Uncle Rudolph [Hardcover]

Paul Bailey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 2002

The haunting new novel from Paul Bailey, whose work has been short-listed twice for the Booker prize. At the age of 70, Andrew Peters suddenly finds himself speaking in the language he has not used since childhood, when he came to live with his doting Uncle Rudolf . Rudolf transformed Andrew's world. Looking back across the years, Andrew remembers the captivating man who rescued him in 1937 from a likely death in fascist Romania. A sublimely gifted lyric tenor, Rudolf's talent had exiled him from his native land, leading him to Paris, Vienna and London, where he became a much-loved star in operetta. He turns all his hopes and sardonic humour upon Andrew, and the gauche child from a remote country town becomes what Rudolf wants him to be -- an English gentleman. Vivid, often hilarious stories of Rudolf's brilliant but blighted career and of his eccentric household are intertwined with the slow unfolding of the secrets that have shadowed Andrew's otherwise happy life. Told in matchless prose, this deeply moving novel captures a vanished epoch and a way of life with exquisite tact and restraint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Part exile's lament and part psychological study, this brief novel by Bailey (Kitty & Virgil, etc.) explores the complicated, intense relationship between a Romanian lyric tenor and his adoring nephew during the years preceding and following WWII. Andrew Petrescu (later Peters) is seven in 1937 when his father-a Romanian debt collector who marries a woman with Jewish blood-finds the situation in Romania increasingly precarious and sends Andrew to live in England with his superbly talented Uncle Rudolf. Introducing Andrew to his freewheeling artistic world, Rudolf becomes the boy's de facto parent, adviser and mentor. The narrative then flashes back to Rudolf's musical education and his lucrative decision to sing commercially popular operettas, a choice that proves costly on a personal level when Rudolf regrets not pursuing a career in serious opera. As Andrew grows up, he becomes increasingly dependent on his uncle, to the extent that his brief marriage fails and he finds himself living vicariously through Rudolf's successes and failures. Bailey's unflinching depiction of Andrew's obsessive, nearly pathological love for his uncle is alternately moving and disturbing, and his gradual revelation of the fate of Andrew's parents adds an element of suspense to the story. The flamboyance of London theater life contrasts strikingly with the melancholia of exile and the horrors of war as Bailey plays masterfully with chiaroscuro in this moody, unsentimental novel.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In February 1937, his father took little Andrei Petrescu from their small Romanian town to Paris, where he put the boy on the first leg of the trip to London. There Rudolf, his father's brother, met him, told him he would henceforth be Andrew Peters, and introduced him to the lifestyle of a wealthy celebrity, for his handsome uncle is a matinee-idol tenor whose forte is that bourgeois middle European theatrical confection, operetta. Andrei is supposedly visiting until his parents call him home, but he never sees them again, and Uncle Rudolf doesn't tell him the whole truth of his situation until he is 18. He grows up in the best circumstances, and Rudolf is devoted to him, but Andrew, though he fathers a son from a marriage that barely outlives the pregnancy, never really leaves the avuncular nest. Moreover, Rudolf thinks himself a failure; he should have sung Mozart and Verdi, not the genre he considers central to the early-twentieth-century's long nationalist nightmare. Seventy and afraid he is becoming senile and incapable of writing Rudolf's biography, Andrew recollects his uncle's and his ever-quieter, intertwined lives. Bailey writes economically, plangently, and with deep cultural penetration, memorably incorporating historic musical figures into Rudolf's story and leaving readers to interpret just what the novel might be saying about anti-Semitism. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Fourth Estate; First Edition edition (September 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841157589
• ISBN-13: 978-1841157580
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,848,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A subtle story of exile from fascist Romania, September 5, 2010

By 

Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Uncle Rudolf: A Novel (Hardcover)

Andrew Peterson was born Andrei Petrescu in Romania, and he tells his story at the age of 70. His maternal grandfather was Jewish, and that is enough to imperil the family in 1937 Romania when Codreanu, the founder of the antisemitic Iron Guard, was on the ascendant and violence was already on the rampage. Andrei's father decided to send his seven year old son to England to be looked after by his paternal uncle Rudolf Peterson (born Rudi Petrescu), who had made a name for himself there and in other European capitals as a singer in operettas. Rudolf had seen some time ago that how Romania was becoming increasingly fascist, had become a voluntary exile in London, and had urged his brother and sister-in-law - in vain - to leave "the beastly country" of their birth. (The miasma of antisemitism in Romania had not even disappeared when Andrew revisited his ancestral home after 1989.)

Andrew never saw his parents again, and though he was very comfortable with his beloved Uncle Rudolf in the day-time, his dreams at night were haunted by his absent parents. Rudolf loved his nephew dearly, worked hard to turn him into an Englishman, and tried to protect him from suffering - so it is not until Andrew is eighteen that he learnt of the fate of his parents.

Much of the book, as its title suggests, is a rich portrait of the uncle who was the key figure in Andrew's life: of his ambitions and disappointments, of his relationships with a number of women, of his generosity, of his charismatic, amusing and carefree exterior covering up a deeper melancholia, grief, anger and self-contempt. Back in the 1920s he had ignored the urging of his teachers (the historical figures of Jean de Reszke and Georges Enescu) to aim higher than operettas: he had the talent to become a famous singer in grand opera. In time - too late to change course - he had himself come to despise operettas, whose frivolity and easy sentimentalism had been so enjoyed in Vienna, Bucharest and Budapest "by those who brought about Europe's destruction".

The novel moves backwards and forwards in time. What happened to Andrew's parents is touched on several times; and the full story, when it comes near the end of the novel, is intensely moving.

A subtle story interweaving the personal, the cultural and the political.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing., December 21, 2004

By 

algo41 "algo41" (philadelphia, pa United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Uncle Rudolf: A Novel (Hardcover)

After reading Bailey's "Kitty and Virgil" and "Gabriel's Lament", I found this novel a total disappointment. I suppose it was intended to be charming and sad. To me, it was a slight book (in impact as well as length) which relies on interesting plot devices to make the story readable.