Customer Reviews

The Year Is '42: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Nella Bielski's new novel will be noted for its ingenious plotting, concision of style, and use of historical scenes. But just as a life isn't a only series of discrete events but also a not completely comprehended network of perceptions, notions and emotions, this novel adds up to much more than its wonderfully handled novelistic elements. In this story, the historical and political forces of Europe, mainly during World War II, play upon the characters, moving them about; the characters push back with what is in their nature. It is their natures that are inevitable, not their fates. The same holds true for the voice telling this story. It withholds from us the too easy gratifications of character analysis and categorization; it offers the more rich pleasures of the feeling of experience, with its limitations and exertions. I approached this novel mainly because John Berger co-translated it -- and if you're familiar with his remarkable essays and novels, you'll also enjoy sensing his hand at work here.

This compact immersion into the souls of three principal characters struggling in the most hellish time of a still living generation leaves you bewildered that its author is simply too young to have lived these moments. You feel the sweat under the covers of a feverish student while her grandparents debate who can enter her room, you see the look of a bartender that lingers too long on a pair of his customers, you worry at a school boy's simple remark. It is the intensity of this environment that makes every moment a mystery. It is the deftness of the narrative voice which modulates with every character it describes that makes your heart pound when a door closes, not in the quiet of your home, but only in the narration.

It is so remarkable a book, that I am going to dust off the French dictionary which hides somewhere in our home, and tackle the work in the language in which it was written.

Merci bien Madam. Grace a vous, nous vivons un grand moment!

Alan Grosbard

This novel is beautifully done. I immediately read it twice through. It's short and slightly elliptical. The first main character is a loyal German Army officer who fought in WW I and comes to hate and fear the Nazis. The second main character is a Ukranian pediatrician who was born in the old regime and lives through the 1917 revolution, its forward looking first fifteen years and then the repressions and horrors of the Stalin years. None of the above, however, really tells you what the novel is about because it's about the interior as well as the exterior life of the main characters.

As if written by a beautiful butterfly enticing the reader by sensing the tale through a veil of history, humanity and inference. Three lives until the end when the force of generations becomes clear and affecting.

This is beautifully written but this does not make up for the total absence of a story. Three characters in war and how their lives, interact. Reads like a series of notes rather than a completed work. If it is trying to convey the horror of war it fails. Deeply deeply disappointing - I feel I have wasted my time and been cheated.

This book strikes me as having been a first draft or proposal, but which somehow wound up as a finished product. I bought the book because I was taken in by a rather ambiguous blurb - allegedly by "John LeCarre" - on the dust jacket. I should have known better.

Despite the positive reputations of the book's two (why two?) translators, I found the translation from the French - or whatever language the book was written in - to be severely deficient. It detracted from the already thin value of the novel itself.

- Russian, apparently author Nella Bielski's native tongue, does not have the Latin letter "H", which is why, for example, in Russian the name Hitler would be given as Gitler. So, when we see in the book a German place called "Schansengof" it should be obvious that the "g" in that word was the Russian author's way of transliterating the German letter "h"; it should be "Schansenhof." What professional interpreter(s) would not know this? Have they not ever been to France's next door neighbor?

- The Russian term "vnuchka" in the book is translated as "little daughter". In fact, the word means granddaughter.

- At one point a girl refers to her grandfather, grandmother, and "Babushka." To a reader who doesn't know any Russian it makes it seem as if there are three people being referred to; actually Babushka is just the Russian word for grandmother. Is the average reader supposed to know this? How about the translators?

- Why do he translators use the French spelling of a Russian name. The name of the hospital is given in the book as the "Botkine", whereas in reality it's Botkin in both in Russian and in English.

With all due respect to the author, the book is just not edited or finished properly.

I try to read every WW2 era novel I can get my hands on, particulartly those from non-american viewpoints. This means I read action-thriller, non-fiction, plain fiction, etc. I am very pleased when a book includes much more than just battle scences and international intrigue. This novel however did not seem to be what it claimed in the dust jacket.

Bielski's writing style is a bit different than some may be used to, but that did not necessarily take away from a wonderful and exciting storyline -- for the first half of the book. After that, it seems like she forgets why she was originally writing the story and goes off talking about something completely unrelated. This would have made sense if the storylines had been brought together at some point, but they were not.

No mention of the characters or events from the first half of the book until the final 3 or 4 pages; and then it seems almost as an afterthought, as if trying to tie up loose ends. The end result left me with too many unanswered questions, and really no desire to see them answered by this writer.

If you like artsy books that lead to nowhere, then this is for you. This story could have easily been done in any other year other than the year '42, and the reader would walk away feeling the same exact way.

I had high expectations for this novel. In a way, this novel works from an implied starting point, where two protagonists intersect. The body of events are a long string of occurences, set in 3 sections, which trace the intricate multiplicities that inform the place and time for events. The event itself, 2 characters meeting, is uneventful and not significant. Could it be just another event setting the table for the future? The effect is to foreground the lineage that informs each moment in our lives. The flurry of events are barely noticable to the characters, as they are to our lives. I give it 3 stars as the author fails to offer any interpretation regarding the significance of the events.