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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Power of the Gentle Soul, October 8, 2000
This review is from: The Industry of Souls: A Novel (Paperback)
Martin Booth's gentle story is a true gem. Truthfully, I brought it to read because I thought it was about the horrors of the gulag, and such tales hold a fascination that's hard for me to resist. Instead, I found a wonderful, insightful and warm story of friendship and love; not what I was looking for, yet more than I could have hoped for. As Shurik strolls through his beloved Russian village of Myshkino on his eightieth birthday, he stops to chat with friends and remembers back to his 25 years of hard labor in the coal mines of the gulag. And as we follow him through the village and through time, we learn that love and friendship are all we have and all we need. When those are strong in us, the unbearable is bearable and the little moments of life are more important than we can imagine. There is such integrity and wisdom in its lessons that "The Industry of Souls" is virtually a text book on the power of relationships. I won't forget this story for a long time. I highly recommend it.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unusual Story Of Russias Gulags, April 25, 2001
"The Industry Of Souls", by Martin Booth is an unusual tale of one man's experience in Russia's penal system. The system may be more accurately defined as a method of gathering masses of slave labor, or, "Ants", as one character suggests. If you have only read non-fiction or historically based fiction of these camps, this book may surprise or perhaps even leave you feeling a bit incredulous. However this is fiction and should be taken as such. Prior to Mr. Booth's work I had primarily either read of the Gulag System of camps while reading history of the era, or books specifically on the camps themselves. Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize wrote what can be considered the definitive and massive trilogy, "The Gulag Archipelago". He additionally wrote further fiction and historically based fiction on the topic and his personal experiences while imprisoned. Anatoli Rybakov also wrote a brilliant trilogy beginning with, "Children Of The Arbat". This is the very first time I have read a work that takes the reader through the misery of 25 years as a prisoner above the Artic Circle digging coal, and then upon his release the same man adopts the Country that savaged his life. Fiction allows anything to be stated, and perhaps a story happened in a manner like you will read of here. I found the book to be excellent reading, however it was so contradictory to the History I have read it was hard for me to suspend disbelief. This work was short listed for The Booker Prize and that is not an accomplishment to be taken lightly and neither is this book. I very much enjoyed the main character Alexander Bayliss, and to the extent a man or woman could endure what he did and find a sort of happiness in the later years of his life was noble, but again such a result would seem almost to be impossible. However, the village and the people who live there, the motive for his initial visit, and his remarkable decisions he is faced with at the book's end make for great reading. The book is very, very good. However if you have read Historical accounts about these camps, the transition to less than horrific endings takes a bit of adjustment.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A parable for our times., April 7, 2001
This review is from: The Industry of Souls: A Novel (Paperback)
This thoughtful and loving tribute to the human spirit begins with the lines: "It is the industry of the soul, to love and to hate; to seek after the beautiful and to recognise the ugly; to honour friends and wreak vengeance upon enemies..." Here and elsewhere throughout the book, Booth uses Biblical parallels to advance his message about the human condition: "[There is] a time to love and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace [Ecclesiastes]..." In quiet, thoughtful tones, the main character, 80-year-old Alexander Bayliss, called Shurik, reflects on his life, a life which we would consider intolerable but in which he has found satisfaction and, remarkably, much joy. At eighty, he is a man completely at peace with his world, celebrating the love, endurance, and forgiveness which have made his life not only bearable, but ultimately, happy.
Shurik was a 40-year-old Englishman doing business in the Soviet Union when he was summarily arrested for espionage and sentenced to hard labor in the gulag, spending the next twenty years in a coal mine. In the hellish darkness and depths of the mine, however, Shurik finds enlightenment. One of seven men in his labor group, he and his companions become a family, fiercely loyal to each other, accepting life moment by moment, with no thoughts wasted on a future they cannot afford to contemplate. Eventually released, Shurik lives a quiet life in a small Russian village, where he becomes much beloved. When Communism fails and the Soviet Union dissolves, Bayliss, at eighty, finds himself faced with his most difficult decision.
This ambitious novel entertains at the same time that it conveys a strong message about man's enduring spirit and the need to forgive. The symbolism is clear and easily understood--the miners digging up a completely preserved wooly mammoth, then roasting and eating part of it, Shurik acting as teacher to the children of the village and sometimes speaking in aphorisms or proverbs, the story of the fox in the cage, the making of bread in the village, Shurik arguing for the historic preservation of the local church, etc. The language is simple, the images are unforgettable, the prose style is both musical and urgent, and the characters are admirable and sympathetic. A memorable and thoughtfully constructed novel, every detail of which advances Bayliss's message. Mary Whipple
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