4.0
The Life of an Unknown Man
ByPublisher Description
A deeply moving meditation on memory, history, love, and art by the author of Dreams of My Russian Summers
In The Life of an Unknown Man, Andreï Makine explores what truly matters in life through the prism of Russia's past and present.
Shutov, a disenchanted writer, revisits St. Petersburg after twenty years of exile in Paris, hoping to recapture his youth. Instead, he meets Volsky, an old man who tells him his extraordinary story: of surviving the siege of Leningrad, the march on Berlin, and Stalin's purges, and of a transcendent love affair. Volsky's life is an inspiration to Shutov -- because for all that he suffered, he knew great happiness. This depth of feeling stands in sharp contrast to the empty lives Shutov encounters in the new Russia, and to his own life, that of just another unknown man . . .
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Life of an Unknown Man Reviews
4.0
“An exceptional book with exceptional characters. Andrei Makine never disappoints.”
““In war the most testing moments are those of peace, for a dead man lying in the grass makes the living see the world as it would be, but for their folly.”
4.5 stars. (because of the beginning but I still have tears in my eyes and my heart hurts so I'm rounding up)
It’s always the five-star reads that are the hardest to write reviews for. It’s easy to point to what you don’t like in a book but how do you write about the things you like, the things you love? Especially when I had so much I didn’t initially like about this book!
The Life of an Unknown Man really and truly crept up on me. You know the feeling when you finish a book and think now what? You think how do you go back to everyday life as if nothing happened? This book does that. It's so much in such few pages. The writing is deceptively simple, the start painfully slow (I actually DNFed this, then pretended I didn't, then nearly DNFed it a few more times but I am so glad I didn't), yet once it hits part III (a little less than halfway through the book), it's unputdownable. I didn't even realize how quickly I flew through the book after that mark. It took me about twenty days to get through a little less than half of the book and then a single day to finish the rest. I didn’t sleep. I remember the sun creeping into my room as I finished the last few pages. This isn’t a book that’s gripping with action or a plot that you just need to keep reading to find out, it’s … quieter. Softer. But no less enthralling.
“During those May days the war ended for them. One year after the end of the war.”
Andrei Makine (and the translator, because at no point did this book feel like a translation) is a master of words. I’m haunted by the quiet depictions of war and the lives touched by it in this book. The people who survived it, each scarred differently. I can't stop thinking about the strength of people, the beauty in small and unassuming places. I'm at a loss for proper words to truly describe what this story did to me. Wow. Just. Wow. War isn’t easy to write about but I think the aftermath is even harder to properly show. It’s harder to show the different kinds of fighters, the ones who may not have been on the front lines, but they fought, they kept others alive, they gave others hope.
“Everyone strove for the performances to go on as before. But, of course, everything was very different. They acted by candlelight in an auditorium where it was minus twenty degrees. Often the show was interrupted by an air raid siren. The audience would go down into the basement, those who no longer had the strength to do so remaining huddled in their seats, staring at the stage emptied by the sound of bombing… Applause was no longer heard. Too weak, their hands frozen in mittens, people would bow to thank the actors. This silent gratitude was more touching than any number of ovations.”
This book is unflinching in its portrayal of the hardships. I felt the biting Russian cold even burrowed beneath a ton of blankets, I heard the hunger and pure exhaustion (the kind that’s embedded deep in your bones) in the silent auditoriums, I even felt the grief and fear, the desperation in every page. But I also saw the glimpses of hope, the little miracles, the bigger miracles in those little miracles, the power of love and the goodness of people. Writing one is easy, but having both in the same book, same chapter, same breath? I don’t know how he did it but he did and I’m left a little breathless.
“It is a song that gives back a forgotten, primal meaning to all that he can see: the earth, laden with dead, and yet so light, so full of springtime life, the ruins of an old izba, the imagined radiance of those who lived there and loved one another beneath its roof… And this sky, beginning to turn pale, which Shutov will never look at again the way he did before.”
All of this to say please please push through that first bit because it is so so worth it. I loved it so much that despite hating the first half I still gave this book five stars (and I'm stingy with my five stars). I’m so glad I came across this gem and can’t wait until I pick up Makine’s other works (I’m not kidding, I’ve already purchased his Dreams of my Russian Summers). What a way to start the reading year.
“He has never seen so much of the sky in a single glance before.””
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