Pravda: A Novel

Gabriel Glover lives in London and struggles to hold together a self help magazine he despises, basically writing most of the copy and doing the design work himself given his incompetent lazy staff. One night Gabriel receives a distressing phone call from his mother Masha who lives in St Petersburg. She presses upon him metaphysical advice and laments the demise of people's ability to inhabit themselves fully. Bothered by the worrisome sound of her voice and her bouts of coughing, he races to Russia only to find her dead in her apartment. Gabriel and his twin sister Isabella search throughout this novel to discover who their mother really was and, more pressingly, who they are themselves. Amidst their quest, their despised philandering father Nicholas must admit some secrets which both he and Masha carefully withheld from their children. Masha's illegitimate son Arkady holds the key to breaking the silence between the father and his grieving children. The pessimistic Arkady is searching to find some way to finance his musical education and wants to see if the Glover relatives who he's never met will help him. He is a gifted pianist that has seen his talent squandered in the shifting gears of Russia's transforming political system. Even more committed to Arkady's education is his friend Henry who is a teacher with an unfortunate drug habit. In the last hundred pages of this sprawling novel, the strands of these characters' stories come together to unearth some surprising revelations and a heart-breaking climax.Docx has produced a powerful family novel teeming with rich ideas and universal themes concerning identity, loss and social/familial dislocation. Each character is explored in depth and with great sympathy. Nicholas' psychology and relationship with his young male lover who schemes to get a steady allowance from the older man is complexly drawn. Henry sees his resources dwindling in his struggle to assist Arkady and kick his drug addiction. His slow downward spiral is written in a way that feels harrowing and true. However, this portion of the story seems glued on to the larger narrative about this family's struggle to reunite and discover how they fit together. This is a difficult novel which yields many great rewards, but the story can be a bit unwieldy in its focus at times. One of Docx's greatest talents is for describing the numerous cities this novel travels through over the course of the story. St Petersburg, Paris, London and New York are all vividly evoked in rich sensual detail giving real character to the places and making them physically real. More than that, he holds up a reflection of the values and sensibility of Russia compared to the West. Docx has many intelligent and heartfelt things to say about the responsibility we have to accept ourselves fully. While Self Help isn't meant to be prescriptive, it does give you a lot to think about.

I'm really disappointed here, as the author obviously does have some talent, but when some here compare this to Dostoyevsky I'm appalled. What are they thinking when they make such a comparison? Russian names? This novel is so boring, so slow-moving, with so little sense of real, lived experience it really started to anger me after a while. I forgave the author less the further I read. There's nothing here but some nice color, a few moments that feel more like a pastiche of Turgenev or Bunin that anything original or honestly felt. Sorry to be so harsh, but the book's been out long enough this will do no harm.

It is hard to be critical of an author with significant potential but that is the case with Pravda. Edward Docx is a writer with not insignificant talent. One can't read Pravda without recognizing what seems to be a gift for capturing internal monologue. In addition, his ability to detail the complexities of emotional and psychological struggles is evident. Yet, despite these obvious talents, the flaws of Pravda bring down what otherwise could have been an excellent novel. Overall what comes to mind in reviewing Pravda is the famous quote from Hamlet "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Docx often presents his characters as having worked out some fundamental universal truths about life and most especially relationships. In reality, what they discover is truth for their situations and ultimately themselves alone. The fact that Docx fails to give his characters this narrower but more realistic perspective often results in the novel's, as well as the characters', having the air of pretentiousness. Both the novel and the characters seem to take themselves much too seriously. The seeming universal scope of the presented insights begins, after much reading, to resemble a cocktail party conversation or the much-maligned self-help magazine. The pretentiousness of the characters and their insights often spills over into the prose itself. It is not unfair to say that it is, at times, overheated to the point of distraction. One wonders if a better editor or a more open relationship with the existing editor would have prevented these excesses from reaching print. It would be easy, and perhaps not inaccurate, to attribute these excesses to the authors age and lack of life experience. One often has the feeling in reading the book that the author does not have sufficient life experience with the theme being discussed and thus falls back into emotional overstatement to compensate. Another possible indication of a paucity of relevant life experience comes in the character of Nicholas. We are told the character is in his early sixties. Yet the entire psychological (not to mention physiological) portrait is more akin to a man in his eighties. One is left to conclude that the author is not really familiar with the internal psychological landscape of people over fifty. Lastly, there are more issues that good editing should have brought to light. A major character, Arkady Artamenkov, is initially presented in some depth. Yet, as the novel closes he is reduced to a prop with no exploration of his development as a result of events. We must assume that Arkady made some significant psychological adjustments off stage somewhere. In fact the entire ending of the novel seems hasty. After what has been at times painful introspection, the characters in the end reach resolution easily in a few dialogues. Was there some need to rush to what in many respects seems a formulaic ending? In conclusion, what could have been an excellent thoughtful novel by an obviously talented author is reduced to a tiring story of self-absorbed, pretentious and ultimately whiny young people. Docx needs more life experience, more humility, and better editing.

