Alright, so I have a confession to make. I’m exactly 30 pages into Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Medea and Her Children, and I absolutely cannot go on. I went in with a lot of hope and quite the open mind (considering this is the very first book that I’m reading for this blog!), but alas, to no avail. Although I knew going in that the novel followed a large Russian family in the Crimea-(definitely took away a geography lesson there- didn’t know that there is some major Greek influence in this coastal region of Russia)-I didn’t expect it to read like a historical fiction novel gone terribly wrong in the third person and trying to follow an entire family tree. I’m sorry, but the third person does not allow for any emotion whatsoever, and the premise of the story is that “the languor of love will permeate the Crimean air, hearts will be broken, and old memories will float to consciousness….” Yeah. Not happening for this reader. Although there is the occasional line of dry humor from Ulitskaya- “Well, how would he be? Half the time he’s drunk and the rest he’s ill. He really knows how to live”- overall the tone of the novel is just so flat-lined. Now, I’ve done Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment, etc. and enjoyed them both, but there at least Tolstoy and Dostoevsky really worked on character development (sorry, I’m a huge fan) amidst penetrating some rather daunting themes and aspects of the human condition.
However, I don’t want to scare you away from Ms. Ulitskaya’s work. She is a critically acclaimed novelist and has won numerous awards, and her work has been published worldwide. This was only her second novel to be published in the U.S. If you’re still tempted to read her, try The Funeral Party or Sincerely Yours, Shurik.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment