book review - The President's Last Love

If there is one thing you remember about this book it is the idea of love and the heart after all it echoes right through from the start to the finish. Andrey Kurkov is a satirical writer that weaves you through Eastern European politics with the often heartless corruption rubbing shoulders with the other human emotions of love and happiness.

In this story you follow the president of the Ukraine and understand through various stages of his life flashing backwards and forwards over the last 40 years that he is essentially a straightforward bloke looking for love and something to love.

The four main story lines running alongside each other obviously give the chance to jump around and have various twists and plots going on but after a while you do wish it would settle down and just concentrate on the 2015 storyline of Bunin in the future.

But it doesn’t take long to get to grips with things. The story starts with the president having gone through a heart transplant and there is a metaphor for lost loves there as he relates his story and his great love that left him after his twin children died. He has known loss before with his first wife leaving him after his child was stillborn.

He has also known what it is like to be close to tragedy with his brother an inmate a mental institution after effectively opting out of life. Ironically it is his brother who finds happiness in marriage and fatherhood only to throw his life away when threatened with his existence in a Swiss clinic being taken away from him.

Back in the political world it seems that the Ukraine exists in the shadow of a mighty Russia and it is an odd relationship between them that allows the president just enough power to believe he is independent of his neighbour. The fight between the president and the oligarchs carries on as the central character Bunin wonders where the ottoman from his presidential office has gone after being stolen and why he is being challenged by forces both inside and out of the party.

Ultimately Bunin is just a vehicle to paint a picture of the past and the future and you have to come to the conclusion that not necessarily the right people get to the top and those that do are far from happy when they reach the summit.

In a final scene Bunin has just won another few years in power and wanders over to some old men living in a basement room opposite the Presidential offices. They fail to recognise him and moan about their way of life being threatened. Perhaps it is that simplicity that is something that is not only envied by those in positions that prevent them from feeling, making friendships and loving but also something we should all consider before becoming consumed by ambition.

The President's Last Love - post IV

After having completed the book I am still not sure what I feel about it. Love seems to be something that the main character President Bunin is constantly searching for and what un folds in the 40 years the story spans is that he has often loved no one or worst given everything to the state.

As the end draws near you expect some sort of dramatic climax and there are a few twists that you didn’t see coming but ultimately you are left with a sense of the air going out of a tyre rather than anything else.

Part of the reason for that is the lack of a conclusion. The sort of life where he is always at the brink of death or disappointment is set to continue as he signs up for a few more years as president.

This is a bitter look at life at the top of a former part of the Soviet Union and although the money and the aides are all well and good the sacrifices you make to stay there and the hollowness in your life that means you live without a heart are plain to see.

Mind you it feels great to actually finish a book for the first time in a couple of weeks. A review will follow soon…

The President's Last Love - Post III

Despite the various stories running at various stages of the President’s life the picture starts to become clearer that despite the mass of corruption around him Bunin is a relatively trustworthy sort.

He clearly has loved in the past and it is getting close to the moment when you discover if his second wife did give birth to twins. There is a nagging doubt that she doesn’t and that ends tragically. But he has also been a loyal friend to those he has met during his youth.

Meanwhile as president he is plagued by dreams that seem to have a meaning connected with the possibility of a coup. A Hammer Jeep features in some of his dreams along with his arch rival an oligarch responsible for power and energy.

The dreams are vivid and cause him concern but for now they are just indications of things to come.

More tomorrow….

The President's Last Love - post II

Not sure the constant jumping backwards and forwards over 40 years is a great style. There are several key datelines running with 1985, 2004 and 21015 all being jumped between.

The question of how a drifter with no real views on politics or any personal ambition became president is lurking somewhere in the story and there are also some failed love affairs and possibly a final successful one as well somewhere to be discovered?

It is enjoyable and there are some moments that make you smile but so far Bunin is not yet a character you totally root for because you can only partially see him. The pieces of the historical jigsaw are being pout down at a fairly quick rate but there is a fair way to go yet.

More tomorrow…

book review: Penguin Lost

Sometimes it might seem like a mistake to put down one book and then immediately turn to the sequel. In some cases it has taken the author several years to formulate their thoughts so arguably it might be a wise idea to give your own thoughts some time to settle. But let’s face it Andrey Kurkov’s Penguin series is not like getting to the end of the first half of War & Peace and there are after all nagging questions that remain from the sudden end to Death and the Penguin.

In the ending to that book Viktor has jumped on a place intended to take his penguin pet Misha back to the Antarctic. He has flown away from the mafia and the prospect of being killed to lie-low.

When he gets to the ill-funded and remote Ukrainian scientific station there is a dying banker also on the run who kindly gives him a note to take back to Moscow as well as a credit card with funds.

