The People's Act of Love [Hardcover]

James Meek (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 16, 2005

In the outer reaches of a country recently torn apart by civil war lives a small Christian sect and its enigmatic leader, Balashov. Anna Petrovna, a beautiful, restless photographer, is raising her young son by herself amid this brutal landscape. Stationed nearby is a company of Czech soldiers, desperate to get home but on the losing side of the recent conflict. Each soldier lives in a fragile co-existence and a troubling uncertainty prevails. Into this isolated community trudges Samarin, an escapee from Russia's northernmost prison camp. Immediately apprehended, he is brought before Captain Matula, the Czech company's megalomaniac commander. But the stranger's appearance has caught the attention of others, including that of Anna Petrovna. And when a local shaman is found murdered, suspicion and terror engulf this village. To be published in twenty countries, The People's Act of Love is quite simply magnificent storytelling and it promises to be an auspicious literary event.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

James Meek has won several awards for his journalism and his fiction, but The People's Act Of Love is a singular departure from all that came before. It is a big Russian novel, written in English. Meek has upped the ante on such books as Cold Mountain and The March in bringing the reader his version of the unspeakable horror and brutality of war, the colder-than-cold winter, the cruelty and humanity of people in extremis.

It is 1919 in Yazyk, Siberia, far from anywhere. The war is waning, but its ravages remain. There is an uneasy detente between a group of Czech soldiers, marooned on the losing side and longing to go home, and a fanatical Christian sect that practices castration as a means of purifying themselves. One of their number is their leader, Balashov, married to a beautiful and restive photographer, Anna Petrovna, who has come to the village of Yazyk to raise her son, after learning of her husband's castration. Her fury knows no bounds. She gives herself to anyone who is interested as a means of shaming Balashov, and satisfying her own appetites.

Into this motley collection of people comes a stranger, Samarin, who says he has escaped from The White Garden, Russia's northernmost prison camp, a place of unbelievable barbarism. Shortly after his arrival, the village shaman, possessed of a third eye and an albino sidekick, is found murdered. Suspicion falls immediately on Samarin. In successive chapters, Meek has each person or faction tell his or her story. Samarin, a revolutionary, charismatic visionary, every bit as zealous as the castrates, tells of his escape. Matula, the crazy, cocaine-snorting leader of the Czechs, doesn't really want to go home, so he prevents his soldiers from leaving. Mutz, a sensible sort, quite taken with Anna, dreams of home and keeps hope alive among his soldiers. Balashov tells of what led him to castrate himself.

The hopes, wishes, dreams, and illusions of all these people converge in Meek's novel. He shows man as pure, base, megalomaniacal, rational, intelligent, incredibly stupid--every aspect of humanity is examined, especially compassion. Despite the horrid excesses of war--and peace--Meek, in their telling, weaves a completely believable story of what happens to people who are not just at the margins of the world, but at the edge of their ability to understand themselves and the world around them. (The people's act of love, by the way, has nothing to do with love: it is cannibalism.) Don't miss this extraordinary novel; it is hugely deep and satisfying. --Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Set during the waning days of the Russian revolution, Meek's utterly absorbing novel (after The Museum of Doubt) captivates with its depiction of human nature in all its wartime extremes. In 1919, the remote Siberian town of Yazyk contains a strange brew of humanity: the docile members of a mystical Christian sect, whose longing for purity drives them to self-mutilation; a small outfit of Czech troops, marooned by the civil war and led by the mad cocaine-snorting Captain Matula; and "the widow" Anna Petrovna, whose passion for worldly things (e.g., photography and men) isolates her from the devout townspeople. When the charismatic revolutionary, Samarin, trudges into town with a harrowing tale of escape from a distant labor camp and a dangerous philosophy, Yazyk becomes a theater of bloodshed and betrayal as well as heroism and compassion. Using the town as a microcosm of the larger war, Meek illuminates both perverted ideology and irrepressible humanity. With confident prose, layered storytelling and prodigious imagination, he combines scenes of heart-pounding action and jaw-dropping revelations with moments of quiet tension and sly humor. This original, literary page-turner succeeds both with its credible psychological detail and in its grandeur and sweep.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 391 pages
• Publisher: Canongate; 1st edition (November 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841957305
• ISBN-13: 978-1841957302
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,324,239 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So, The End Justifies The Means?, January 16, 2006

By 

prisrob "pris," (New England USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The People's Act of Love (Hardcover)

"He's not a destroyer; he is destruction, leaving these good people who remain to build a better world on the ruins. What looks like an act of evil to a single person is the people's act of love to its future itself." Samarin pretending to speak of another, but really speaking of himself.

