The Dream Life of Sukhanov Olga Grushin Grushin, Olga Grushin, Olga Grushin, Olga

It is August 1985 and Sukhanov is at the peak of his success as a cultural guard dog of the Soviet state. Yet in a few days it will all fall to pieces.This is an incredibly ambitious novel and not every target is reached, but it is still stunningly good. The main narrative is all about the compromises and betrayals that made the Soviet people participants in their own oppression - why it was so much easier to compromise than to follow Havel's advice to "live in truth". But it also seems, to me, to be a commentary both on why the Soviet edifice collapsed and why what replaced it was , in so many ways, also an ugly betrayal of the hopes of the reformers.But this is not a paean to the lost glories of the USSR - far from it: Sukhanov hs never sent anyone to prison but he - as the representative of the system - is no sort of hero. He doesn't listen, he's a bully and a cynical snob. He might not get what he deserves but we struggle to care about his personal fate given that those he knew who tried harder to remain true to their values suffered more and for longer.Some of this is laid on a bit thickly - we didn't actually need to have Sukhanov tell us that his children represent the best and worst of him, that has already been made all too obvious.And I have one other whine - the only time I was in Moscow was early August 1985 - the precise moment this novel is set in - and it was baking hot, not an early autumn - of course I am confusing the author's simile for reality, but it did very occasionally bother me.But buy it and read it - it's great.

Excellently written book about how artists, who deviated from the officially accepted style of "social realism" were outcast by the officials and even everyday people.It will mostly appeal to the literaty and immigrants from the former Soviet union.

Anatoly Sukhanov had it made. He has a beautiful wife, a luxurious apartment, chauffer driven limousine, and is editor of Russia's premier art journal. But what was the status of art in 1985 Russia? Anatoly's job was to extol an art form that portrayed happy mine workers, smiling women holding their babies, gallant soldiers defending Mother Russia. How does a man who was an aspiring artist in his youth stomach the promotion of such dross?As the novel progresses Anatoly experiences a series of small, quirky incidents that start him on a mental reverie of his life. When you are young, and poor and struggling you are faced with a decision. Do you as an artist stick to your artistic ideals which are contrary to the regime's dictates, and risk living in poverty or worse or do you take the road that provides a decent living for your wife and children? As the pages fly by the current reality of Anatoly's life begin to meld more and more with his dreams of the past. We wonder, as Anatoly examines his past, if he is going to have a spiritual reawakening. Can he finally cast off his self imposed blinders? There has to be the remains of an artistic soul in this man whose job it is to denounce Matisse, and Dali as decadent, corrupt artists.This is an amazing book. It is truly a literary work of the highest order. The writing is superb. Here is a Russian born woman writing in what is her third language. One immediately begins to compare the writing with that of Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov, and the comparison is highly favorable. If you love art, as I do, you will find this book to be especially enjoyable. This is truly a "10 star" book.

I had my doubts about this. But the final part of the book - from about 2/3rds in really kicks in well and leads to a thoroughly deeper level of investigation. An excellent well-written book. Some of the writing is really elegant and beautiful and it does what all good books should do - it makes you think beyond what the writer is saying on the page directly and to examine the ideas and concepts con tained in the text.I admired this as much for it's historical context as for it's examination of the nature of artistic sell-out. Sukhanov and his family are complex characters. In the end it comes down to making one's own choices. Nobody forces you down that path but you have all the questions, the doubts, the will to succeed and the fear of failure looming with every decision.Its a far deeper and meaningful book than the sordid and rather poor writing on the party at their Moscow apartment that Sukhanov stumbles back into when it all starts to unravel.

"Although it was early August, the air had already acquired that special, brittle and gentle, autumnal quality that made the world seem a breath deeper and a trifle less certain..." This segment is from the second page of the book, and the lovely, dreamlike prose is both indicative of how a wonderful terror engulfs the sensitive, deep reader throughout the work as well as an omen of how the intertwined subject matter develops, "deeper and a trifle less certain..." At the end, Sukhanov's dream life, his swirl of surreal imagery and of remembrance have so completely taken over that the reader is left very deep in a Russian Winter and certain about very little at all, aside from artistic vision and death.Despite almost all the other critics' linking this to the glasnost period under Gorbachev when it is set, the book's themes are timeless and belong to no particular era or clime. Any artist, as Sukhanov has done, can "sell out" (Sukhanov's own phrase) his vision, whether it be to a repressive Soviet regime, a greedy Capitalist corporation or a ruthless Fascist dictator in order to gain comfort, security and prestige for him and his family.I would only bother with this book if you are an artist or a passionate, lifelong devotee to art; for what happens in this book is that - due to a madness inherited on the paternal side - Sukhanov's artistic, epiphanic vision of art and the memories associated with it return to him with a vengeance, and there is no easy answer as to whether this is a "good" thing or no. The reader spirals along with Sukhanov (Is it upwards or downwards?) until the bitter, or is it enlightened, end.After he leaves his wife in the dacha and begins hoofing it to the train station, stumbling, literally, into the small, dilapidated church to which he returns in the end (in his mind, anyway), Sukhanov has his most poignant moment of artistic vision/hallucination/ glimpse of the eternal:"For here, in this stale backwater, on the outskirts of an insignificant village, in a church that now served as a warehouse for dim-witted dacha owners, on a wall ravaged by time and sun and frost, flowered a masterpiece created by an artist whom no one noticed, whom no one even knew - and yet, Sukhanov believed, as strongly as he had ever believed in anything, that by some miracle he had just been brought into the presence of the most original, most amazing mind ever to emerge from the dark ages of Russian art."The sweeping prose of author Grushin who, thankfully, does not belong to the group of Russian writers to whom she's compared - Nabokov, Bulgakov etc. - but more to (if one must compare this book written in English to those written in Russian) Pasternak, Tolstoy and, particularly, the bittersweet lilts of Chekhov, leaves us with the tortured dilemma that if you choose your visions, or rather they choose you over sanity and comfort, that way lies a slow march to madness and death, with a redeeming few thunderbolts of god-like insight flashing across your via dolorosa.A modern masterpiece.