Customer Reviews

Pravda: A Novel

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

 

 

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.

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.

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)

Although in the beginning Docx's writing is sometimes over complicated, I found his insights to be thought provoking. Towards the end of the book the reading becomes easier, and the insights are few and far between, culminating in an ending that provided little to ponder.

Certainly an Amis wannabe but compare this prose to that of something like 'London Fields' and 'Pravda' comes up very, very short.

The writing is so overblown it's past funny. I can only assume that Docx's position in the UK literati makes him untouchable by a decent editor. I can only liken this to the situation with Kate Mosse's 'Labyrinth', a lamentably poorly written book from a high-profile UK literary industry figure, praised to the high heavens.

I don't require the characters in the books I read to be likable, or even believable, but I do like them to be enjoyable and these were not. Any of them.

And as for the twist...some twist.

Give it a miss.

Plot was so so but so over written that I found myself skipping all the adjectives, descriptions, etc to find out what happened!