DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK

Name: DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK
Author: Vladimir Sorokin
ISBN: 978-0-374-13475-4

by Vladimir Sorokin & translated by Jamey Gambrell ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2011

Acidly funny send-up of Russia’s current state of affairs that challenges the status quo with embellished wit and outlandish...

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In the near future, a member of a government-sponsored goon squad bears witness to the skewed and skewered state of Mother Russia.

Perhaps no other postmodern writer demonstrates the angst around the reemergence of Russia’s slide back toward authoritarianism than the celebrated (and often reviled) satirist Sorokin (Ice, 2007, etc). His latest assault, not only on Putin’s government but literary senses, is a caustic, slash-and-burn portrait of a man joyfully engaged in the business of state-initiated terrorism. Our narrator is Andrei Danilovich Komiaga, a gleefully enthusiastic member of the Oprichniki. Originally formed by Ivan the Terrible to torture and murder enemies of the Tsar, the Oprichniks are resurrected in 2028 for much the same reason. Andrei is close to Tsar Nikolai Platonovich, who rules with an equally iron fist. The new Tsar laid the foundation of the Western Wall 16 years earlier, fencing the country off from all foreign influence, as its citizens burned their passports in Red Square. There are wildly hallucinogenic elements to Sorokin’s odd future—genetically modified fish are used as recreational drugs, while the tightly controlled news is delivered straight to the brain. But it all exists to add pitch to the author’s frenzied, dystopian satire. His hero is a piece of work—patriotic to a fault and enraptured by his duty. “This work is—passionate, and absolutely necessary,” Andrei tells us. “It gives us more strength to overcome the enemies of the Russian state. Even this succulent work requires a certain seriousness. You have to start and finish by seniority. So this time, I’m first.” This chillingly lucid monologue is delivered as the fervent Oprichnik prepares to rape the widow of an already murdered dissident. It’s disturbing stuff, but as Sorokin’s razor-sharp caricature unfolds, bouncing from cocktail parties to assassinations to team-building orgies, the novelist’s keen argument becomes hard to ignore.

Acidly funny send-up of Russia’s current state of affairs that challenges the status quo with embellished wit and outlandish violence.

Pub Date: March 8, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-374-13475-4

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BLIZZARD
by Vladimir Sorokin ; translated by Jamey Gambrell

- BOOK REVIEW
ICE
by Vladimir Sorokin & translated by Jamey Gambrell

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.

The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.