- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Mariner Books; None edition (Feb 13 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0618534407
- ISBN-13: 978-0618534401
- Product Dimensions: 20.5 x 15 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 340 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #422,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Docx's second novel (after The Calligrapher) wrings out all the theatrics to be had from unhappy urban-dwelling twins, their sexually voracious father and dead Russian mother. Twins Gabriel and Isabella Glover, both 32 and leading lackluster lives—she at a New York PR firm, he the editor in London of Self-Help! magazine—see another crack form in their perennially tortured existences when their mother, Maria, who defected to marry their British father, dies alone in St. Petersburg. (Their despised father, Nicholas, meanwhile, dabbles in art, decadence and self-important interior monologues in Paris.) All are unaware of an additional family member: Arkady Artamenkov, their mother's first son, who had been kept afloat by Maria's financial assistance and the guiding hand of his junkie friend, Henry Whey. After the checks stop, Henry hatches a plan to send Arkady to plead for money from the family that doesn't know he exists. Though Docx's prose can get dangerously overheated (Give me the sincerity of nakedness and the honesty of desire, O God, and deliver me from the turgid bourgeoisie and all their favorite phrases), the crushing atmosphere will draw in fans of dark Euro-fiction. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Docx's ability to evoke the atmosphere of a city is almost Dickensian...Docx can place you within each heart-stopping moment, speed up and slow down time from one sentence to the next...Masterful...A gripping read that will engage, delight, and engross." (Guardian (London) )
"[Docs] allows the reader to experience [St. Petersburg] with all its beauty and cruelty, similar to the style of Dostoevsky." (Financial Times )
"[Docs] allows the reader to experience [St. Petersburg] with all its beauty and cruelty, similar to the style of Dostoevsky." (Financial Times )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.2 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A seriously good - posiibly great - novel, Mar 31 2008
By JC "Blogster" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Pravda: A Novel (Paperback)
This is one of the best books I have read recently. Docx gets compared to Dickens and Dostoyevsky around the place and, while that is a pretty high bar, this is certainly a wonderful old school style novel: deep and full of life and characters with things happening on lots of layers. I was watching out because I read the first one and mostly loved it. In Britain, Pravda got on the Booker prize list and you can see why - just way more scope than most of the younger writers around.There's a great story at the heart of Pravda, lots of insightful passages on male-female relationships, cities, politics and psychology. The Russian scenes are truly evocative. And, as with the first book (The Calligrapher) and as other people have said, there's also some really beautiful writing. The tale is a family one - with some pretty unexpected twists and turns. The children are the focus. But for my money, the best character is the father - I've not read someone as deep and as dark (but weirdly likeable) as him anywhere else in all my reading. Though I was fascinated by the mother too, because she is (in one way) what the whole book is about but somehow she hovers just out of reach - a ghost in the writing, as well as in the fact of her death.
In summary, this is the real deal - a finely written novel for readers who are interested in literature and all the amazing things that good books can make you think about and feel! Would recommend it highly, no question.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dostoyevskian, Oct 17 2008
By Paul E. Richardson "Russian Life" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Pravda: A Novel (Paperback)
Set in St. Petersburg, Docx's novel offers a Dostoyevskian mix of rich prose, haunting scenery, well-buried secrets and engrossing characters. This is a great bedtime read, but beware, Docx offers a window on a gritty, dark St. Petersburg - not the one you would likely want to visit, except through fiction. (Reviewed in Russian Life)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Magnificent Effort, Jun 4 2008
By William A. Viall - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Pravda: A Novel (Paperback)
I really liked this book a whole lot. It's the best novel I've read in a while. Kudos to Docx. He has much to say. Reading it, I thought he was a poor man's Martin Amis, but now I'm on to Amis' Meeting House, and am not finding Amis quite as brilliant as I remember him. (Full disclosure: I'm a huge Amis fan.) Docx must surely be influenced by Amis, and I believe he shares some of the older writer's mental agility and thurst to get his ideas out there.My niggle with Pravda is that it was a bit treacly, a bit too touchy-feely for my tastes. It lacks a certain edge, grit; is a little too gauzy in places. I believe Docx loves a few of his characters a little too much.
But his prose are great, again, remeniscent of vintage Amis. His insights are not earth-shattering, but he lays them out in inventive, entertaining, and rich ways, and they are certainly ideas that bear repeating. This is fine, fine, fine contemporary Brit-Lit at its best.
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