Customer Reviews

Cape of Storms

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A nearly perfect novel, Cape of Storms is the story of three Russian half sisters finding their way in a world that constantly threatens to tear us down.
The youngest sister, Zai, has a stark choice - to go the way of her sister Dasha, who has chosen happiness, or the way of sister Sonia, who has chosen unhappiness.
Sonia would today be diagnosed as clinically depressed - and some readers may rebel at Berberova's depiction of her life as a "choice." That is, after all, part of the definition of mental illness - that depressed or schizophrenic have no choice.
Here's Dasha, in the opening lines of the novel: "It often seemed to Dasha that inside herself it was like a starry sky. And in fact, when she looked inward she4 seemed to be standing at the brink of a great chasm. There, at her very core, deep down, where her thoughts were anchored, reigned calm, quiet, and clarity... Sometimes Dasha felt as if she were sitting above a precipice with the stars beneath her; often she would linger with them for a long while..."
Later on, Dasha thinks, "the world was carved up a long time ago, not length-wise, between good and evil, but cross-wise, between happiness and unhappiness..."

Berberova's original CAPE OF STORMS was published in 1951 in the Novyi Zhurnal. For the English language reader, knowledge of Russian history at the time of the Revolution must be assumed. The author plunges immediately into the setting where a mother is brutally raped and murdered by Bolshevik criminals. Dasha, one of three daughters sharing the same father, witnesses the bloody crime. Her natural father Tiagin comes for her, and they leave the tumultuous city to live abroad, resting finally in Paris. But Tiagin leaves behind his baby, Zai, for his wife's lover to raise.

A third daughter, Sonia, lives in Paris and is the child of his present wife. Dasha and Sonia do not meet their sister Zai until she is 14. The second chapter is the story of Zai's separation from the family who raised her and her assimilation into her father's family. Both Dasha and Zai exhibit a detached awareness of the people most important in their lives. Each seeks self-fulfillment in Parisian culture but each remains unable to form close associations with its people.

Sonia's story is the most poignant but the least understood. Her portrait is painted through the author's introduction of her diary. Born to a French mother, unlike her Russian sisters, Sonia's personality is the most like a native Russian. She is highly educated but without direction --- a misfit in her political time. Berberova could have placed Sonia into the American culture of "flower children" and not missed a beat.

Each character in the novel is tragic. Berberova's style is difficult to follow because of her transitions to multiple points of view in rapid succession. She dedicates much of the novel to philosophical wanderings into the psyche of each main character. However, none realizes their dream by the end of the book. Zai, the youngest, comes the closest to accepting her world.

From Sonia's journal comes her philosophy. "Because in the world everything flows logically out of everything else, because everything tends to flow down, a miracle flows into the everyday, despair flows into suicide. It's going to happen."

Dasha embraces the Parisian social elite by marrying into her employer's family and moving to Africa. Her letters are without salutation, as if she is incapable of showing her love. Although she adapts well to life's changes, she remains outside the realm of deep emotion. For her, the death scene in Chapter One is the barometer that controls her outlook on all of life.

CAPE OF STORMS is a difficult book to enjoy because it opens the wounds of revolution that strike three girls tragic emotional blows for their entire lives. It is, however, a study of the methods the human mind chooses to cope with life's difficult choices.

--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad

Ms. Berberova's work has been praised as work that resides on the same tier as, "The Old Russians". High praise but not presumptuous as her book, "Cape Of Storms" demonstrates. And like many Great Russian writers her work is not something to casually stroll through. She demands your attention to detail, and her style can leave you wondering which turn you may have missed. None of this detracts from the reading, and some of the confusion may be due to translation, which no book benefits from.

The very beginning is critical to the book as it begins to piece together three sisters that share much but not always the same parentage. If you miss anything here, the rest of the book won't work unless you begin again. Whether their formative years are on Russian or French soil these three women could not be more different. Sonia is giving to asking questions that center on why, what, and who, and when the answers are not forthcoming it decides her fate.

Dasha will eventually find herself in Oran in circumstances much more pleasant that either of her other siblings/partial siblings, and Zai remains for the most part the most enigmatic of the three. The book also takes the forms of first person narrative, a diary that belongs to Sonia, tremendous dialogue, and is host to major events that take place largely out of the mainstream of the book, even while described on the book's pages. Further layers are added to the story when pre-war Paris is the locale for most of the book, and the life of being part of an emigration, and not part of so much else also runs through the work. The ideas of what an émigré is and is not, is part of, and all they can never be, is extensively debated.

I have read two of this Author's books, and I have enjoyed them both. They are for those times when you want a book that demands your attention as opposed to a lighter diversion.

This is an exploration of three different approaches to happiness as seen through the lives of three Russian sisters in pre-WWII Paris. Dasha, the oldest, has a chance at being extraordinary by her power of healing, but chooses ordinary happiness with a wealthy older man who loves her. Sonia, the middle sister, seeks a total happiness, an absolute happiness outside of everyday human life. In this, she is clearly linked to the political visions of the Soviets. Sonia is a difficult character and makes her sisters' lives more complicated. The youngest sister, Zai, is completely open to the world and is able to experience the profound everyday beauty of Paris in a way that is moving and real.

All three sisters have the same father but different mothers and Dasha and Zai have memories of traumatic experience in Civil War Russia before they came to Paris. They all choose to work through their experiences differently. Here, I'm not sure I agree with an earlier reviewer who said that Sonia was clinically depressed and Berberova was wrong to present her state of mind as a choice. I don't really think that Sonia was depressed in that sense, exactly. She was oppressed by her search for perfect happiness and rejected imperfect (i.e. real or existing) happiness. She seems much more active and verbal than someone in the grip of major depression would be. In any case, Berberova is interested here, as in her other works, in how the individual approaches life as either open or closed to the possibility of happiness.

Zai's life is the most open to happiness. The sections describing the wonderful bookstore where she works and where she is very happy are among the most enchanting bookstore descriptions I've read in fiction.

Towards the end, Berberova seems to swing over to Sonia's more hard-edged way of seeing the world. I think this is related to the coming of World War Two, which is just over the horizon as the book ends.

Those interested in Russian literature, Paris between the wars, and just good writing should read this book.

This is the story of three half sisters living the ex-patriot life in Paris before WWII. In the hands of a Jane Austen, it would have been filled with trivial flirtations and misunderstandings- bringing everything to a happy conclusion. But Nina Berberova is Russian. Therefore this novel is filled with introspection, analysis and suicidal tendencies. To her credit, she only touches briefly on the existance of God.

I say this a little tongue-in-cheek because, in fact, for those of us who love the Russian novel form, that is what puts it head and shoulders above Jane Austen. One must use one's mind, not merely be entertained.

I give this 4 stars because Berberova is not exactly Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy. However, if you want something a little deeper than the average modern novel, but don't want to spend several months plodding through it, this book is for you.