book of books - The House on the Embankment

There are two approaches to trying to illustrate how oppressive a political system is. The first is to go head on and try and show how those at every level are impacted and that is where Vasily Grossman was sort of coming from with Life and Fate. Then there is an alternative approach, which is more on display here with Yuri Trifonov. He focuses on a small group of school friends but in particular Glebov and shows how in order to survive he has to become a man of almost no opinions or loyalties. Those he cares for he lets down and those he should love he betrays with indifference.

Plot summary
Glebov pops into a furniture shop to buy a dining table and when there meets an old school friends Lev who is a shop assistant and clearly down on his luck. The encounter is topped with a phone call that night after Lev blanked him in the shop with Lev explaining that he hated him and that’s why he did not want to talk to him. Then the story goes back to school and Glebov is vying for attention with Lev who seems to have a well-connected father and money. An uneasy friendship exists for years but starts to turn sour after it is Glebov who manages to win the heart of Sonya, the professor’s daughter, and not Lev who really wants her. Without realising the hatred Lev has for him or the way the academic authorities plan to use him to discredit the professor Glebov manages to get to the crossroads in life and then delay having to make a decision. Those around him that do seem to make wrong ones, with Lev falling from grace and Sonya going mad before dying. But the question you are asked at the end of the book is whether or not Glebov regrets what happened in the house on the embankment where Sonya lived.

Is it well written?
It is a struggle to get into because there are no chapter breaks, just a couple of paragraph returns and you have to work hard not just to work out what period of Glebov’s life is being discussed but also when the narration switches voices to understand another point of view. It manages to convey the sense of how the fear of standing up for anything terrorised people in the Soviet Union. It also gets across brilliantly the differences that influence can bring with Lev having access to clothes and films that his school friends could only dream of. Finally it shows that no matter what your record, in the professor’s case an exemplary one with the revolution, you are always vulnerable to attack.

Should it be read?
It is not going to be on anyone’s summer reading lists but it should be read by anyone who is interested in Soviet literature and in particular seeing what the 20th century writers were doing updating the story from the 19th century greats like Dostoyevsky. It also deserves to be read because the story here might be set against a regime that is trigger-happy about destroying people’s lives but putting that to one side there is a morale here about standing up for what you believe in. Do you let down a friend, a love and your own ideals just for immediate self-preservation? Quite a question to be asked from a novel.

Summary
Glebov gets through life unscathed while those around him die and crumble but he ends up without much more than regrets of the life in the house on the embankment he left behind

Lunchtime read concluded

The book comes to a very Russian ending with those who are dead almost being in a better position than those who are left behind to suffer on. The voices in the narrative switch back and forth between Lev and Glebov and in the end the narrator is unnamed because life has changed for everyone and although you know it is Glebov it isn’t the same Glebov from the previous 150 pages.

Highlights from pages 134 – 153
After the fateful meeting the narrative is picked up by Lev who is helping defend Moscow against the German bombs and ends up in Sonya’s flat where Glebov is saying his farewells. Lev no longer cares for anyone having gone through the baptism of fire that is the war and views the people in the house on the embankment as relics of his childhood. Glebov seems to fudge reality and cannot remember if he did or did not denounce Sonya’s father but the mother hates him and in the end Sonya ends up going into an asylum and going mad and dying. Glebov finally catches up with Sonya’s father and together they go to visit the grave and Lev is the man on the gate who lets them in and then as they all head back to Moscow city centre he wistfully looks up at the house on the embankment and wonders if he can ever return from his shattered adult life to the situation he was in when he was a child.

This is a book as much about the choices people are faced with as children and young adults and how they can shape their future and acts as a powerful metaphor for the Russian system

A review will follow in the next couple of days…

Lunchtime read: The House on the Embankment

I’m determined to finish this book today because it feels as if it has been hanging around for a long time. That’s not fair but it certainly has not been the flowing read that I had hoped. Partly that is because it is asking you as a reader some pretty heavy questions about whether or not you would make the brave turn at the crossroads or save your skin and get through by letting down friends and family.

This is part one of the final post and the rest should come later…

Highlights between pages 114 – 134
Glebov doesn’t know what to do about making his speech against his prospective father-in-law at the Academic Institute meeting so he asks Lev’s advice who tells him to dump Sonya (he wants her after all) and then as he waits and the pressure mounts his grandmother does him a favour and dies making it impossible for Glebov to go anywhere on that Thursday leaving you wondering what happened because he himself had ruled that option of not attending out because it would do nobody any good

Final chunk later…

Lunchtime read: The House on the Embankment

The inevitable pressure of the Soviet system starts to impact on Glebov with the educational authorities turning the screws on his girlfriend’s father. The assumption is that he will marry Sonya but already you guess that the great survivor will help destroy her father and then leave Sonya. Because of the other critical voice attacking Glebov, which the more you think about it might be from Lev, the more you start to dislike him.

