The People's Act of Love: A Novel [Paperback]

James Meek (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 4, 2006

Set in a time of great social upheaval, warfare, and terrorism, and against a stark, lawless Siberia at the end of the Russian Revolution, The People’s Act of Love portrays the fragile coexistence of a beautiful, independent mother raising her son alone, a megalomaniac Czech captain and his restless regiment, and a mystical separatist Christian sect. When a mysterious, charismatic stranger trudges into their snowy village with a frighteningly outlandish story to tell, its balance is shaken to the core.

Product Details

• Paperback: 391 pages
• Publisher: Canongate U.S. (December 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841958778
• ISBN-13: 978-1841958774
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #877,453 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Showdown in Siberia, February 20, 2007

By 

Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The People's Act of Love: A Novel (Paperback)

James Meek brings together a number of forces in an isolated Siberian village during the last stages of the Russian Revolution: a young mother who has lost her husband; a sect of religious zealots and their otherworldly leader; a shaman from one of the forest tribes and his albino acolyte; a force of Czech soldiers, unable to return to their newly-established country; and an escaped political prisoner, driven, charismatic, and wrapped in mystery. Meek gradually introduces several even more unusual elements into this mixture [some of which are revealed by other reviewers on this site, which is a pity]. The result is an exciting and relatively short work of fiction that defies easy categorization; history, romance, mystery, horror, politics, and even comedy combine in a quite unusual way.

I have to say, though, that it is not entirely a success. For one thing, it demands more knowledge of early Soviet history than can be expected of every reader: to understand, for example, the timeline of the defeat of the White Russians by the Reds, the history of the Russian prison camps, and the surprising presence of the Czech Legion thousands of miles from home. For another, I personally found that the presence of such diverse elements made the novel difficult to follow, or rather difficult to penetrate to the deeper levels that the author occasionally implies, as he raises questions about fanaticism, religion, and the suitability of means to ends. The cover reviews compare James Meek to Tolstoy, Lermontov, and Pasternak; this is true in that he writes well, and captures the Russian atmosphere memorably. But although Meek juggles them skilfully, themes of this scope really demand to be developed at a length more typical of his great Russian predecessors if the book is to rise above the level of a very good thriller and become a true novel as those authors would have understood the term.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a masterful tale of a revolution in limbo -- *Anna Karenina* meets *Silence of the Lambs*, January 1, 2007

By 

Scott (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The People's Act of Love: A Novel (Paperback)

*The People's Act of Love* is an extremely meaty novel, written with care and elegance. Amazingly, for a novel that touches on (among other things) a sect of castrates, a premediated act of cannibalism, and the motivations of a revolutionary bomb-thrower, its tone is restrained, precise, lucid. It's this tone of normality (as one critic has called it) that makes the unbelievable events described in this novel so believable, and that keep the reader turning page after page, eager to dive into the author's world.

What kind of world does Meek create, then? Most of the novel is set in a small town in the Siberian outback, as the Russian Revolution sweeps from Petrograd in the west to Vladivostok in the east. The revolution hasn't quite made it to this small town, which sits in a kind of political and spiritual limbo: the Czech Legion (having been contracted by the Tsar) is the presiding authority, even though at the moment the Tsar is gone; meanwhile the town's residents, who are involved in a secret mystical sect that demands castration from the men, keep their distance from the political events of the day. Disrupting this fragile equilibrium is the arrival of an escaped convict: the spell-binding and brilliant Samarin, a man who is equal parts fantasist, visionary, revolutionary, and murderer. With Samarin, Meek has created a gripping, indelible figure, one who magnetizes the whole of the novel: we shudder as we follow the trajectory of his mind, and yet we can't help but feel shivers of excitement, too, as he takes us where no sane person would ever hope to go.

In all, a beautifully-written, beautifully-troubling novel.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "No deep and strong feeling, May 23, 2008

By 

Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The People's Act of Love: A Novel (Paperback)

such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim."

Yuri Zhivago, who uttered these words in Boris Pasternak's classic tale Dr. Zhivago, would no doubt find common bond with the setting and characters that inhabit James Meek's wonderful book "The People's Act of Love".

Most of the People's Act is set in 1919 in the village of Yazyk, in Siberia. To call Yazyk the middle of nowhere is to give it too much credit. Russia, now the USSR, is in the midst of its post-revolutionary civil war that has caused untold deaths and facilitated illnesses and famine. Yazyk's end-of-the earth location does not insulate it entirely from these events. The town is run by a stranded division of a Czechoslovakian Legion with no apparent means to return to Prague subsequent to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Legion is commanded by Captain Matula who for all intents and purposes is both insane and sadistic. The civilians in the town consist mainly of a mystic sect of eunuchs (the "Skoptsy") who believe their self-immolation removes the one body part responsible for most of the world's sins. As far fetched as this may seem, the presence of stranded Czech soldiers and the existence of a sect of castrati inhabiting parts of Siberia is a matter of record and was not a piece of fiction created by Meek solely for this novel.

The town is also inhabited by Anna Petrovna, who appears to be a widow, and her son. The Red Army is making its way towards Yazyk and intends to seek revenge for an act of brutality committed by the Czechs. A younger stranger, Samarin, makes his way into the town. He tells a fantastic story about escaping from a Siberian labor camp. He indicates that he was fattened up before the escape by his prison `guardian', Mohican, so that could eat Samarin after their food ran out. (This tale of cannibalism is also based on real events.)

The story of each group of protagonists is woven skillfully into the narrative. Although written by a British journalist and author in the 21st-century the narrative tone has a very Russian feel to it. The sentence structure, the formality of the conversation between the characters, and a somber, fatalistic tone will resonate with anyone who has read 19th and 20th century Russian literature. This particular structure holds up extremely well as the stories of each protagonist merge and the novel's conclusion approaches.

The book's title is taken from a line uttered by one of its characters. It is a very appropriate title in the sense that despite (or perhaps because of) the macabre nature of some of the events in the novel one theme that remains constant is the question of love and what we flawed creatures do in its name. In an interview about the novel the author made the following statement: If there is one thing which the four central characters in the book . . . agree on, it is that love exists and matters. What they disagree on is what love may be.

This theme of the infinite variability of love and the horrors and selflessness transacted in its name may sound trite or too well worn a path to go down for some. However, in the hands of Meek it comes across as masterful and compelling. The People's Act of Love was one I had trouble putting down once I got past the introductory chapters. If the test of a good novel is whether or not one continues to think about the story after it has been concluded - then People's Act of Love passes with flying colors. It is a gripping yet thoughtful book and any evocations to Russian authors of the 19th-century should be viewed as a well deserved accolade. L. Fleisig