My Life as a Russian Novel: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Emmanuel Carrère (Author), Linda Coverdale (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 2010

An unsparingly truthful account of love, betrayal, and the traps we set for ourselves, by France's master of psychological suspense

In work after work, the critically acclaimed author Emmanuel Carrère has trained his unblinking gaze on the lives of others as they fight a losing battle with that most fearsome of adversaries—the self. Now, determined to escape the bleak visions of his narratives, he takes on a film project in the heart of Russia while also embarking on a new love affair back home in Paris. But soon enough, the diversion he seeks eludes him, intimacy proves too arduous, and Carrv®re is left peering into the dark mirror of his own life.

Set in Paris and Kotelnich, a small post-Soviet town, My Life as a Russian Novel traces Carrère's pursuit of two obsessions—the disappearance of his Russian grandfather and his erotic fascination with a woman he loves but cannot keep from destroying. In prose that is elegant and passionate, Carrère weaves the strands of his story into a travelogue of a journey inward. Road trip, confession, erotic tour de force—this fearless reckoning illuminates the schemes we devise to evade ourselves and the inevitable payment they exact. 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this compelling, intensely interior-driven narrative, French author Carrère (The Adversary) uses as a point of departure the return of a Hungarian mental patient imprisoned in a Russian hospital since the end of WWII to unlock the author™s own guilt-ridden, transgressive past. Carrère admits he is chronically attracted to tales of madness, due largely to deeply suppressed feelings of shame surrounding the family relationship to Carrère™s grandfather, a brilliant but gloomy Russian-speaking Georgian émigré to France who gravitated toward the German occupiers during WWII out of frustration and disgruntlement. He worked as an "interpreter" for the Nazis in Bordeaux, then vanished at the time of Liberation. Denial of his grandfather™s deeds had gnawed at him all his life, and by venturing to Kotelnich, Russia, with a film crew, ostensibly to produce a documentary of the plight of this long-lost Hungarian mental patient, Carrère plunged back into his mother™s first language, Russian, hoping somehow to gain insight into his grandfather. Hand-in-hand in this torturous Russian saga is Carrère™s romantic crisis with fiancée Sophie, a young woman in love with the author but so cowed by his moods and self-absorption that she took another lover and lied outrageously about it, compounding Carrère™s emotional paranoia. Despite a puerile erotic "short story" to Sophie that appears midway, Carrère™s solipsistic work proves absorbing, while his rendering of the hard-worn Russian inhabitants of Kotelnich are frankly moving.
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From Booklist

In this tepid memoir, acclaimed French novelist Carrere turns his critical eye on himself, recounting a disappointing documentary-film endeavor and a deteriorating romance. The discovery of a Hungarian prisoner of war brings Carrere to the tiny post-Soviet town of Kotelnich, but the dead-end story crushes his hopes for an interesting film project. Though rural Kotelnich is hopelessly dull, Carrere decides to stay. He'll cover the town's poor, hard-working residents, including a bodybuilder who helps reform wayward young men and a local girl aspiring to be the next Britney Spears. More important, he'll look into the mysterious disappearance of his Russian grandfather. In between trips, Carrere laments the precarious state of his love affair with sexy Sophie, who lives with him in Paris. She's become pregnant by another lover but aborts the child, insisting Carrere is the one she loves. Journalist and filmmaker Carrere interweaves passages of deep introspection with racy love scenes that seem inserted purely for effect. Rich, evocative prose is the main appeal here, as the memoir itself tends to wander, trying to cover too much. --Allison Block

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1 edition (August 3, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805087559
• ISBN-13: 978-0805087550
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 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: #849,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent look at the emotional insecurities of a son of French of privilege, September 30, 2011

By 

Liviu C. Suciu (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Life as a Russian Novel: A Memoir (Kindle Edition)

This an excellent memoir/novel by Emmanuel Carrere a son of French privilege though a grandson of former privileged Russian aristocrats and Georgian intellectuals fallen on hard times due to the Bolshevik takeover.

These are the crucial facts that constitute the core of the book, while the author sure can write superbly.

The book has two threads - the author's coming to terms with the fate of his paternal grandfather, a brilliant but misfit Georgian intellectual living in poverty in French exile, disappeared and presumably shot as a German collaborator by the French resistance after the liberation of Bordeaux in 1944, event that defined his mother - a current bigwig in France's exclusive intellectual circles who still cannot accept the truth in some ways - and the author's profound love story with a beautiful younger girl of inferior social class - France still being a very class based society except that the new aristocrats are the elite bureaucrats like the (in)famous "droit de seigneur" DSK and intellectuals - girlfriend who resents his "my stuff is important, yours is not" that the elitist Carrere exudes daily, though still loving him profoundly.

An unsparing look at the privileged class' emotional insecurities and a very well written book.

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Stranger than Fiction - But is it True?, November 30, 2010

By 

Loves the View "Louise" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: My Life as a Russian Novel: A Memoir (Hardcover)

It is marketed as a memoir and it has the ring of truth. It is not stranger than fiction, but it is strange. These events might have happened; maybe some of them happened or they happened in a different way. There is the story the author is telling and then there is the portrait of the author.

If what he says is true, the author wears his self-absorption like a crown. He speaks of his insecurities, his fantasies, his enjoyment in manipulating Sophie and more. He does not see the intrusions he is making on the lives of others. Carrere seems to assume that everyone wants 15 minutes of fame (or at least wouldn't mind having it once the life is public), no matter what the fame is for.

The film which is central to this story exists, but does his "ticking time bomb" in Le Monde? Almost anything to do with Sophie, true or not, has a lot that is gratuitously prurient about it.

The people of Kotelnich, ashamed of their poverty, duck the camera. Sasha could lose his job over this (and maybe he did). The author has no stated purpose for making this film, several pages deal with looking for a story line. He seems only to want to film the sadness of these people's lives.

Despite my concern for the people brought into the public realm like this, I did read the whole book. I stayed with it through the humiliation of Sophie (he says he loves her but she will never be able to discuss art and literature with his sophisticated friends, after all, she has a job and cannot be as creative as they are) and the ploys he uses to film the sad people of Kotelnich.

It's a side issue, but I was disappointed that Carrere, when he re-connected with Anya, didn't follow up on her statement that the Hungarian POW (who started the Kotelnich adventure) worked in the town and was known by many people.

In the end, Carrere dedicates this book to his mother. If the book is true (also, maybe if it isn't - or maybe partially true) in regards to his grandfather, is this the book she would want (particularly with its conclusions about her father) as a gift from her son?

If you like a sophisticated, sexy, paradoxical narrative, this book is for you. If you don't concern yourself over its veracity (or its potential effects on Sophie, his mother or the people of Kotelnich), it will be a fun, if at times shocking, romp. I read it over a 24 hour period and you may too.