Customer Reviews

The Line

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4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

In "The Dream Live of Sukhanov", Olga Grushin displayed a gift for descriptive prose that easily evoked wonderful imagery, a talent especially amazing for a new novelist writing outside her native language. Ms. Grushin demonstrates that writing talent again in "The Line", which is also set in Russia at an indeterminate time in the Soviet era. So often she seems to find just the right word or phrase to capture a thought or a scene.

The central characters are Anna, her husband, teen-aged son, and mother, with nobody particularly happy as they cope with daily life. Anna joins a new line at a kiosk, which may offer something of use. "'So what are they selling here?' she asked. The old man smiled, and as his wrinkles multiplied, a deeper darkness suffused them. 'What would you like?' he said softly. 'I'm sorry?' 'They are selling,' he said, 'whatever you'd most like to have.'"

They soon conclude that the line is for concert tickets to a return performance by a great exiled composer. Anna's husband is a musician, and Anna's mother has some vague connection to the composer, making the rumor particularly desirable for them. The days of maintaining the line grow into months, with the kiosk occasionally staffed by someone who never sells anything. For some, the line becomes the dominant presence in their lives, with significant consequences for Anna's family and others. The author develops some characters from anonymity in the line to more complex individuals with their own reasons for being there.

Despite the author's graceful writing, "The Line" moved a bit slowly through much of the first half. As one might expect for a story oriented about a line going nowhere, not much happens as the group forms and settles into equilibrium, and we learn more about Anna's family and its dynamics. The story lacked some narrative drive during the transition. Perhaps the assessment includes my own disbelief that people would voluntarily stay in such a line for so long, and we'll need some perceptive Russians to comment.

Eventually some relationships form and the characters deepen, such as Anna's son Alexander's interactions with an old man and a fellow young criminal. The line itself becomes secondary at the same time that it dominates. At a key moment for Alexander, he bemoans a theme of the novel, "Alexander wept, and couldn't stop weeping, like the child he had been once - weeping for this life in which nothing ever happened, weeping for his mother, and his father, and Viktor Pyetrovich who had wasted so much time waiting for something to happen, waiting in vain, for nothing ever happened in anyone's life".

The abstract line does, in fact, transform the lives of the family and those in its sphere. Anna's long-silent mother comes more to the front as the novel winds toward a modest climax, and Grushin leaves the mother's historical thread tantalizingly incomplete, as part of an ending that is satisfying and without a need for a complete, tight wrap.

Psalm 39, V.2

I was nervous about Olga Grushin's second book, The Line, for two reasons. First, I thought her first novel, The Dream Life of Sukhanov, was a beautifully constructed look at the lives of a small group of Soviet artists from the 1950s through the 1980s. But second novels are challenging, both for the author and for the reader. The author is challenged to live up to the promise of his/her first work. The reader is challenged by virtue of his/her own heightened expectation and anticipation that the second work will outstrip the qualities of the first novel. Second, I've read another book, The Queue (New York Review Books Classics), in which a line served as a metaphor for life in the USSR and was moderately disappointed in the result. I'm happy to say that Grushin's latest book lived up to my heightened expectations and one that engaged me far more than Sorokin's work.

As noted in her author's comment, "The Line" is loosely based upon Igor Stravinsky's famous 1962 return to the USSR to perform in Leningrad after a long period of exile. The announcement of the concert set off a year-long wait for tickets and the evolution of the line, the development of an informal but rigidly enforced set of rules for those waiting in line that became a model of sorts for all the lines that followed.

The Line focuses on one family's collective experience with the one-year wait for tickets to the performance by the composer "Selinksy". Sergei is a frustrated musician whose dreams of playing the violin were crushed when he was forced to take up the tuba instead. He now plays in a local `band' run by the sort of apparatchiks that could crush anyone's spirit. He lives in a crowded, run-down apartment with his wife Anna, a school teacher, Anna's mother, an elderly woman who has remained mostly silent for years, and a 17 year old son Alexander (Sasha). They are each disaffected and alone despite their close living conditions. They are each in their way dumb with silence. But for each of them the chance to secure tickets to this concert is a way out of their sorrow. The return of Selinsky takes on something of the return of the Messiah as each of them sees hope for some redemption in their lives if only they can get their hands on a ticket.

Grushin has a marvelous way with words, all the more remarkable given the fact that English is her second language. Her ability to portray and reveal the inner lives of one family and the people they meet at work and on the line is remarkably good. Secrets are revealed to the reader and new secrets arise during the year-long wait but the profound lack of communication amongst the family left me acutely aware of how tenuous are the links that bind us even while the story reveals links among the parties that they could not even begin to imagine.

