The People's Act of Love
by James Meek
Love in a Cold Climate
A review by Gerry Donaghy
There is a moment in James Meek's superb novel The People's Act of Love
when the widow Anna Petrovna is pondering her past choices and the future that
lay before her. Meek writes, "Anna did not believe in new worlds, but she
could not help wanting to be with men and women who did." Set in 1919, in
the shadow of both the Great War and the Russian Revolution, The People's Act
of Love chronicles the convergence in northern Siberia of characters with
substantially differing viewpoints as to what shape this new world should take.
The escaped political prisoner Samarin is transformed from seemingly apolitical
to violent revolutionary; "the destruction," he calls himself, "of
everything that stands in the way of the happiness of the people who will be
born after I'm dead." The Christian mystic Balashov leads a sect who seeks
to secure a communal paradise on earth through castration. Mutz, a junior officer
of a Czech battalion abandoned by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
simply wants to leave Siberia, taking Anna Petrovna with him. His commanding
officer, Matula, rules the village with murderous whimsy, envisioning a new
world where "…the terror will stay with them and their children for
generations."
Meek is an Englishman writing in the vernacular of 19th-century Russian authors,
faithfully replicating the various linguistic and ideological nuances their
texts would present. There is a formality of language in the dialogue, where
everybody is addressed by their patronymic name (Kyrill Ivanovich Samarin),
and even a peasant has the soul of a poet, expressing himself with language
that is penetrating, but without unnecessary flourish. The representation of
the conflicting ideas are also masterly presented, compressing as much philosophical
debate in a relatively short 400 pages (that read very quickly, I might add)
as Tolstoy or Dostoevsky would flesh out in works two or three times that size.
The narrative trajectory that Meek achieves in The People's Act of Love
is equally breathtaking. There are a stunning number of twists, turns, and revelations;
many are surprising and all of them are plausible: how exactly was Anna Petrovna
widowed? What is the true nature of the White Garden, the brutal gulag that
Samarin escaped from, and who is the cannibalistic Mohican that is pursuing
him? Finally, what constitutes a people's act of love? Is it an act of self-sacrifice
to protect the living, or an act of annihilation for the benefit of future generations.
This is the kind of book that will welcome a second reading, if only to see
what ciphers the author laid out for us that we missed the first time around.
What is also surprising about this novel is how relevant it is to the current
discourse concerning war and peace. Perhaps this critic is reading too much
into the fact that the author has spent the past few years reporting from both
Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, but I can't help but feel that Meek is attempting
to paint a broader canvas, both in terms of how wars are started and the rather
subjective and morally relativistic nature of terrorism. When Samarin makes
proclamations such as, "I'm a manifestation. Of present anger and future
love," it's impossible not to imagine the same words coming out of the
mouth of a jihadist to justify his savagery. When history looks back on our
current situation, will the end results be as tragic as the slow, violent death
of Trotsky's perpetual revolution? Is there a contemporary people's act of love
that doesn't involve politics, religion, or violence?
The previous digression notwithstanding, The People's Act of Love is
an unqualified success. A richly imagined story, heartbreakingly rendered characters,
and a narrative arc that will keep the reader's attention to the bitter end
combine to make this essential reading for anybody who takes the novel as an
art form seriously.
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