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Title: Russka: The Novel of Russia by Edward Rutherfurd ISBN: 0804109729 Publisher: Ivy Books Pub. Date: December, 1992 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.27
Rating: 5
Summary: I recommend it to anyone! Best book I ever read.
Comment: I first picked up this book at the library when I was doing research on russian history. After looking at the number of pages, I quickly put it down. It was only after I finished my project that I decided that I would buy the book because I found russian history so fascinating. I was not dissapointed. Mr. Rutherfurd goes into such detail that you grow to love the characters, you grow to understand russian culture so much more. So many people are still clinging to the steriotypes of Communist Russia: if they could read this book, I am sure that they would understand our friends in the east. What I enjoyed the most about the book was the fact that it was also educational. I even learned things that I did not discover in my studies. But that doesn't mean that if you know nothing about Russia that you won't understand the book, far from that. Rutherfurd takes the time to explain what is happening, so the reader is never lost. I'd recommend this book to anyone. If a 17 year old can read it and enjoy it, anyone can.
Rating: 4
Summary: Spassiva
Comment: Reading Rutherfurd brings instantly one other author to mind, the late James Michener. Like Michener (most of his books, at least), Rutherfurd chooses one specific place (London, for example) and, through a series of characters inhabiting that place, he tells the story of a nation, or of a city. In this case, the "place" is the biggest country in the world: Russia, and her neighbours.
Like "Sarum", which tells the hisstory of England, "Russka" is the hisstory of Russia told from the point of view of three families, each occupying a different position in russian society. From the II century, through the tsarist empire and finally the October Revolution, Rutherfurd, in more than 900 pages, was able to provide his readers with the right blend between a well-created fiction with the most important parts of russian history. And yet, I thought this book was shorter than it could be.
Rutherfurd's style sometimes leave the reader tired. Some of his sentences are a little too prosaic for the kind of fiction he's intended to write. He abuses the right to use the word "For" (as in "For Nicolai was the greatest poet in Ukraine") to begin a phrase. One other problem I found was concerning the division of the book. The part I expected the most was the Revolution. I was satisfied when I read it. It's well written, interesting and holds the attention of the reader. In fact, the Revolution is the climax of russian history (at least in my opinion, I'm not russian and I really don't know that much about russian history), and the author does a good job in building the tension and creating a very "russian" atmosphere in the previous chapters before the revolution. But the problem is that, after 1917, the book ends. Nothing about the second World War, nothing about Breschnev, the Perestroika and the fall of the Berlin wall. So, I was left with the sense that there was somethig missing. Rutherfurd could have written at least 300 more pages and I wouldn't think this would a book too big, given its subject.
But I think that I was rewarded after closing the final page on "Russka". I wanted a book of fiction that would show me the history of Russia. Rutherfurd's research and his choice of characters, although conservative, were very good. "Russka" is entertaining and gripping, and I was hooked all through its 900 pages.
Grade 8.3/10
Rating: 3
Summary: Fine Read, But Pale Imitation of Russian Originals
Comment: I was very, very sceptical of Russka from the moment it was first published. It would be impossible, I thought, to novelize over a thousand years of incredibly rich history. The novel would have to be a resounding disappointment. And so, despite my deep love of Russian history, I refused to buy Russka until I saw it for a quarter at a used book sale.
I'm pleased to say my expectations were wrong. Rutherfurd has, remarkably, created a novel that covers a broad range of history without losing much of the excitement that pervades each era. Russka is a series of vignettes, each one skipping as much as nine hundred years or as little as twenty years and, with the exception of the very first story, all entertain and occasionally move. All the while the background of history unfolds remarkably accurately, with only one minor exception that I noticed.
Russka has two serious shortcomings, however. First, Rutherfurd, perhaps believing he is the equal of Tolstoy (War and Peace) and Solzhenitsyn (August 1914), consistently interrupts the narrative for a history lesson. While such history lectures are, perhaps, necessary, coming as they do during the stories themselves. Tolstoy, at least, relegated his history discourses to separate chapters, giving the reader the option of reading them or not.
Second, too much of Russka, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, is recycled material from great Russian novels. There is a Pechorin-type fatalist from Lermontov's Hero of Our Times. There's an Oblomov, fat and lazy. There's a revolutionary from Dostoevsky's The Possessed and a father/son conflict that is almost a carbon copy of Turgenev's novel. There's even a woman throwing herself under a train ala Anna Karenina. In each and every case, the Russian original is leagues better than Rutherfurd's retelling. Readers looking to become immersed in Russia of the 19th and 20th centuries would be much, much better served reading Lermontov, Goncharov, Gogol, et al. than Rutherfurd.
And there's a third failing. The revolutions of 1917, which changed Russia (and the world) forever receive remarkably little attention, and the Communist era with NEP, Stalinism, the Great Patriotic War, the Thaw, stagnation, and perestroika receive practically none at all. For a novel that appears to be about the impact historical forces have on individuals, this lack is especially staggering. At no time in human history have so many people had their lives deeply affected for so long by a system of government, yet Rutherfurd chooses to mostly ignore it. Very disappointing.
With all of that being said, for those who want a flavor or Russia without going to the originals could do much worse than Russka. As entertainment, it works, and it was definitely worth the price I paid.
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