsarina both enlightened and despotic, a feminist in advance of her time and a nymphomaniac, a friend of the philosophers but hostile to the revolutionary fruits of their ideas."
Unfortunately this is true of much of the novel as well – acknowledging something is a cliché doesn’t make it any less of a one if you repeat it.
The narrative of the post-Soviet era world, contains its moments of poetry, particularly when describing the solidarity of those left behind in the grab for wealth:
These comradely actions recall the collective lives of the older days, though Oleg always detested their poverty. What he is experiencing now is the lingering echo of that life: the humble, patient, solidarity of the losers.
But this is not a world where the author himself lived, and other Goodreaders have suggested his portrayal of Russia is not particularly insightful. Certainly his tale of unbridled crony capitalism is rather clichéd, full of sinister oligarchs with silicone enhanced teenage nymphets, orgies of conspicuous consumption, and gangs of thugs intimidating or even assassinating rivals.
Between all of this, there are some genuinely moving observations on Erdmann’s own family history and what they suffered “on account of that little Princess who decided to come to Russia” particularly when Germany and Russia went to war.
Makine does acknowledge the theatrical nature of history as it is told in books, plays and films:
If History can be acted out this way, does it have the weighty import that is attributed to it? Perhaps it is no more than a stage set, one upon which wars, conspiracies, dramas of love, the marriages of tsars, and the fading of glory are all played out.
[...]
I've studied the language Catherine uses ... What's astounding is how often she used the word 'theatre'. For her everything was theatre: diplomacy, wars, the airs and graces of her courtiers ... And even love. A Drama acted out by her lovers.
Makine’s real point is that all the accounts of Catherine in the history books give us no real insight into the person herself:
It is the Tsarina entombed on her sarcophagus of words of whom we are truly ignorant, for not one of these volumes captures the freshness of a winter's morning as Catherine one day lived it.
And Erdmann’s ultimate quest, both in Catherine the Great’s life story, but also his own personal life, is true love, where the lover seeks no material gain. In Catherine’s case Erdmann identifies this with Alexander Lanskoy, the only one of the anointed lovers who sought no material gain or power, and he hypothesis that the lovers planned secret journey across Europe to Italy, to escape at least temporarily from the strains of power, one he himself recreates with his own true love at the novel’s end.
“A moment to express an essential truth ... Oleg pictures it with great simplicity: a light night at the start of Summer, a road leading out of St Petersburg, the silhouettes of two riders, the dull sounds of horses' hooves.“
Overall, Makine is always worth reading. However, the most successful parts of this novel are those that are more classically Makine, operating at the level of personal loves and losses, whereas the meta-story of the film of Catherine the Great’s life and, particularly, the portrayal of post-Soviet Russia are much less compelling. I would therefore point anyone new to Makine elsewhere, e.g. to [b:Dreams of My Russian Summers|135158|Dreams of My Russian Summers|Andreï Makine|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347769108s/135158.jpg|130243], as a starting point.
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