Customer Reviews

The Secret History of Moscow

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4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When Galina's sister turns into a bird and flies off leaving their mother to care for her newborn child, Galina is confused and perplexed but also determined to find her sister. Yakov is the downtrodden cop assigned to investigate the disappearance of Galina's sister and the others around Moscow who have met a similar fate. Together he and Galina, with the help of a street artist named Fyodor, must find their way into an underground version of Moscow. It is in this secret world that characters from myths, fairy tales and long forgotten religions abide and some of them are willing to help the travelers on their quest.

The Secret History of Moscow was a creative and intriguing urban fantasy novel. Ekaterina Sedia developed a unique world and wonderful multi-layered characters to inhabit it. I was captured by the story she wove and the way the Russian traditions and mythologies came alive in her writing. Fans of Neil Gaiman and Charles de Lint will not want to miss this work.

People (including Neil Gaiman, by the blurb on the cover) keep comparing this to _Neverwhere_, but it reminded me much more of _American Gods._ It also reminded me of Little, Big and _So You Want to Be a Wizard._ The division between our world and the other is thin and has has holes, and troubles in one place reflect in the other. Although the author wastes no words, she creates characters you can believe in, whose feelings you can understnd. While not a funny book, it's hopeful. Read it.

Some compare this to Gaiman's Neverwhere, but this is quite different, I think, even if this too is kind of an urban fantasy where people go to an ... underground world. What I loved best in this book was all the Russian mythology, of which I know shamefully little - though it was fun to spot some familiar things. (Actually, the only reason I recognized some characters etc, like e.g Koshchey the Deathless, was because I've got one single fairytale by Eduard Uspensky. Pathetic.)

Anyway, this is a pretty good book - not excellent or anything, but worth reading if you happen to get this into your hands. Some people seem to be annoyed at the way the author keeps on interrupting the story: every time a new character is introduced, the story of his or her life is also told. But. At one point I started to get the feeling that _this_ in fact is the "secret history of Moscow", these stories of small people who otherwise wouldn't get their voice heard, who, behind the brilliant Russian/Soviet coulisse are not living so wonderful lives. This isn't just fantasy, but also offers an interesting look into the everyday life in Russia/Soviet Union.

I visited Moscow which gave more appreciation to the characters and settings. When the book mentioned a particular place, I was there. For those of you interesting in reading novels based in Russia, it is an emotional book about the lives of people in Moscow as well as some mythological characters from the Russian past and folklore. The author shows an appreciation of life in Russia as well as Russia's history and folklore.

Russian urban fantasy is not normally my thing, but Sony was offering this free as a promotion on the E-Reader site, so I went ahead and downloaded it. Surprisingly, I quite liked it. It's certainly different from anything I've read before, and not just because it's fantasy, which I don't read much of although I make the occasional foray.

The story is told from several characters' points of view, but I'd say the primary character is Galina, a young woman in post-Soviet Russia who is working as a medical translator after her release from a mental institution for a vague form of schizophrenia that may or may not have been a complete fabrication by authorities under the old Soviet rule. Living in a dingy Moscow apartment with her mother and pregnant sister, Galina half-assumes her mental illness has returned when her sister locks herself in the bathroom, gives birth to the child, and then somehow disappears through a small window several stories from the ground. The only thing left is a black bird sitting on the windowsill, and Galina tries very hard NOT to believe that the bird is her sister - not to mention that suggesting such a thing to anyone could land her right back in the sanitarium - but can't fight the certainty that it is.

From here she's led to several others who are also having odd, inexplicable experiences involving mysterious birds, and portals into an underworld that can pose as anything from an illusory doorway to a puddle of oily water in an alley. The other people she meets and travels with to this underworld are Yakov, a policeman investigating the strange disappearances and himself a reluctant witness to a man who appears to actually turn into a bird, and Fyodor, a homeless artist with a dark past who takes Galina and Yakov through one of the portals.