James Meek has written a marvelous story-telling in this novel. It portrays the Russian revolution in such detail you would think you are in the world of 1917. So many characters woven into effortless story lines, so that the story grabs our attention. The characters are revealed in a central figure, and we are able at last to understand the drama and the truth. James Meek attended Edinburgh University and as a journalist for the "Guardian" and "Observer" reported from Russia for ten years. He has been able to show us the horrific sights and scenes of Siberia: cruelty, murder and cannibalism. And, yet the sun shining on the snow, the love of a man and a woman; the everyday life of those who live the best they can.

Samarin, one of the main characters shows up in tiny, poor Yazyk, a Siberian community. His story is that of a political prisoner, a run-away from a horrible place in the Arctic. He has escaped with "Mohican" a guard at this prison. Mohican took Samarin with him, it seems, to eat his flesh. Samarin's story is slowly unraveled, but not before we meet the other characters. An extreme Christian sect that castrates its members so they can be called angels. A group of Czechoslovakian legions, trying to leave this God-forbidden place, led by Lieutenant Mutz. Mutz loves the earth and a woman, Anna Petrovna. Anna is the wife of the leader of the Christian sect. She is also a woman who loves men and sex, photography and her son.

All these characters and more who are puzzled about many events. They learn as we do, when the puzzle begins to fit; the meaning of the extremes of the political, the spiritual and the humanity. There are heroes and there is goodness. This is a particularly spectacular book, written by a particularly special writer.
Highly recommended. prisrob

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The People's Act Of Love, January 9, 2006

By 

Stewart (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The People's Act of Love (Hardcover)

It was the intention of James Meek that his third novel, The People's Act of Love, should be written in the manner of the great Russian novels. While I have little to no experience in this branch of literature there were enough idiosyncrasies within the book to believe that he has, at least, achieved this. And, having spent eight years living in Russia whilst following his career in journalism, Meek may be better qualified than most to write a modern take on the Russian novel .

Set in Yazyk, a remote village in the Siberian wilderness, the novel investigates the actions of a small group of people. There is Balashov, the leader of a bizarre Christian sect; Mutz, a Jewish soldier from Prague, who is one of a number of Czech soldiers on the losing side of the Russian Revolution; Anna Petrovna, a young war widow, who lives in the town with her son, Alyosha; and Samarin, an enigmatic escapee from a Siberian prison camp, who is just passing through, being followed, so he says, by another prisoner named the Mohican.

The People's Act of Love is high on drama, and, as the action unfolds the death of a local shaman brings suspicion to Yazyk. Samarin, being the stranger with an unverifiable story, becomes the prime suspect and is imprisoned. When he tells his story to a makeshift court, a long painful narrative about life in a hellhole called the White Garden, he garners sympathy and, at the request of the undersexed Anna Petrovna, goes to stay under her watchful eye.

As the events happen in Yazyk, further tension is added to the fears of the closeknit community by the knowledge that the Reds, winners of the Russian Revolution, are coming. A priority for them is to eliminate the Czech soldiers, men desperate to return home, and claim the town for the People. The leader of the Czech's, a man named Matula, led his men in the massacre at Staraya Krepost for which the Reds want to exercise their own brand of justice.

Meek's prose is wonderful, as fresh and crisp as the snow falling upon the land. In fact, the harsh temperatures of Siberia inform the prose: the description makes use of evocative words suggesting a locale lost in the emptiness of northern Asia. Characters trudge over `papery snow', they wear two jackets, and even the trees are known to shudder.