Once back in the Ukraine the hunt starts to find Misha. That takes him into contact with some former characters plus into the world of politics. His talents with a pen come in handy again as a local politician decides to run for serious office. Viktor manages to walk through the cynical world of a local election helped by his protector who introduces him to the argument of the snail’s house, the place of protection.

Viktor does get in touch with his old fellow flat mates the young girl Sonya and Nina and it is the little girl that saves his life when he finally manages to track his penguin down to Chechnya.

In a rather surreal few chapters Viktor finds himself burning bodies in a gas pipe outlet working for a criminal politician who has hidden out in a war zone. The level of cynicism is widespread and it doesn’t seem to be a war with conventional sides but a case of victims trying to cope with a system of corruption and oppression through armed struggle rather than anything conventional because the lines of good and evil are blurred.

With Misha on his way back Viktor starts to plan for the end game that is this time an escape for both him and his penguin. A complicated arrangement leads him into Dubrovnik as part of the Ukrainian arm wrestling team and once there he uses the last of the money from the Moscow bankers account to pay for his passage on a boat that is meant to be heading to the Antarctic.

Instead it is going to South America captained by a couple of war criminals but Viktor is saved again, this time by marriage and finally the moment comes to say goodbye to Misha.

There is the same sense that Viktor can almost daydream his way through war zones, corrupt politicians and mafia bosses partly through ignorance and partly through holding good intentions.

Ultimately there is satire here about the political system and there are probably references to Eastern European politics that escape a British reader but it is the character of Misha the penguin that will be the takeaway from both of the books concerning him. Without speech, limited facial expressions and being almost permanently out of his environment the penguin manages to express both the disbelief and the indifference to what is going on in his adopted country that Viktor seems to be unable to formulate into either words or speech despite his ability as a writer.

The President's Last Love - post I

It takes a couple of chapters – which are often just single pages – to get into the flow with this book. The story moves backwards and forwards from the past to the future, with the current day set in 2015. The subject of the story is Bunin the Ukrainian president who is clinging onto life after a heart by-pass and clinging onto power trying to survive the scheming politicians and business men that surround him.

Back in his past it is revealed he seemed to be totally normal with a brother in care, a wife who divorced him after a still birth and little signs of political ambition.

Of course how he got where he is is unravelling slowly but it becomes clear early on as he recovers that the wife of the deceased who gave permission for her husband's heart to be used has set conditions that she lives within close proximity to the heart. It is that sort of oddity that you start to expect from Kurkov and to be honest start to enjoy because no doubt she will have some serious influence on the plot as it develops.

more tomorrow...

book review: Death and the Penguin

When you open the pages of an Andrey Kurkov novel you are stepping into a world that is not quite the same as our own. This is a world where corruption, death and power are all permanent but fleeting for most of those who grasp after them. It is also a place where a journalist living alone with his penguin can become the catalyst for numerous deaths and odd meetings.

At the heart of the tale there sits in a cold flat Viktor who dreams of becoming a novelist. His book never gets written so he decides to try his hand at writing short stories. That leads to the newspaper getting in touch offering him the chance to write obituaries of high profile dignitaries who are still alive. After a while those he writes about start dying and the snowball that involves the state, mafia and aspiring political schemers starts rolling.

The satire about a corrupt political system where death is cheap and those trying to the top do so for a brief moment before being killed is clear. But there is also something here about the impact that sort of society has on love and friendship.

Along with his penguin Misha Viktor ends up living with a mafia bosses daughter and a young woman he pays to be her nanny. Both of those relationships are financial ones and as a result Viktor comes and goes without making commitments to either of them.

Misha becomes the star of the show connecting Viktor to the underworld as the penguin becomes de rigueur at funerals of the most important slain gangsters and also brings his master into contact with a retired zoologist.

Viktor seems to get through life in a mixture of ignorance and luck always missing the bullets and always managing to get his hands on some dollars whenever he needs them.

But it is Misha that is a wonderful creation. The penguin shuffles round and in his own way communicates his despair and cynical distrust of most of the people around him. In the end he becomes involved as a solo player with the mafia funerals and they pay for him to have a heart transplant.

The irony is that in planning to release Misha back into the wild in the Antarctic it is a dangerously pursued Viktor that ends up taking the flight and escaping from those that would do him harm.

Littered with memorable scenes and larger than life characters and a gentle insight into the madness of a society run by guns and dollars this is an enjoyable book that also gets away with having a penguin as a main character.

Penguin Lost - post IV

Finally Misha returns and the complex ending is set up with Viktor managing to leave everyone happy as he sets off to release the penguin back into the wild and escape from his own past. The scene where he throws his typewriter out of the window to smash on the concrete below is used to break with the past and the evil he has done.

He manages to become a saviour and friend to the mafia boss who used Misha as an extra at funerals and he steps back to allow the love to blossom between his new lodger and Nina. Sonya meanwhile is a constant voice of conscience in the hunt for Misha and is the one who pushes Viktor to keep his promise about releasing him back into the wild.

