Russka: A Novel of Russia, by Edward Rutherfurd

Russka: A Novel of Russia
By Edward Rutherfurd

If it seems like a long time since a new book appeared on That's All She Read, it's true. It feels like it to me too. I assume that the moment you saw the name of the novel I just finished, you figured out why. Russka is one of Edward Rutherfurd's hugely long books covering a select group of families through the history of a place. This one starts in 180 AD and ends in 1990. I have read them all now, Sarum, London, The Forest, The Princes of Ireland and The Rebels of Ireland. I had to read this one too, so I took advantage of my role as chooser of books for a book discussion group to assign this one for our August meeting.

The novel follows families of divers backgrounds through many eras. It starts with the arrival of raiders from the Steppes in the second century. The Mongols follow, then the story follows into the eras of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, the log lead up to revolution, to the rise of the Soviet Union and to Stalinism, and finally a short visit to post-Soviet Russia and the return for a visit of a Russian-American. (Be sure when you read the book to pay attention to the child's reveries in the first couple of pages as they come back as an impression quite satisfyingly at the very end.) The eras follow movement from an old torn near Kiev in the Ukriane called Russka to a new one nearer Moscow in the north. This is such a complex book that I can't do much more than mention a few of the individual plots. A Cossack and his friend who is nicknamed The Ox go their separate ways when the latter's illusions of fate are shattered, only to come face to face many years later during a crackdown on religious schism. The illegitimate som of the wife of a noble is in love with his own sister, and a "dangerous man", seeing them kiss, vows revenge and gets it in the one scene that got a tear out of me. A Jewish girl marries a revolutionary and converts in order to be safe, then watches her life deteriorate as the day of rebolution approaches.

I have to admit my own lack in that all the names being Russian or Ukrainian made it hard for me to track who was who, but I suspect had I been reading the book with my eyes I could have overcome that. Ihope to find a digital copy of the family trees at the behinning of the book. It will probably organize my understanding of the different characters and their eras for me. I will try to do this before the discussion group meets. On the other hand, my having read the other books which all took place in countries whose histories are acquainted with, I can say this book was the one the I learned the most from. I knew little about the history of the countries that came to be lumped under "Russia" and then un-lumped periodically. Rutherfurd traditionally uses certain physical traits or mannerisms to connect characters in the same family through the ages. I had a little more trouble tracking these in Russka. The boble landowner family seemed to share a particular way of touching someone caressingly on the arm, one familyhad red hair, music was central to another family, and somehow the Cossacks were recognizable. I think. If you tracked it better, I would appreciate a heads up.

The one big problem with the novel which was nevertheless fascinating was that when Rutherfurd got to the decades of the development of revolutionary ideas, he gets into way too much explanation, in my opinion. I kept wanting the characters in that period to do more with their personal lives to "show, don't tell".

These books, to be be frank, depress the hell out of me. I love reading them, but I always come away mourning how each generation after another loses any knowledge of the past ones.. and reading these books you get to know the individuals and for me at least having each one utterly obliterated from memory is horrifying. To each of us as individuals our perception and life are all important. It's less that I can't stand the idea that I will personally be forgotten but that any one of us will. Of course that's why I wrote my own novel, so the characters will have the longevity I cannot. Only a historical novelist would suffer the angst of whether characters will be remembered, never mind the author.

One final complaint.. why did the Mongol's head that was buried in front of the door of the house have to have such a blah reappearance?

OK, the Tear Factor in this novel.. considering I had three really good cries in the Irish saga, I had one mild choke up with Sergei, and one "oh dear" each about Peter and Karpenko. And whatever happened with Vladimir Svorin?

I have also been reading Morgan Llywelyn's 1916 for the Let's Read Historical Novels group and if I can get my barious audio devices to stop squabbling over it, that will be my next review.