Grushin's portrayal of her characters felt brutally honest to me. There is pettiness, despair, self-interest and the possibility of betrayal. Anna, Sergei and Sasha all fumble their way through their lives. These are flawed `small' people living lives of quiet, unexpressed despair. But in Grushin's hands they are treated with an underlying compassion, a sense that it is the world (in this case the USSR) that is too much with them, it is the world that has made them small.

Grushin's The Line is well-worth reading. It is a worthy successor to "The Dream Life of Sukhanov". Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

Olga Grushin's, "The Line" is an amazing work. Demonstrating a mastery of English reminiscent of Joseph Conrad, also not a native English speaker, the novel combines compelling prose with an interesting plot line and convincing character development.

Author Grushin captures the feel of life in the Cold War era Soviet block with an uncanny accuracy that gets to the very heart of how things were and how people lived. I spent a short while in East Germany back in those days, and even as a visitor it was clear: the grinding poverty, the shabby housing, poor food, lack of goods, and above all the despair and hopelessness was so obvious. Ms. Grushin puts us intimately in touch with all of this at the same time she tells a fascinating story.

It's about waiting in line for concert tickets. This line lasts a very long time. It's based, at least loosely, on something that actually happened in the former Soviet Union.

I too experienced such a thing: a line in East Berlin. For some reason I joined in, just like many others, not knowing what was on sale, but knowing that if something was available, you bought it--- whatever it was--- because you didn't know when or if you could get it again. In this case, it was a small teapot, one per customer, pay and move along. Ms. Grushin's book brought back every facet of that experience, and you will "live" the same experience, even if you've never done it in real life.

The story is full of ironies, unexpected connections, and surprises. The writing is poetic, the imagery vivid, the sense of time and place crisp and alive. But above all, the story is about the people in it, and the dreams they build to cope with the lack of hope of life in those days, in those places. We watch them dream and we watch the dreams shatter against the hard walls of reality, and yet we watch the characters somehow survive and build something precious in the midst of the unrelenting grayness of Soviet bloc living. At the conclusion of the story, we feel uplifted by the triumph of the human soul. It shows us a glimpse of the spirit that eventually brought down Communism.

Read this book. Although at times it may seem just a little tedious, there's a reason the author wrote it that way. You'll understand it all when you get to the end, and you'll be glad you persevered. It's sort of like getting to the front of the line and receiving your teapot.

I had a hard time at the beginning getting into _The Line_. I had read her previous book, The Dream Life of Sukhanov, and had been immediately captivated by her language in that one. In comparison, her language and characters seemed drab and dull to me in the line. Initially. Kind of like how one might feel when standing in a long line and unsure of the reason. HOWEVER, by the time I finished the book, I cared more deeply about the characters than the characters of almost any other book I have read. Consequently, it became one of my favorite books, even more so than _Dream Life of Sukhanov_. This was my experience: the characters were flat and colorless (as was the landscape), like cardboard cutouts, and I just didn't care for them. They seemed less than human. But as I continued reading, page by page, they became more fully human, until by the end they became some of the most human characters I have ever read. And I cared more deeply for them than almost all other characters in books. The characters themselves were transformed in the book, and in reading it, I too was transformed. By the end of the book, I felt I had evolved more as a human being. I can think of no greater praise for a book or any work of art.

So, if you have a pet peeve for books that can be hard to get into at the beginning, maybe you shouldn't pick this one up. But, if you can have a little patience and stick with it, it is an absolute must read. Stunning.

Olga Grushin's "The Line" is a novel with excellent descriptive language that's set somewhere in the Soviet era of Russian history. Anna is a teacher, whose husband is a musician. Her mother is a retired ballerina, and her son mostly is a juvenile delinquent. All four of them live in a very cramped apartment, and are extremely unhappy yet have completely closed down. Anna believes she must be happy because no one's complaining.

Into this morass comes a very unusual occurrence -- a concert is reputed to be in the works from a well-known expatriate composer. (In real life, this composer would be Igor Stravinsky, but Grushin calls the composer someone else.) There's a line forming, partly because it's something different to wait for, partly because it's a chance to see something better, or at least hear it. And all sorts of dramatic elements happen from this one, simple thing -- Anna has to re-examine her life, while the others make and change alliances in succession. All of them have stories to tell that are worth hearing, especially Anna's mother, yet none of those stories would've come out if not for this one line.