At the end of this book you realise some powerful things have been said about corruption, the cheapness of life and the hollowness of success but it has been done in such a downbeat and quirky way that you never felt lectured too and it leaves you with a desire to read more of this author’s work.

A review will follow soon...

Penguin Lost - post III

There is a scene where having given a group of orphans presents to celebrate new year Viktor then suggests taking them all to McDonalds. The woman in charge of the group is so overcome with happiness she cannot speak.

It vividly shows the contrast in between the rich and the poor in a country that is full of violence and corruption. In between the violence Viktor clings onto the quest for his penguin and that seems to set him apart from those that are motivated more by greed or power.

Having returned from Chechnya Viktor is without his penguin but back home to a world of political fixing and the odd home life of Sonya and Nina. He doesn’t seem to love either of them a great deal but does feel guilt towards Misha the penguin he last saw in a dog kennel eating gruel in Chechnya.

More tomorrow…

Penguin Lost - post II

In some ways the main character of this story – Viktor – reminds you of James Bond in the sense that he swims with some pretty nasty sharks but continues to come out the other side with luck on his side.

The satire comes thick and fast as Viktor plays his role in the run-up to the election. In the end a bigger player comes in and puts pressure on Viktor’s protector to pull out of the race much in the same way it seems to happen every day in Russian politics.

There is a real sense that everyone is stepping on each other’s faces and climbing on their backs to get power but once they have it then it is ripped from their grasp as accidents and odd scandals overcome them.

Back to the story Viktor has tracked his penguin down to Chechnya and he ends up going after him into the war zone. Even here there is dark comedy as a gas pipeline is siphoned off to be used as an illegal but busy crematorium.

More tomorrow…

Penguin Lost - post I

Sometimes sequels start and feel like a completely different book with time being taken before the characters of the past are reintroduced. Withy this book it feels as if just a minute or two have passed since the moment Viktor stepped on a plane and flew to the Antarctic to escape the mafia.

Almost as quickly he is back in Kiev and searching for a trace of his penguin Misha who he abandoned. He doesn’t find him but meets another mafia boss willing to pay and protect him for his services, this time as an election adviser, and Viktor starts to look for Misha.

The trial on the penguin leads to Moscow but in the meantime his old flat has been taken over by the impostor who wrote his obituary and any relationship he might have had with Nina seems to have gone completely.

More Monday…

Death and the Penguin - post III

Thankfully there is a sequel to this book because this ends in a hurry with too many questions left unanswered. With Misha the penguin out of the picture having surgery to save his heart in the last chunk of the book the focus goes back onto Viktor.

You have to say that he is not the most loveable character. He lives with Nina and Sonya yet doesn’t seem that attached to either. When faced with the reality of what he has been doing – helping write death orders – he also seems to be only mildly disturbed.

What does trigger a reaction, a selfish one of self-preservation, is when he faces losing his own life.

Viktor runs away and as a result the book sort of hangs there. It is an ending that leaves an awful lot of the blanks to be filled in by the reader. In some respects too many because by the time you have thought about them you have moved onto another book. Maybe the best idea is to get straight into Penguin Lost and treat this as one half of a two-part story.

A review will follow soon…

Death and the Penguin - post II

This book works on several different levels. In one sense the reader is ahead of Viktor as it becomes clear that he has been writing not just obituaries but in effect death orders that have been processed through his newspaper offices based on selected criteria he is not party to.

But in other ways it is far from clear where this is going. Writing the obituaries has changed Viktor’s life permanently and he has not just collected the mafia bosses’s daughter as a companion but now gains a nanny for her who becomes his lover. The link between all them is the reaction they all have to Misha the penguin.

Misha is growing as a character and makes you realise the potential that a good writer can get out of a character that not only does not speak but has very little facial expression. If anyone asked me if this book was worth reading the answer would have to be that it is just for the Misha character alone.

More tomorrow…

Death and the Penguin - post I

The expectation before you start this book is of the penguin being a comic character but within a few paragraphs there is a penguin that lives in a flat with the main character Viktor because he could no longer be cared for in the zoo.

Although Misha the penguin can’t speak he both expresses some of the moods of the hero, the environment and the world as he shuffles from room to room sighing. He also acts as a bridge between the isolated hero of the story and others acting as an excuse to attract friendship and fellow penguin enthusiasts.

The world of Viktor is largely a failed one with his girlfriend abandoning him, his attempt to become a novelist in tatters and his career not particularly going anywhere. He writes a short story, all he is capable of and that leads to a job writing obituaries for the as yet undead.

Problem is that after undertaking some work for the mafia he mentions none of his work has been published so one of his favourite subjects is helped out of a window. The penguin watches this with an air of indifference as a war breaks out between rival mafia gangs sparked by Viktor’s obits.

More tomorrow…