fiction

You might have stumbled upon a few nasty mistakes by Pérez-Reverte before? Like “Good People”? Which, check it out, cunningly mistranslated, is actually “Boring People” in the original title. No worries, though. You always give the author another chance because of “The Fencing Master” (Or the woman’s shadow on the man’s heart), which is a bit like a neo-western, only with rapiers instead of firearms – and more sophistication.

1811. 99.9999 percent of Spain has been occupied by Napoleon’s troops, but Cádiz flips the bird to the emperor with infinite calm, peacefully nestled behind its high stone walls, happily trading through its port. The siege of Cádiz spans about another year and a half, and you follow it through the eyes of three main characters and the kaleidoscope of supporting characters swirling around them.

Inspector Tizón chases a serial killer, on which not only his job but also his own faith depends. And although the inspector is a foul jerk, who mostly gives his investigations a final shape with a bludgeon, he now has to rise above himself. The enjoyment value of the investigation is diminished by the fact that it unfolds first on a philosophical and then on a metaphysical level, until finally, it painstakingly finds its way. But the excitement of the obsessed pursuit is enough to make the incredibly unsympathetic inspector somewhat acceptable.

The other two characters, in return, are much more likable: Pepe Lobo hunts hostile ships with a privateer’s license. In his case, Pérez-Reverte’s book turns into a trace of an adventure novel, but if you have any romantic ideas about this profession, you sober up quickly at the sight of the everyday life of piracy: it sucks, plain and simple.

Lobo’s employer, Lolita Palma, who from a 19th-century perspective is slowly aging into an old maid, reluctantly takes over her father’s trading company. The evolving relationship between these two characters, socially distinct from each other and initially rooted in mutual antipathy is the greatest virtue of the book titled “The Siege.” Lolita has been my favorite from the start; I sometimes found myself flipping ahead to see when her chapter would come. (Just like in the good old days reading Game of Thrones with Arya). I have to admit, from the moment these two characters met, I found the story irresistibly exciting.

And although the book is much more a historical novel than a crime or romance novel, the siege itself mostly consists of the opposing sides shooting cannons at each other with not much efficiency. The essence lies much more in the everyday life. However, the description of these everyday lives is E-N-D-L-E-S-S-L-Y meticulous. I can easily imagine that during the “handicraft workshop” afternoon meeting, when the colonial rebellions’ commercial and political aspects are deeply explored, the dear reader suddenly goes wild and bites off a considerable chunk of Pérez-Reverte’s hefty work. Additionally, some supporting characters are entirely unnecessary; they don’t contribute anything essential to the story, like the salt miner, but the difficulties of the French artillery’s shooting range seem to be somewhat overrepresented. But seriously!

And during the last hundred pages of “The Siege”, perhaps because as you approach the endgame, you increasingly sense a foreboding, you feel that less would have been more.

7.7/10

The Siege by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
624 pages, Hardcover
Published in 2014 by Random House

If the first chapter’s improbability, where Amor Towles’ protagonist jests with his humor-prone Bolshevik compatriots, doesn’t put you off, and the book’s verbosity doesn’t immediately deter with its many twisty and winding sentences right from the start, then suddenly you find yourself beginning to like Alexander Ilyich Rostov, this charming and kind-hearted bohemian. Although you might have started with the assumption that “A Gentleman in Moscow” is sure to be some romantic affair, full of whining, but then again, it’s not.

We’re in 1922, by the way. Ah, the finest years of communism! Wait, scratch that: The count is declared a class enemy and is sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life, confined to a attic room in the Metropol Hotel. Reluctantly, he has to start assimilating into the world of work.

As a reader, you might not tolerate all the babble, feel annoyed by the verbosity, and get chills from the unnecessary, unwarranted, and superfluous use of adjectives. I’m exactly the same way too! I’ll tell you that clearly, straight, plain, and openly. Nevertheless, I must admire with genuine astonishment when, for example, in “A Gentleman in Moscow”, the relationship between goulash and a type of wine is compared to the not overly sunny relationship between Achilles and Hector, and the metaphor then happily leaps onto a Trojan war chariot from there.

And then there are Montaigne’s essays, the Nizhny Novgorod apple cultivation, and family anecdotes in abundance, but all done with such elegance that it’s very difficult to extricate yourself from their influence. (Moreover, since Amor Towles is obviously a lover of Russian culture, after a while you find yourself surprised, deciding that you will definitely tackle War and Peace for the second time, which you abandoned thirty years ago when you got completely lost in the forest of Russian names.)

This verbosity, however, certainly won’t appeal to everyone. If you’re already annoyed by it at the beginning, it’s better to leave this book alone.

However, if you continue reading, you may feel that “A Gentleman in Moscow” is the MOST PLEASANT novel that has come your way lately: it exudes cheer, goodwill, and disarming humanity, despite being set in a dark era. Even towards the absurdities of Bolshevism, it is mainly addressed with gentle irony. The few chapters where it speaks more directly, such as the one about the Ukrainian famine, stands out from the novel like sore thumb.

And how long does the admiration last? Precisely until little Sofia appears on the pages of the book. After this, the count’s story visibly ends, but Towles’s book unfortunately continues – although it would have been advisable to end it with a masterful stroke. Instead, the focus shifts to Sofia, and indeed her story is much less interesting: a series of trivial, sometimes entirely boring and sentimental scenes. Strangely, even Count Rostov’s quirks resurface. But if you’ve made it this far, you probably won’t abandon the story, which becomes livelier once again towards the very end and turns into a more subdued espionage tale. Still, it slips down from a much higher rating to a

6.8/10.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
462 pages, Paperback
Published in 2019 by Penguin Books