This is a very good story from Ms. Grushin. I enjoyed it very much. I rooted for Anna and her family, and I wanted them to hear this concert -- or at least get whatever they could from this line. But be advised that it does start very, very slowly and takes a bit to work up steam. I had to try about four times to get into this story, but once I figured out Ms. Grushin's narrative I was hooked.

Simply put, this is the stuff soap operas could be made out of, except this has a thousand times more dignity and gravity. There are moments of humor here, especially black humor (which apparently the Russians under Soviet rule were very accustomed to), and any progress made is halting, frustrating, and slow -- just like in real life. But if you give it time, you'll enjoy "The Line" as much as I did.

Four stars, highly recommended for anyone who loves Russian literature, interpersonal relationships, or just-plain-good writing.

Barb Caffrey

Olga Grushin's novel begins in an alien, restrictive, punitive environment in Russia. In this Stalin era bleak state, defeated characters climb each day out of a pit of dreary night in winter without a moment's happiness until they end the day exhausted and isolated in their beds.

A kiosk at the end of a street, with an abandoned, dilapidated church at the other end, is rumored to sell something unusual, the news traveling quickly between sad cases living in government inspired architecture. The rapid spread of word reveals an intensely interactive network of people that comes alive when hope is introduced. The hope is vague with no real idea of what the kiosk will be offering. But, if the goal were specific, the emotions related to it would be fleeting and not individually life changing.

The people begin to line up and wait, and the infinite continuum of depressing days becomes sectioned into periods of waiting and anticipating. Each person in line has a dream of buying something that will have lasting meaning. A consensus develops in the waiting community that the products that will be sold are tickets to a symphony concert to be performed by a composer who left Russia before "the Change" that became Stalin's brutal regime.

As spring arrives, people in the line continue to wait and dream about how the tickets will bring them happiness. The main characters include a father, mother, son, and maternal grandmother who begin to understand and empathize with each other by organizing shifts to keep their communal place in the waiting line. They gradually become a family by sharing their individual dreams and the love they have for each other.

The general line itself becomes a cohesive group and a Khrushchev era of increasing freedom and emotional expression is possible. Isolated self interest is unsustainable in this new atmosphere, and each character must make a decision when to reestablish social lines of true communication.

Even though the oppressive heat of summer produces a Brezhnev era of stagnation for the people in line, the tickets become almost irrelevant and the characters' new family and social bonds more rewarding. Groshin contrasts this state with that of the Stalin era when people with no hope lost themselves on a featureless time line, trying to live in the past or the future avoiding awareness of the miserable present. But after hope has been introduced, the infinite time line is brought to exquisite moments each day when the pinpoint of experience is focused like a crystal in the groove of a symphony record. The beautiful melody of life can only be heard when the moments are collected through immediate attention.

The Line is an excellent, insightful, and potentially life changing experience for readers. We realize that our own lines of waiting and passing time allow for peak experiences of immediate life only when we use the awareness of our past and future to open honest lines of interaction with our families and others and share our alienated emotions. We can approach what William James called "the razor's edge of time" with this sharing even if we can never capture those perfect moments and hold them forever. The peak experiences can be put together to produce our own previously forbidden but now unstoppable symphony.

What would you wait for? What have you waited for in your life? Was it worth it? "The Line" by Olga Grushin may make you ask yourself those questions. It is about hope and anticipation, delusion and disappointment. It is part fairy tale were the hero or heroine embarks on an impossible quest, part "Gift of the Magi" and it's part Beckett - one can't help thinking of "Waiting for Godot".

Presumably set in Russia when waiting in lines was a quotidian endeavor, it could just as easily have been set in any totalitarian regime, past or future, when goods are scarce and talking to the wrong person in a Men's room, teaching the wrong poem or listening to the wrong symphony can earn your disappearance. A family of 4; mother, father, teen son and grandmother, all have reasons to desire a ticket to a one-time concert, one year hence, by a famous classical composer/ex-patriot; each has his/her own hidden agenda for these tickets. The novel brilliantly illustrates how they miss-communicate with each other, and also the complicated interconnectedness among them and the other denizens of The Line.

Now, this is my exegesis of the book - your interpretation may differ. I saw The Line as an allegory of religion. The crowds gathered to wait together, in anxious expectation; a congregation. The composer, Igor Selinsky, was their Messiah whose appearance, they believed, would expunge their guilt, repair their lives, give them joy, hope and a bright new future. A rival religion, (The Nightingales), even wages a religious war with them. When seeming proof is received that Selinsky will not ever come, the people of The Line disregard the evidence and continue to believe.

But this is just one reading, there are many themes in the novel including themes of love and temptation, family and community.

