The Crime of Olga Arbyelina [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Andrei Makine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1999

In The Crime of Olga Arbyelina, Andreï Makine takes us to Villiers-la-Forêt in the summer of 1947. The inhabitants of this sleepy French town are stunned to discover two resident Russian émigrés washed up on the riverbank. The dead man was a vulgar ex-soldier; the woman-dazed and disheveled but still alive-is an elegant beauty rumored to be a member of the royal family. With the luminous prose, brilliant characterizations, and powerful evocations of bygone worlds that have garnered him both extraordinary review attention and dedicated fans, Makine weaves an intricate tale of history, passion, madness, and ultimate tragedy.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Olga Arbyelina is a princess who fled Russia during the revolution; now she lives in a town near Paris tending to her hemophiliac son, keeping ghosts at bay--an existence hollowed out by history. The town gossips obsess over her, making her into the prime character in their "game of a thousand voices." They "had a fleeting dream of figuring in a poignant melodrama called The Exiled Princess." When she is found lying next to a dead man on the local riverbank, her fame only increases. The Crime of Olga Arbyelina begins with this grim discovery and moves backward, trying to find the erotic transgressions and terrible secrets that separate this exile from the tired and ordinary world.

Andrei Makine resembles his heroine in that he is a kind of runaway; born in 1958, he fled the Soviet Union for France. There he wrote about his homeland in his adopted tongue. The well-received novels Once Upon the River Love and Dreams of My Russian Summers first appeared in French and have since been translated widely. Perhaps it is all these layers of language and memory that make his prose so thick and difficult; clearly there is a great clumsiness in this particular translation, which is rife with sentences like "She was breathing jerkily," and "A thought struck her with the painfulness and beauty of its truth." Ultimately, such writing sabotages The Crime of Olga Arbyelina, fogging up the book's exotic landscape. Translations can work two ways: they can transport you into a world of strange new music, or they can feel like schoolwork. This book is definitely the latter: you know it's supposed to be a learning experience, but the difficult, self-serious prose makes you want to resist, stare at the clock, play hooky. --Emily White --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The intricate thoughts and fears of a Russian ?migr? mother take center stage in this elaborately haunting work from the author of Dreams of My Russian Summers. In 1947, in Villiers-la-For?t, France, Sergei Golets, an unlicensed doctor and former officer in Russia's anticommunist White Army, drowns in a boating accident. His companion, Princess Olga Arbyelina, survives: she claims to have murdered Golets, though the police are sure his death was an accident. Why would the princess accuse herself of homicide? The answer emerges gradually amid Olga's lyrically tangled (and chronologically disarrayed) memories. Olga's husband, a swashbuckling poet, left her in 1939, when their hemophiliac son was seven. Since then Olga has lived with her frail son among the other Russian exiles in Villiers-la-For?t. In 1946, Olga discovers she's pregnant, and travels to Paris for an abortion. Though she has a lover, the pregnancy puzzles her, since its timing doesn't match his visits. One day she spots her teenage son shaking something into the flower infusion she drinks before bedtime, and understanding floods her: he has been drugging her in order to enter her bed. Tormented by her fears for his future (he is sure to die young), and by dread of her own old age, she decides to let him continue his incestuous practice, pretending continued ignorance during the day, and feigning unconsciousness at night during his lovemaking. All is, if hardly well, consistently settledAuntil Golets, her son's doctor, confesses that he has spied on them. Abetted by Strachan's sinuous translation, Makine gives Olga such a rich interior life that other characters, including the nameless son, seem like shadows her psyche casts. But readers in tune with Makine's goals will not object. Olga's involuted, tormented consciousness becomes a sophisticated pleasure in its own right, and a metaphor for the displaced, disintegrating aristocracy. That same consciousness, and the events that destroy it, invoke larger mythic patternsACupid and Psyche, Beauty and the Beast. Makine's novel possesses the feverish beauty of a hothouse culture in its final efflorescence.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Unknown (September 15, 1999)
• ISBN-10: 0641821727
• ISBN-13: 978-0641821721
• ASIN: B000HWYLJ2
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,207,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing., October 15, 1999

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Crime of Olga Arbyelina (Hardcover)

Makine is an extraordinary writer with many wonderful gifts and great accomplishments. In this book, however, the gifts seem to be wasted--or at least used for dubious effect. The tale of Olga Arbyelina is beautifully crafted and presented, but the actions which give impetus to the story are repulsive--incest with her son, initially done while she was drugged and unconscious, but eventually continued, justified to herself, and even welcomed. Olga is only marginally a sympathetic character. She seems so sick and seems to learn so little that one wonders why this book was written. The universal themes one would expect to see used to try to justify the subject matter seem missing here, though Pauline Melville uses similar subject matter in The Ventriloquist's Tale to great and even positive effect. The denouement and Olga's madness seemed to me neither sad nor unexpected. Ultimately, I found myself wondering why the author chose to write this story, a romanticized, melodramatic, and unsatisfying journey into darkness.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Crime of Olga Arbyelina, July 14, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Crime of Olga Arbyelina (Paperback)

This is a beautifully written book. Makine truly has a talent with language -- some passages are so poetic, it's hard to believe that one is reading prose. You have to read the book in increments and savor the scenes. The writing is often very challenging and the whole plot is intellectually stimulating. This is definitely not a book where the plot moves quickly and everything is apparent from the beginning. Although the novel contains several taboo topics (incest, abortion, politics), it is possible to identify oneself with Olga. Makine's meticulous descriptions and his ability to communicate Olga's feelings has made this book a joy to read.

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Madness, Madness!!!, September 6, 1999

By 

Tom Kuntz (Upstate New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crime of Olga Arbyelina (Hardcover)

Excellent. What else can I write. Andrei Makine is one of the great writers of our time. As a reader you will descend into madness with the princess and feel as if you are holding her hand and can do nothing to stop it. An excellent addition to an already outstanding body of work. Highly recommended.