Highlights between pages 88 – 114
Glebov is asked by a couple of the academic staff to choose another professor so his future ‘father-in-law’ does not end up supervising his post graduate studies. They then ask him to get evidence that will help build a case that the professor is straying from the Marxist path and his idols include dangerous elements. Glebov tells Sonya who in turn tells her father who does not show alarm at the prospect of a hate campaign against him and instead seems to know all about it. Meanwhile Glebov is agonising over whether or not he really loves Sonya.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The House on the Embankment

Love is in the air as Glebov finally declares his feelings for Sonya but will it last? Already there have been narrative clues indicating that it will not. Then Trifonov uses another voice, as yet unidentified, to describe Glebov from the outside and it is a damming appraisal describing him as a “nothing” person who is neither one thing or another and going through life as a successful nonentity.

Highlights from pages 64 – 88
Left alone in her parent’s dacha Sonya and Glebov finally falls into each other’s arms and get down to it. They keep their secret for a while but finally the mother finds out but is in denial about the affair. Then the narrative voice changes and it is an admirer of Sonya describing Glebov who he clearly struggles to like and reveals he is a nonentity and tries to please everyone.

You sense there is some real tension with two rivals for Sonya’s affections with Glebov possibly heading for some problems with his rival.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The House on the Embankment

I’m close to knocking this lunchtime read thing on the head because it is becoming very difficult to get through an decent amount of pages in my lunch break. If you are not able to get into a rhythm and close out the external noise then it becomes nigh impossible to read seriously.

Along with finding the time I would add the right mood as one of the biggest challenges for those wanting to read. You can come home on a train with somebody deciding that they want to play music on their mobile phone and amid the rising anger and the noise you can end up reading just a couple of pages. There isn’t the noise in the office, mind you everyone is watching YouTube which is enough of a distraction, but it is still very difficult to concentrate.

Highlights between pages 50 – 64
Glebov starts to spend more time at the professors house on the embankment and starts to try to define his relationship with his daughter Sonya. Friends suggest that he is having a relationship with her and that starts him thinking about how they stand but he doesn’t want the friendship to develop into anything different even though he is round the house almost everyday and very close to the father.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The House on the Embankment

It is interesting reading a Russian book about post Stalin life alongside Life and Fate because it is impossible to get away from the same sense of paranoia and fear that the Soviet system produced.

This book delves back into the same period of the war and pre war because it is about a man looking back over his childhood and it is a good companion piece to the Grossman. The only slight downside is that it is very slow going.

Highlights from pages 32 – 50

Glebov continues to delve through the memories of his childhood friend Lev and remembers how powerful he was seen to the degree that his parents asked his father to try and get information for an uncle in the camps. Then the history fast forwards a few years and the war has taken the lives of a fair few of Glebov’s friends including his mother and left him poor and hungry. So it is with amazement he bumps into Lev looking well wearing an expensive leather jacket and still living in luxury. The same feelings of inadequacy he had as a child come back and despite the obvious lies he is hanging off Lev’s every word.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The House on the Embankment

Things at work are always manic as we put the magazine to bed so there has been little chance to do any reading over the lunch break. Even if I had tried there might well have been a lynching had I sat there for too long with my nose in a book.

Although this book has barely started there are comparisons that can be made to Cat & Mouse by Gunter Grass that also covers the topic of one boy remembering the superiority of a friend at school.

Highlights from pages 14 - 32
Glebov remembers more about his friend Lev and how he was able to entice the friendship of almost anyone he wished and even undermined the ont thing that Glebov had to offer, which was exploiting his mother's job at the cinema to get his friends in for free. Lev it turns out has the film on his own reel and can watch it at home. Still on a childhood theme Glebov remembers a family of thugs that lived in his building and made life hell for various people until one day they killed their dog and the family seemed to fall apart and dissapear into the wind

More tomorrow...

Lunchtime read: The House on the Embankment

Sticking with Russian authors and by default staying with the theme of living with an oppressive system this book is by someone, Yuri Trifonov, I have never heard of before. The beauty of second-hand charity shops is that you end up getting a choice of books that you have never seen before and don’t have to pay a huge amount for. As a result though you start off with just the dust jacket blurb which indicates that this was a writer who managed to win respect of Soviet writers because of the way he managed to make comments about the system by focusing in on the day-to-day lives of his characters.

Highlights from the first 14 pages

You start by being introduced to Glebov who is heading out to a furniture store to buy a table when he meets an old acquaintance Shulepnikov who refused to acknowledge him when greeted. Later that night he phones up Glebov and tells him that he did recognise him but didn’t want to talk to him because he never liked him. That starts some memories going where Glebov remembers ho popular, confident and influential Shulepnikov was when they were at school but there are numerous indications that things went wrong for the student.

More tomorrow…