In Review

21 November 2008 19:26 BST

Leninsky Prospekt by Katherine Bucknell

Published by Harper Perennial, out now, paperback, 322 pages, £7.99.

In a nutshell…

Wistful. Strident. Russian. Tight. Lyrical.

What's it all about?

Nina Davenport, daughter of an American communist who achieved his wish of bringing his family up in Moscow before dying a slow and lonely death, returns to the Cold War-enveloped city of her upbringing with loving, rock-solid, but intensely busy, political translator husband John. Having been whisked away from the city at a time when friends, including her first love, are being spirited deep into the tundra by KGB agents for proclaiming lofty political ideals, she comes back to discover that the comfort and clear boundaries of her blissfully happy life in the US are thrown up into the air.

As she acts as a native-speaking guide to an American ballet visiting the Bolshoi, where she once looked set for stardom, it soon becomes apparent that a faction in the US Embassy sees her heritage mining far deeper resources than an intricate knowledge of Russian dancing. Presented, notionally, with the opportunity to prompt an intellectual revolution centring around her erstwhile – and mental asylum-bound - paramour Viktor Derzhavin, she soon hits the crossroads between her own happiness and a set of higher, heroic, aspirational ideals which had been nascent in her mind before she first left Russia.

Who's it by?

Katherine Bucknell's Washington childhood was lived out to a backdrop of Cold War fear and uncertainty, which drove her to write this novel even though she had not visited Russia at its inception. This is her second novel – her first, Canarino, also dealt with the trials of displacement in a seemingly-stable marriage – and she has also written and edited several works about W H Auden and Christopher Isherwood.

Born in Vietnam, she was influenced in part by her father's CIA work, which bred in her a fascination about the lives of spies and intelligence agents. This mixture of experience and curiosity greatly informs her writing.

As an example…

"She recognised the sensation: powerless rage. She used to live with it long-term; it had been the story of her mother's life in Russia, her own. It had been the agony of her adolescence, not even being allowed to express what you want. I thought I was done with this, she found herself thinking."

"How the hell do I compete with this, with heroes, moral demigods?" – Nina's husband John

Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster

Classic subject matter, but a relatively subtle conclusion not enough real punches to afford it possible blockbuster status. Lengthy and eloquent dialogue, along with a highly-choreographed sensibility within the main protagonists, perhaps make it a better candidate for the stage than the big screen.

What the others say

"Bucknell has all the makings of a powerful, moving and intelligent novel. But she seems unable to let the story and its characters speak for themselves. Dialogue is never allowed to do its own job without the motives and feelings of each speaker being subjected to an almost psychotherapeutic scrutiny." – Linda Grant, the Guardian

So is it any good?

It's certainly a decent read, with the main character involved enough to detain the reader even if she fails to quite achieve the spontaneity and genuine passion which it is suggested are innate in her. Bucknell's sentences are perceptive, flowing, attractive – but the sense of scenes being played out rather than naturally unfolding leads to a certain woodenness in the protagonists, and a lack of real development or empathy despite the number of words being expended on their behalves.

The author's lack of real working knowledge when it comes to Russia and the Russians is perhaps another flaw; there is nothing new here for the ardent Russophile, such as this reviewer, and native characters - even the broodingly vibrant Derzhavin - are given too little time or scope. Background and scenery is described relatively sparely, too. This should be little problem provided that the primary protagonists can stand up to the strain of being context-bearers, but too much explaining tends to have to be done for them.

There are some very nice touches; the lie about Nina's age which, aptly, cements her initial Russian citizenship reminds us of the ambiguity, the dual identities between which she is constantly struggling, the blurred boundary between reality and fiction which rules her experience.

As the ballet-related scenes suggest, choreography is important to Bucknell - her language and positioning of characters are painstaking. So, too, are some of the slightly superfluous scenes involving US military figures and the likes of Nikita Kruschev. These are attempts to add depth, sure, but to cap a novel which does not really go beyond the 'promising' category there is at times a need for a greater rawness, a simplicity, in the characters and a slightly more life-orientated backdrop.

6/10

Nick Ames