In the strange world beneath we meet a fascinating cast of creatures and characters from Russian myths and legends, who are concerned about what is happening "up above", because never before have people been able to pass so easily into the underworld except in death. Something is awry, and while on a literal journey through a strange and beautiful wood, across a Stygian-esque river and into other magical, mysterious places to learn what's happened to cause this unnatural aperture and also try to find their way back, Galina in particular is on a mission to find her missing sister, whom she can hear calling to her for help in the half-light of her dreams.

The author is a Russian native now living in New Jersey, and I think this is her second or third novel. It is not a translation as far as I can tell, although she may have written a Russian version as well. Although the story drags slightly every so often, for the most part it is beautifully told. Sedia has a beautiful, unique sense of language and style and I would definitely read more from her.

The Secret History is a romp through 1990s Moscow, where the underground is a world of magic and secrets that may hold the answer to a rash of mysterious disappearances. It is an offbeat, engaging story that offers a rich portrait of a grey Moscow. It suffers only for lack of a more aggressive editor's pen - to eradicate a slew of distracting typos. (Reviewed in Russian Life)

I started out very much loving this book. It was the third in a row I'd read with Russia as the setting (Child 44, Moscow Rules and then this). I thought it would be a nice way to round out my Russian fiction education. The beginning has a wonderful mix of magic, lore and dark urban fantasy: we have a seedy, gritty modern Russia, people disappearing and the cops doing nothing about it, and the strange hint of an underground magical force.

The book doesn't have one strong protagonist, which maybe is one of its drawbacks, because it also isn't chapter-by-chapter narrated by different characters--you simply change perspective willy nilly, especially as the book progresses, and none of the characters has a very original voice. That said, Galina, a girl ostensibly "recovering" or "dealing with" symptoms of schizophrenia, is living in modern Moscow with her mother and sister. Her mother detests her for her psychiatric failings, but her sister--who is pregnant and getting married--loves her dearly. One day her sister goes into the bathroom, there is some commotion and the mother and Galina break into the room to find the baby, but no sister. Galina sees a jackdaw on the windowsill and, although she senses that the jackdaw is her sister, keeps her mouth shut to keep from being sent back to the institution.

She eventually meets up with a street artist who has also been seeing strange circumstances throughout the city, as well as a police investigator who witnessed a man turn into a jackdaw. The three go in search of all the missing people-turned-jackdaws, and find their way to a magical underground world below Moscow where the dead and/or semi-dead live with the creatures who make up all the lore and fairy tales told in Moscow (such as Koschey the Deathless).

The story itself is interesting enough, but almost everything fell flat. For one, Galina's supposed schizophrenia. Does she have the disorder? She claims that she once maybe heard voices, but we never, ever once have any evidence that she actually did or still is--and considering she's in the underground world for weeks with no meds, you'd have to assume that the voices, if she'd ever heard them, would return (seeing as you can't "cure" schizophrenia, if she once had it, she still would). It's implied at one point that she was misdiagnosed---the police officer, Yakov, who traveled with her recognizes the specific type of schizophrenia that she was told she had as a fake disorder that the government used to "diagnose" political dissidents and other troublemakers they wanted to keep locked up. But not only is this concept never, ever visited again, but it doesn't seem to make any sense. There was never any implication that Galina had shown signs of being a political dissident, so why would she have been diagnosed with the fake disorder? And she was released to her mother's care, so obviously she wasn't considered a threat.
Then we have Yakov, who also lives with his mother because his wife left him. Something bad also happened to his child. Why did his wife leave him? What happened to the child? Why did his mother act so strange around him? Why was he obsessed with finding the missing people who turned into jackdaws? Did he ever go back to visit the little girl whose mother disappeared? Yakov happens to meet his long-lost grandfather in the underworld. It turns out he wasn't killed as a dissident by the government, but had escaped to the underground and abandoned his family, a decision that had far-reaching effects on Yakov's life, despite it all happening before he was born. So what happens between him and his grandfather? What was the point of meeting him underground? It seems an incredible coincidence, does it not, that of all the millions of people, he meets his own grandfather in the underworld? Again, this discovery, which probably would have been considered an, uh, life-altering discovery for most people amounts to basically nothing. We hear the grandfather recount the terrible day that he escaped to the underground, and then he basically disappears from the book. Yakov spends almost no more time with him. It just doesn't make any sense.

