Pravda: A Novel [Paperback]

Edward Docx (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 19, 2008

A sweeping transcontinental novel of secrets and lies buried within a single family

Thirty-two-year-old Gabriel Glover arrives in St. Petersburg to find his mother dead in her apartment. Reeling from grief, Gabriel and his twin sister, Isabella, arrange the funeral without contacting their father, Nicholas, a brilliant and manipulative libertine. Unknown to the twins, their mother had long ago abandoned a son, Arkady, a pitiless Russian predator now determined to claim his birthright. Aided by an ex-seminarian whose heroin addiction is destroying him, Arkady sets out to find the siblings and uncover the dark secret hidden from them their entire lives.

Winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Pravda is a darkly funny, compulsively readable, and hauntingly beautiful chronicle of discovery and loss, love and loyalty, and the destructive legacy of deceit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Docx's second novel (after The Calligrapher) wrings out all the theatrics to be had from unhappy urban-dwelling twins, their sexually voracious father and dead Russian mother. Twins Gabriel and Isabella Glover, both 32 and leading lackluster lives—she at a New York PR firm, he the editor in London of Self-Help! magazine—see another crack form in their perennially tortured existences when their mother, Maria, who defected to marry their British father, dies alone in St. Petersburg. (Their despised father, Nicholas, meanwhile, dabbles in art, decadence and self-important interior monologues in Paris.) All are unaware of an additional family member: Arkady Artamenkov, their mother's first son, who had been kept afloat by Maria's financial assistance and the guiding hand of his junkie friend, Henry Whey. After the checks stop, Henry hatches a plan to send Arkady to plead for money from the family that doesn't know he exists. Though Docx's prose can get dangerously overheated (Give me the sincerity of nakedness and the honesty of desire, O God, and deliver me from the turgid bourgeoisie and all their favorite phrases), the crushing atmosphere will draw in fans of dark Euro-fiction. (Mar.)
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Review

Docx has a gift for assessing “the exact shape and weight of other people’s inner selves, the architecture of their spirit,” and although the book teems with characters—the cast reaches nearly Dickensian proportions—even the most ancillary flare into being, vital and insistent.
The New Yorker

A novel so vivid it glows in the dark -- like truth.
The Washington Post

Longlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize, and with good reason: well written, vigorously plotted and perceptive about human nature. Kirkus Reviews, Starred

Caustic, hip, and highly recommended. Library Journal

Docx's ability to capture the feel of St. Petersburg, London, New York and Paris adds depth to this portrait of a family in turmoil. Drug addiction, sex, the emptiness of superficial relationships, poverty and music round out the ambitious narrative.

As the mystery of Maria's life and death is revealed, the haunting story hurtles toward a startling conclusion.

Docx has plumbed the depths of understanding and forgiveness with this fascinating book.

Tampa Tribune

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 395 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; First Edition. first american edition (March 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618534407
• ISBN-13: 978-0618534401
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #806,987 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A seriously good - posiibly great - novel, March 31, 2008

By 

JC "Blogster" (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pravda: A Novel (Paperback)

This is one of the best books I have read recently. Docx gets compared to Dickens and Dostoyevsky around the place and, while that is a pretty high bar, this is certainly a wonderful old school style novel: deep and full of life and characters with things happening on lots of layers. I was watching out because I read the first one and mostly loved it. In Britain, Pravda got on the Booker prize list and you can see why - just way more scope than most of the younger writers around.

There's a great story at the heart of Pravda, lots of insightful passages on male-female relationships, cities, politics and psychology. The Russian scenes are truly evocative. And, as with the first book (The Calligrapher) and as other people have said, there's also some really beautiful writing. The tale is a family one - with some pretty unexpected twists and turns. The children are the focus. But for my money, the best character is the father - I've not read someone as deep and as dark (but weirdly likeable) as him anywhere else in all my reading. Though I was fascinated by the mother too, because she is (in one way) what the whole book is about but somehow she hovers just out of reach - a ghost in the writing, as well as in the fact of her death.

In summary, this is the real deal - a finely written novel for readers who are interested in literature and all the amazing things that good books can make you think about and feel! Would recommend it highly, no question.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Magnificent Effort, June 4, 2008

By 

William A. Viall - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pravda: A Novel (Paperback)

I really liked this book a whole lot. It's the best novel I've read in a while. Kudos to Docx. He has much to say. Reading it, I thought he was a poor man's Martin Amis, but now I'm on to Amis' Meeting House, and am not finding Amis quite as brilliant as I remember him. (Full disclosure: I'm a huge Amis fan.) Docx must surely be influenced by Amis, and I believe he shares some of the older writer's mental agility and thurst to get his ideas out there.

My niggle with Pravda is that it was a bit treacly, a bit too touchy-feely for my tastes. It lacks a certain edge, grit; is a little too gauzy in places. I believe Docx loves a few of his characters a little too much.

But his prose are great, again, remeniscent of vintage Amis. His insights are not earth-shattering, but he lays them out in inventive, entertaining, and rich ways, and they are certainly ideas that bear repeating. This is fine, fine, fine contemporary Brit-Lit at its best.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dostoyevskian, October 17, 2008

By 

Paul E. Richardson "Russian Life" (Montpelier, VT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Pravda: A Novel (Paperback)

Set in St. Petersburg, Docx's novel offers a Dostoyevskian mix of rich prose, haunting scenery, well-buried secrets and engrossing characters. This is a great bedtime read, but beware, Docx offers a window on a gritty, dark St. Petersburg - not the one you would likely want to visit, except through fiction. (Reviewed in Russian Life)