Deathless [Paperback]

I thought that I would be an ideal reader for Catherynne Valente's Deathless, her 2011 work of magical realism and Russian folklore. I'm familiar with most of the folk tales and practices on which her work is based. I've taken courses on Russian literature and history and toured both Moscow and St. Petersburg extensively. I speak enough Russian to understand the references (not quite puns) in the character and geographic names. But all of this, I've found, actually makes me less than an ideal reader for Deathless -- my dilettantish dabbling into various parts of Russian culture leaves me equipped with neither of the frameworks I could use to appreciate the novel.

If I weren't familiar with the source material, I would be more awed by the strangeness of Valente's work and the striking images she presents -- a world of eggs, feathers, huts with chicken legs, galloping pestles, magical villages, and house spirits. Valente casts these elements into beautiful English prose, but they are not her inventions. The banya ritual, with its bizarre lashing by birch branches, is a beloved Russian pastime, typically enjoyed with alcohol and picked victuals. Baba Yaga, Koschei the Deathless, firebirds and mustard plasters (and even the main character, Marya Morevna) are all part of the Russian folk tradition. And if I had absorbed the source material through a lifetime of culture, rather than a few book and college courses and weeks abroad, I could better appreciate Valente's inversions, re-castings, and transformations. Deathless is a catalog of Russian folk lore stitched into a novel.

The overall plot is impelled by the demands of the fairy tale, not the motivations of the characters, inevitability without agency. Goldilocks has to eat the three bears' porridge, else she wouldn't be Goldilocks -- she has no choice in the matter. Similarly, Marya Morevna has no choice in her interactions with Koschei the Deathless. They are preordained by centuries of Russian tradition. "Why" or "How" are not a question one can ask of fairy tales, and they don't figure into Valente's novel, either. It's better to let the striking images and strong, direct language exist as points and not attempt to resolve them into a coherent outline of a plot.

The real world / Soviet elements of the story aren't as well fleshed-out as I'd hoped. This is a shame, because they are among the more intriguing ideas. What would Baba Yaga or the Firebird have done at the Siege of Leningrad? The domovoi (house spirits) organizing themselves into soviets and committees is brilliant (they have been too long oppressed by the bourgeois inhabitants), and I'm sorry that this didn't play a larger role.

Valente's narrative voice is lush, ornate, packed with adjectives and descriptors, and borrows the cadence of the fairy tale. This is usually powerful, but in certain moods and quantities feels oppressive. The voices of her characters are no different. Characters speak in lush, large, sweeping sentences, proverbially, poetically and axiomatically. This fits their role as archetypes and ideals, not as people. There are frequent jumps (temporal and thematic) between sections and between sentences, so that at times, the novel feels non-sequitur. It is cleverer than the reader; it is wiser. It expects the reader to keep up, and I couldn't always meet the challenge.

Deathless, to me, succeeds as a series of images and fails as a story. It has more in common with the snippets of Akhmatova poetry found throughout: best understood as fragments of some much greater whole.

This is a haunting, gorgeous tale about love - for your lover, your friends, your home - and about death, because those two go together so well. A young girl is kidnapped by a dark dashing stranger, the man of her dreams, and taken to a land where houses have walls of skin and hair, where she hunts firebirds and befriends fairytale creatures. Her lover is Deathless, the Tsar of Life - and being the Tsar of Life, it is so that he must battle death at every turn, and Maria Morevna is drawn into his war. Tired of war and death, torn between her humanity and her new magic, she tries to go home to Leningrad (St. Petersburg), but death follows her there as well.

The story isn't depressing, far from it. This book is darkly humorous, and wrenchingly beautiful. (I cry every time I reread Chapter 23 (p 271-284)) It is bitter sweet, and hopeful, and romantic, and epic - and very intimate at the same time. I loved the ending, both to the romance and the fairytale. Catherynne Valente did an amazing job here. She captures the feel, sound, texture of Russian folklore perfectly, and taps into the culture, history, politics and humor (think Bulgakov), the Russian "soul" exceptionally well. (I am Russian, for a disclaimer.) The prose is more restrained than in "Palimpsest," it's clear and simple, like a teardrop. Ah, there is so much to love here.

It's a complex, layered tale that will reward a careful reader; it will carry you off into a different land and make you live the fairytale and wish for the history to have a similar ending.

A note on some Russian translations of names (it was quite delightful to see the author play with them so cleverly, and definitely added a layer to the story):

Zvonok means "doorbell"
Chainik means "tea kettle"
Skorohodnaya (Road) means "quick-walking"
Kosti means "bones," while Kostya is a man's name (so Maria's name for Koschei is an affectionate pun)
Chernosvyat (Koschei's castle) means "Black blessed" or "black light"
Vintovnik (imp) means "rifle" (vintovka)
Lebed means "swan"
Ushanka is a winter hat with big floppy ears
Geroy (Ivan Geroyev) means "hero"
Ozero (Kseniya Yefremovna Ozernaya) means "lake" (and I recogized her from Valente's fanatastic short story "Urchins, While Swimming")
Yaichko (Yaichka village) means "egg"

First, I'm thrilled to say that once again, Valente has proven that my confidence in her work is utterly deserved. Second, I'm very happy with the new turn of style she's taken. The prose is undoubtedly hers, but the style is more straightforward than her previous novels Palimpsest and The Labyrinth, which I believe is better-suited to this particular tale. I wasn't sure I'd like the change, as an ardent fan of both her poetry and her lavish, transcendent prose, but world of Deathless is still full of arresting visuals and exquisitely tensioned relationships between characters.

Speaking of which, the story between Marya Morevna and Koschei is epic, for lack of a better term. It spans wars, and famines, and feasts, which are all things to behold in and of themselves, while still following the tragic tale that Koschei cannot keep himself from re-starting again and again. This time it is set in 1920's-1950's Russia, with the political philosophy of that time adding a particular note to the soup of the story, flavoring everything in sometimes very strong, sometimes very subtle ways. Valente did her research well, and I find myself very interested in reading a history of that period, so compelling a background did it form in this novel.

The relationships that stand upon it are no less compelling either. There are friendships, and marriages, and families upon families, but the focus is on the marriage of Marya and Koschei. Valente does not flinch, and shows both the sacrifices that one person will make for another, and the deep, wrenching wounds that one person will inflict on another. Love is a war in and of itself, difficult to start, and perhaps impossible to end. It is a pain that, as a reader, I came to love to hate to love. After the first reading, I'm left with several provocative statements about love, as well as life, that I can barely begin to wrap my head around, and which will spur me to re-read this novel several times, I've no doubt. This work is layered, and carefully, as Koschei hides his death, though not impossibly so, and the glimpse of the egg I have so far is enough for me to give it five stars.