Last, we have several apparently famous fairy tale characters from Russian lore as characters, but none of them makes any sense either. For one, they're not very well explained. I don't know who Koschey the Deathless is, nor have I heard the story, because I wasn't raised on Russian folk tales. Everyone seems to like to threaten him by telling him they "know where his death is" but I don't know what that means, really. Who is this cow that created the Milky Way? What does she mean to the Russian people? Why is she in this story? If you're going to reference the Decemberists, don't just tell ten percent of their story and leave the rest completely ignored--have the character explain what happened with them!

So therein are the problems--the story is completely disjointed. People do and say things and you don't know why. No character is ever developed. The street artist who left home and is obsessed with gypsies--does he ever get over his fear of them? Can he love Oksana freely? What were the Russian mafia men planning on doing with all these souls trapped in glass spheres? How were they using the jackdaws as spies if the jackdaws cannot speak? Or why would the jackdaws only be able to speak to certain people and not others? It's frustrating because the idea behind this book is so good, but the writing only takes you part of the way, and then falls short. It's in no way a /terrible/ book, it's just not great, and not one I'd be quick to recommend.

In The Secret History of Moscow, Ekaterina Sedia captures the grey physical and emotional landscape of Moscow in the 90's and infuses it with haunting Russian mythos. The author's exploration of the supernatural clashing with reality creates a backdrop for social and economic commentary on Post-Soviet life.

But The Secret History of Moscow has neither bland prose nor flat characters (which is impressive considering the sheer breadth of characters we encounter in the book). These characters are given life by the author's lush, descriptive language. The details bring this world into sharp focus, and some of the imagery is utterly unforgettable. The bear is fantastic, as are the ways of entering the Underworld.

The population of Sedia's novel live in the distorted shadows of life--the people are hopeless and weary, and the gods and heroes have been relegated to the Underworld, no longer called upon by the modern folk. Yet it is in the hands of these fading myths and disillusioned antiheroes that the city and her people must ultimately find redemption.

Some have commented that they were unable to suspend disbelief as the "real life" characters met the folkloric ones and were not phased by the meeting. Western readers may fail to understand just what kind of presence these archetypes have in Russian (and Eastern European) ethos. They have not all been banished to the realm of children's fairy tales.

The mythical characters have a definite presence--an undertow in the murky waters of Russian cosmology. It's really not that hard to believe that they co-exist just out of reach, visible in the ripples of a puddle or in the reflection of a subway window. They should not be forgotten, and thanks to Ekaterina Sedia, I don't think they shall!

The book weaves real history and Russian folklore and myth into a dark and mesmerizing story. The bulk of the chapters are stories within stories, like matryoshka (god I hope I'm spelling that right) nesting dolls. The histories within the histories. The writing technique is complex and very well done. There is some truly stunning imagery here, including a Russian "bear" that I wouldn't dream of spoiling.

The three main characters are everyday folk (a factory worker, a cop, a street artist), and the other characters they meet along the away are, generally, the discarded, people who have been trampled under the feet of history for centuries, but what makes SECRET HISTORY go is that the characters aren't fatalistic or pushovers. They choose to act despite their incredible vulnerability.

I've always been a fan of both novels about hidden or underground cities as well as novels containing those "secret histories" of what really happened in the past to make things how they are today, so it comes as no surprised that I was hooked by Ekaterina Sedia's Secret History of Moscow.

Instead of London or New York City, places that have been explored countless times before, the setting of Moscow was a refreshing change of pace. I was fascinated by the fairy tale beings I'd never heard of before, almost as much as I was entranced by the stories of regular Muscovites in the past and present -- people struggling to get by, people without strong voices, people you'd pass on the street or in the subway without giving a second glance. These are the people that, in Sedia's remarkable prose, literally take flight in this novel.

If you enjoy fantasy tinged with stark realism and clear-eyed storytelling, you'll love this book.