What are you waiting for?

This second novel of Olga Grushin once again displays all of her gifts of descriptive language and her ability to delve deep into the emotional and psychological states of her characters. She is particularly adept at depicting her characters' reminiscences of their "lost pasts" (accompanied with little hope for what the future might bring) that tend to weigh heavily on their hearts. That said, I did not enjoy this novel as much as her first, The Dream Life of Sukhanov. Of course, she set the bar so high with that first novel that, barring some incredible miracle of artistic inspiration, her second novel was bound to disappoint at least a little. I think the major hindrance to this novel is in fact the inherent anti-climatic nature of the subject matter. Very little happens in a line, and when you are portraying a Soviet line, you certainly have to temper expectations and focus at least somewhat on its dull and tedious nature. However, Grushin very effectively portrays the various networks, interactions, and friendships that arise between strangers as they cope in these near-impossible situations. Someone reading this novel without a knowledge of Soviet society might in fact interpret this as absurdist fantasy in the style of Waiting for Godot, but in fact it is based on keen observation of Soviet life, when waiting in line for a year to obtain a concert ticket was a distinct reality (at least in the case of the famous Stravinsky concert, on which this novel is based). I would recommend reading this novel in tandem with Vladimir Sorokin's work, The Queue, which omits narrative altogether and relies exclusively on non-attributed dialogue. While Sorokin's work focuses on the comic and surrealist aspect of the Soviet line and emits a warm, almost nostalgic glow, Grushin focuses on the heavy, tragic quality of the phenomenon that became a practical symbol of life in the Soviet Union.

Olga Grushina's second novel is a masterpiece of storytelling. She transports us to what seems Soviet Russia of the 1950s, or a few decades after "the Change." News is leaked that an émigré composer will be returning for a single, special engagement concert (a literary riff on Igor Stravinsky's 1962 return). And a ticket line forms in which people wait through an entire year, slowly forming a community of hopeful sojourners, their lives, secrets and passions intertwining as the experience of expectation leads to unexpected revelations.

Aside from the wonderful plot and deeply drawn characters, there is a richness in Grushina's writing that contains all the senses. We feel the damp cold of her winter evenings, smell the thick soup reducing in the close kitchen, hear the murmur of passing conversations, see the church shadows falling on her characters, taste the crumbly canapes at a secure embassy party. This is a novel to be read slowly, her descriptive power savored: "the low, furry-clawed sounds resumed shuffling up and down invisible stairs like clumsy circus bears..."; "the strengthening wind began to throw heavy hours back and forth like smudged, icy snowballs..."

In the end, the line draws the characters out of themselves. It has, as one of the protagonists reflects, taken them apart, piece by piece, "then put them back together again; but the order of the pieces was subtly different, or else they fit together in a different, looser way, with spaces left between them for air, or light, or music, or perhaps something else altogether, something ineffable that made him feel more alive."

Exactly what a good novel should do for a reader.

As reviewed in Russian Life.

...character connections convincingly coalesce.

Set starting around "the thirty-seventh anniversary of the Change," The Line is a story about the relationships between a group of persons who, for the most part, each spend a certain amount of time waiting in line at a somewhat secretive kiosk where it is said that tickets for a concert involving a brilliant composer (who's said to be returning from the west to perform) are to be sold. The book's "central premise" was "inspired" by an historical episode involving "the celebrated Russian composer Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, "The line for tickets began a year before the performance and evolved into a unique and complex social system, with people working together and taking turns standing in line." During the approximately 14 months over which the story takes place, author Olga Grushin, with distinguished descriptiveness, tells the tale of this group of interconnected individuals: a disillusioned 47-year-old musician, his teacher-wife, her mother, the couple's son and a few other assorted characters. Initially, the concert appears to be all rumor and innuendo, (p 9) `...no one, no one at all, knows what they're selling!"' It wouldn't be right to say much more as the beauty of the story is in its surprises. Best of the book is the author's unique writing style, ability to paint a picture, and revelations involving the connections between the characters. Examples of Grushin's greatness include, (p 10) "...a few children stopped writing and were now staring at her with flat, incurious eyes resembling buttons and beetles," (p 14) "...people were already starting to come by, drifting down the sidewalks like pockets and patches of the departing night in the limpid green twilight of the last predawn hour," (p 61) "...he felt his limbs fill with lead, and his throat with dead, dusty insects." Even now, the premise of the story seems strange, but the story is worth the read, if for no more than seeing how things pan out for the participants. Also good: anything by Ayn Rand, especially We the Living.