A multi-layered novel – about first love and the properties of selective memory that makes life easier, about courage and the loss of human appearance, about childhood trauma that always finds a way to reveal itself to the world – at some point turns out to be primarily a novel about justice.
The history of Russia in the 1900th century, with its tormenting vicissitudes, is finally reflected in such a clear, whole and artistically perfect way that it seems there is nothing to add. From the operetta (the intelligent young man Innokenty Platonov, born in 1932, was experimentally frozen with nitrogen in 1999 and thawed in XNUMX) and secondary (we read this in the range from Dostoevsky to Mayakovsky, and maybe Wells) Vodolazkin story made an amazing novel. Among its obvious advantages are the detective twist of the plot, an unexpected denouement, and brilliant stylization (the syllable of the beginning of the XNUMXth century sounds so natural in Vodolazkin that until the author specifically shows us the words “car” and “spray gun” instead of “machine” and “spray ‘, we won’t notice).
Returned to the world of the living, Platonov, under the gentle supervision of the psychotherapist Geiger, writes down everything he remembers (my therapist wants the same from me and also uses the word “unfreeze” — in relation to emotions). The longer he writes, the more often he talks about the personal responsibility of each for events not only in his life, but also in the country; the more nightmarish scenes from the camp life come to his mind, the less he rejoices in his rehabilitation; plunging into the past, he speaks more and more often about the deliberate guilt of all those who suffer. Closer to the denouement, Platonov is sure: everything, even incomprehensible in its cruelty, that happens to us against our will, is justice, and what we do in the name of justice ourselves is just revenge. The conclusion makes Geiger doubt the adequacy of the ward for the first time, but Vodolazkin insists that the deafening finale, turning the novel inside out, was written to prove this formula. It is a pity to retell it — the intrigue will be lost. But I agree with the conclusion.
Aviator Evgenia Vodolazkina.
Edited by Elena Shubina, 408 p.