A beautiful, intellectual read. Docx's character development, even within such a short novel, was exceptional.If you have parameters against profanity and/or sexual content (though he uses these within the story line and not simply for sensational purposes) this may not be your type of book.Besides that and even with that - I was thrilled with the vocabulary, illustrious analogies, and with the obviously rich research used to create "Pravda".I am planning on becoming a "Docx" fan as of this moment and am looking forward to falling into his other works.Enjoy!

Great novel, meaty, but not heavy read. The author really gets under the skin of his characters, and this is told from 5 points of view, all of whom are engaging in their own way - and totally credible - set in London, Paris and St Petersburg - and the level of detail (without being overwhelming) really made me feel I was there - unusually I felt for all of the main characters - although I didn't see the twist coming at the end!

It took me a little while to get into but once I had I loved it... the plot is cleverly told from the perspectives of the very different characters who are introduced in quick succession. It has a strong story line and is beautifully written. Gives the reader much food for thought with lines like "the price of courage is loneliness". Enjoy!

This is the best book I have read for a long time. It is well written; easy to read; has a facinating plot; features voyages into three separate worlds (North London; New York; St Petersburg); beautifully descriptive; has very well drawn characters; and a good twist at the end.There are some lovely quotes and phrases ("a slouch of teenagers").I have just one minor quibble (!) and that's on the second page of Chapter 31: there was no "pre-Roman Gloucestershire", and certainly no English people there!

A beautifully written story, unexpected in its conclusion, wonderfully written characters with such depth and perception. There are so many levels this novels works on and each one successfully. I really loved it and it kept me awake reading into the early hours. I couldn't put it down.

I read this book for my book club group we had the most animated discussion that we have had in ages and all 8 of us really enjoyed the book.I found the swearing too frequent, the characters swore like builders on a building site, which was not consistent with the characters they were supposed to be.

An excellently written story, complex and interesting. Some very good characters and clever dialogue as well as convincing description of place.

NB. This novel "Pravda' was also published under the title:Self HelpI came to this novel after reading Docx's first book: 'The Calligrapher' which I enjoyed but was hoping for something more with his second novel: 'Pravda'. I am glad to say that I enjoyed this second book more than his first; it drew me in from its opening pages and I found myself immersed in the author's descriptions of London, Paris and especially St Petersburg, where Docx's gritty portrayal of the streets, alleyways, canals and underground bars was very well depicted - places you might not want to experience firsthand but might enjoy visiting vicariously.This is an engrossing novel about a fairly dysfunctional family who live separate lives in Russia, England, France and the USA. Gabriel Glover travels from London to St Petersburg after a worrying phone call from Maria, his mother, only to find her dead in her apartment when he arrives. Isabella, his twin sister, flies in from the USA to support her brother, both of them fiercely hoping that their estranged father, Nicholas, a bisexual hedonist living in Paris, does not join them for the funeral. Unknown to Gabriel and Isabella, their mother had given birth to and abandoned a son, Arkady, in Russia before she met Nicholas and then defected to England. Initially unaware of his parentage, Arkady spent his early life in an orphanage, but is now trying to follow his ambition of becoming a concert pianist and is connected through his friendship with Henry (a drug addict) to the underworld of St Petersburg. Henry is willing to do anything to help Arkady realize his ambition and the death of Maria Glover causes far reaching problems, not just for the twins, but for Arkady and Henry also.As so often happens after the death of a close relation, other family members start to think about their own lives more deeply and this is where the author excels with his descriptions of his characters; we know what clothes they wear, what they look like, where they live, how they behave and, most importantly, how they feel. This detail has, in some instances, lead to an abundance of very long sentences - which, although suitably punctuated (thank heavens for the semi-colon) do sometimes become rather rambling; however that said, I did not feel this detracted from the merits of the book. In some ways this novel is a traditional, sprawling family story, in other ways it is dark, gritty and contemporary; this is not a great novel, but it is a very good one. Recommended.4 Stars. Self Help

Published under the title "Self-Help" in North America, this is a fabulous book and a really interesting insight into relations between Russia and the rest of Europe.Highly recommended (although when I ordered it, I thought it was another Edward Docx novel and was excited to find it, only to discover it was the original U.K. title for "Self-Help").

Written in a constipated and pretentious style this novel needs serious editing. I abandoned the book after wading through three chapters.

Well I don't know if I don't like it because when I opened it and started to read it, it was exactly the same as 'Self Help'! Had the publisher put this book in the wrong cover or is this an alternative, working title or what? So I just thought 'What a swizz' closed the book and harrumphed a bit. Not a good buy but to cheap to make a fuss about.