Throughout the novel there are a number of scenes which are brutal but handled in such a way as to seem unimportant. A man is castrated; another is butchered and the separate parts of his body hung from a tree so that they may dry; while others are sentenced to death for no reason other than the Bolshevik ideal. Matula, also, shows his anti-Semite opinions in the way he talks to Mutz, always referring to him as `Yid' and making light of his religion. It's testament to Meek's ability that he shows us such inhumanities without preaching and leaves it open to the reader to form their opinion on his characters.

Despite how bleak The People's Act of Love gets, it is shot through with an underlying humour that serves some warmth to the frozen landscape. And while the jokes are old, or you know them in some incarnation, they are always spoken by the soldiers who, with their circumstances, can be forgiven as they try to maintain morale.

Another interesting slant, is the book's passing regard to religious fundamentalism. The sect living in Yazyk are Christian but their methods and doctrines are far from standard Christianity. They are castrated to be more like angels and live without sin; a practice bewildering to some of the others living in the town. Not least of all, to Anna Petrovna, whose husband is Balashov, a soldier so devout that he gave up his wife, son, and member to be closer to God.

The main themes, however, are love and sacrifice. Anna Petrovna gives up her normal life to be with Balashov, a man she loves but can never love her again; Balashov's love of God that he would forfeit his sexuality to be with Him; and Samarin, embodiment of the People, who would sacrifice parts of his nature so as to better prepare for the world ahead. In fact, the act of love referred to in the book's title, comes from a conversation with him and Petrovna where he talks about eating a comrade for the greater good, beating off starvation to be able to change the world. Essentially, since the book is shot through with cannibalism references, Meek is asking if there is a right time to eat another human being.

The People's Act of Love was longlisted for the Booker 2005 and, while I've not read all the books that made the eventual shortlist, I wonder if Meek may have missed out on a chance to become more of a public interest. His style is certainly enjoyable, his plotting tight, and his characters tinged with much humanity. I believe Meek's earlier two novels were somewhat different to this book and, based on the change in direction he appears to have taken, we can look forward to an interesting voice for the future.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Russian Literature or Contempory Fiction?, December 11, 2005

By 

Sarra Borne (Grand Prairie, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The People's Act of Love (Hardcover)

The People's Act of Love is set in an isolated religious commune in 1919 Siberia, that is also occupied by a regiment of Czech Legion soldiers who were on the wrong side of the recent revolutionary conflict. The Legion has lost a third of its number to battle, hunger and cold and is desperate to go home. Into this uneasy community trudges Samarin, an escapee from an Arctic gulag. Before his arrest Samarin claims to have been a university student, who was at the wrong place during an activist action. His trial sent him to the White Garden, from which he escaped with the assistance of another convict, the Mohican. During the long walk, he discovers that the Mohican brought him along as a "cow", a lesser prisoner that is fattened for the slaughter, and is butchered and eaten so that the Mohican may survive the hazardous trek to freedom. Samarin eludes the Mohican but fears he is still being chased by a hungry cannibal bent on revenge.

Anna Petrovna is a woman who moves to this isolated community to discover what really happened to the husband she thought had died in battle. Lonely and estranged from the villagers as a non-practitioner, Anna Petrovna stakes her life as bond in order to host Samarin in her home. Has she made a bad choice? Balashov is the enigmatic leader of the religious community, who first meets Samarin on the mountain and through his actions brings Samarin to Anna. His followers seek Utopia through personal sacrifice to God, this sacrifice bringing them closer to being angels on earth. It is Balashov's fate that gives title to the book.

This book gets off to a slow start. At first glance, the opening chapters appear to be individual parables instead of a cohesive narrative. The author created a complex web of interconnecting stories, for which a scorecard would be helpful to keep all the characters straight. Once everything falls into place, a reader who truly enjoys historical fiction will be transported. The attention to detail is extraordinary. Another reviewer commented that this book is reminiscent of classic Russian literature translated into English, rather than contemporary fiction. This isn't an easy read, nor one that is easily forgettable.