The Ladies From St. Petersburg [Hardcover]

Nina Berberova (Author), Marian Schwartz (Author, Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1998

tr from the Russian by Marian Schwartz

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Born in 1901, Nina Berberova led a life that encompassed both pre-revolutionary and post-communist Russia, and the three novellas comprising The Ladies from St. Petersburg follow the arc of their author's experience. In the title story, Varvara Ivanovna and her daughter Margarita plan a vacation in the country. True, there have been some shootings in the streets of St. Petersburg, and the trains are packed with people fleeing the city, but when Varvara expresses her fear of a "conflagration," she is assured that "all this revolution business will fizzle out very quickly. We here are all agreed that the Bolsheviks have no chance whatsoever." The sad dénouement of the tale, of course, tells a different story.

Berberova continues to explore the Revolution and its aftermath in the next two novellas. "Zoya Andreyevna" follows the fortunes of a young woman caught up in the midst of the fighting. Zoya has left her worthy but dull husband and moved in with her lover. When war breaks out, the lover enlists in the White Army and Zoya is left on her own, fleeing from town to town and at the mercy of common people who despise her as much for what she has lost as for who she once was. In the final story, "The Big City," Berberova injects a note of grace into the émigré experience as she chronicles a day in the life of an unnamed narrator who discovers after a day of small adventures that

every person brings whatever he can to this big city ... some dream, or thought, or melody, the noonday heat of some treasure, the memory of a snow-drifted grave, the divine grandeur of a mathematical formula, or the strum of guitar strings. All this has dissolved on this cape and formed the life I plan to take part in too from now on. With you, who are not here with me but alive in this air I breathe.

From Publishers Weekly

The three novellas in this slim but potent collection explore the psychic price of immigration and the rigors of enduring hardship alone. Russian emigre Berbova (1901-1993) first moved to France in the 1920s, then settled in the U.S. in the 1950s, where she taught at Princeton University. The first two tales, written in 1927, recall Russia's tumultuous pre-Revolutionary period. In the title story?the most powerful of the three?a young woman is left to make her mother's funeral arrangements at an inn deep in the country. When she returns many years later, the new government has erased all evidence of the entire village. Berberova's matter-of-fact tone and descriptions of the stark surroundings create a dark current of tension. The title character of "Zoya Andreyevna" struggles with her decision to live in a rooming house in an unknown city. As a middle-class woman who has divorced her husband, apparently for political reasons, she is scorned by her somewhat less-respectable roommates. In the experimental "The Big City," which was written shortly after Berberova's arrival in New York, as the narrator explores his new, monstrous apartment building, he is presented with glimpses of this country's opportunities, literally, with every door he opens and every window he peers through. Berberova describes the loneliness of the immigrant without sentimentality; once thrown into this transitional world, her characters resign themselves to the fight to stay alive. Schwartz's fine translation should help acquaint a larger audience with this writer, best known for her earlier works about life in Paris, including The Accompanist (which was turned into a film), The Tattered Cloak and Other Novels and her biography, Aleksandr Blok: A Life.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 122 pages
• Publisher: New Directions; First edition. edition (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811213773
• ISBN-13: 978-0811213776
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,137,947 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful book. Three stories from a master., February 3, 1999

By 

Steve Schwartz (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ladies From St. Petersburg (Hardcover)

OK, I admit to a slight prejudice (I'm the translator's proud brother), but don't take my word for it. The NY Times put it on their Best of '98 list. I don't know any Russian beyond a few guidebook phrases and isolated words that pop up in Russian songs and James Bond novels. All I ask of a translation is that it give me the sense that I'm reading great literature. I usually don't know enough - as in this case - to comment on accuracy or to nit-pick connotations. What my "reader's voice" gives me is the sound of a masterpiece, different from the sound of the translator's own prose (read the wonderful introductory memories of Berberova). The three stories collected here weren't meant as a trilogy and are separated by years and, in the case of the last, by several decades. The first two reminded me of Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Illych," with their satiric and grotesque edge on death and illness. The last seemed to me more modern, even somewhat like Kafka, in its phantasmagoria. I must admit to liking the third story -- about an immigrant in New York City - best. Berberova is good and even funny on the disorientation of the newcomer, but also romantic (and Romantic) about the city's attraction and mystery. The book is filled with passages of virtuoso storytelling - all of which seem to point to a big nature that could easily create a novel. In the first, a description of a burial stands out. In the second, a sick woman is taken out of a rooming house run by almost fairy-tale witches to a hospital. In the third, the immigrant is given a pair of (magic?) binoculars by someone who reminds me strongly of a wizard in a cave and is shown a series of powerful, disturbing images - realistic and fantastic at the same time. I have to bring up classic masters to remind myself of anything this good. Berberova's a thrilling find.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Starting Point, March 26, 2001

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Ladies from St. Petersburg (Paperback)

Ms. Nina Berberova was an unknown writer to me prior to my reading of, "The Ladies Of St. Petersburg". Happily she no longer is an unknown. Ms. Berberova presents three novellas in this work, all of which are very well done. My comment about starting with this particular work is that it contains an extensive 14 page Foreword by Ms. Marian Schwartz who translated the work of this woman who wrote throughout her 92-year life. This section includes a great deal of biographical information, as well as explaining some of the difficulties involved in translating the work and deciphering the Author's originally intended symbolism.

All three novellas are wonderful, and they all are quite different from one another. Even the first two that are many things but are not joyous, are still are very different. "The Ladies From St. Petersburg" covers a great swath of time and History, which it is recounted in so few pages, and feels so complete when read is remarkable. The main event is not new or unique, however Ms. Berberova adds a circumstance that takes a routine if unhappy event, and makes it almost grotesque.

The second work, "Zoya Andreyevna", has the largest cast of players and provides a setting for a wide exposition of human character traits, and the tale will not leave you filled with optimism. The final work, "The Big City" is quite different, appears autobiographical and looks forward to a future that while seemingly positive still reads as though the character sees the future through shades of gray. New times are approaching, they will be better, or will at least seem to be. There is a fascinating bit when a set of binoculars are much more than an optical instrument, and become more like a crystal ball manipulated by the user and perhaps their owner.

Three great Novellas, which suggest that pursuing this writer's work, is definitely worthwhile.