Customer Reviews

My Life as a Russian Novel: A Memoir

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.