Items related to The Crime of Olga Arbyelina
The summer of '47. In the sleepy town of Villiers-la-Forêt, roughly an hour from Paris, the peaceful radiance of the day is interrupted by the discovery that, along a nearby riverbank, the body of a man has washed up, a gaping wound in his skull. Beside him rests a beautiful, nearly bare-breasted woman, her dress soaked and in tatters. An accident or foul play? A crime of passion? Soon there are almost as many speculations and theories as there are townspeople. The woman, it turns out, is a Russian princess, Olga Arbyelina, a refugee from the Bolshevik revolution who in the 1930s had settled in town along with many of her compatriots. Rumor was that Olga's husband, a dashing prince given to gambling and revels, had deserted her some years after the couple's arrival in France, leaving her alone to care for their young son. About the victim, also a Russian refugee, little is known: many years Olga's elder, he was a taciturn, rather coarse, slightly ridiculous man name Sergei Golets, thought dismissively to be a former horse butcher. What on earth could have brought these two unlikely souls together? Moving back to early in the century, the author meticulously recreates Olga's past-her enchanted childhood; her pampered youth and fevered, transitory embrace of the revolution; her arduous flight toward freedom; her encounter with the dashing White Army officer who saved her life; her marriage and arrival in France; the birth of her adored son. Olga also faced a special problem: her son was afflicted with hemophilia (from which the townspeople who knew concluded that she must be related to the czar). Medicines and medical care were of little help. Yet if love could prevail, she would make him survive. . . . Love has its limits, its limitations and boundaries. But in a woman of great passion, what do such limits mean when you know that each day may be the last for your son?
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Beautifully observed and lyrically expressed, the novel slowly ... A tragic story of misplaced erotic love (The Times)
Though his blend of memory and imagination has won him comparison with Proust, his broad sweep and mystical vision, his emotional intensity and lyrical elan ... belong to the tradition of nineteenth-century Russian novelists (Independent)
Intriguing ... meticulous, lyrical prose ... he charges space with tension and the inanimate with meaning ... Makine deserves our full attention (The Sunday Times)
An elaborately haunting work ...Olga's involuted, tormented conciousness becomes a sophisticated pleasure in its own right ... Makine's novel possesses the feverish beauty of a hot-house culture in its final efflorescence (Publishers Weekly)
Structured like a crime novel, but told in the language of a poet... It's a thrilling book, lit with the soft light of despair, withpassages which should shock but whose style caresses, melting this scandalous story into a captivating melody. The readers of "Le Testament Francais" will rediscover in "Olga Arbelina's crime" Andrei Makine's beautiful and supple writing, his relish for the waking dream.' (FIGARO LITTERAIRE)
Book Description:
'Beautifully observed and lyrically exptressed, the novel slowly ... pieces together the mosaic of Olga's inner life as she begins to lose her mind. Returning obsessively to the tiny details of domestic life, the creak of a door, the gap in the curtains and the texture of the surface of a cup the effect is hauntingly claustophobic. But the greatest achievement is in the portrayal of Olga's son, a nameless youth with translucent skin and blood that will not clot, whose spectral presence is sensed, but never captured, in this tragic story of misplaced erotic love.'
Natasha Fairweather, The Times, August 99
Beautifully observed and lyrically expressed, the novel slowly ... A tragic story of misplaced erotic love (The Times)
'Though his blend of memory and imagination has won him comparison with Proust, his broad sweep and mystical vision, his emotional intensity and lyrical elan...belong to the tradition of nineteenth-century Russian novelists.'
Shusha Guppy, The Independent 24.7.99
Though his blend of memory and imagination has won him comparison with Proust, his broad sweep and mystical vision, his emotional intensity and lyrical elan ... belong to the tradition of nineteenth-century Russian novelists (Independent)
Intriguing ... meticulous, lyrical prose ... he charges space with tension and the inanimate with meaning ... Makine deserves our full attention (The Sunday Times)
'this is an intriguing novel about a Russian immigrant woman who lives in a small French town with her only son just after the second word war...the novel is neatly framed....Makine's meticulous, lyrical prose- served well by this sensitive translation- is all the more impressive because his first language is Russian (he writes in French)....he charges space with tension and the inanimate with meaning until the curtain rings are sinister, the position of a shoe is shocking and a lamp base causes a significant turning-point....Makine deserves our full attention, he exerts impressive control over these themes, hops back and forwards through time with ease, and ultimately neverforgets the value of a simple and compelling story.'
Lucy Atkins, The Sunday Times
An elaborately haunting work ...Olga's involuted, tormented conciousness becomes a sophisticated pleasure in its own right ... Makine's novel possesses the feverish beauty of a hot-house culture in its final efflorescence (Publishers Weekly)
'The intricate thoughts and fears of a Russian emigre mother take center stage in this elaborately haunting work...Olga's involuted, tormented conciousness becomes a sophisticated pleasure in its own right...That same consciousness, and the events that destroy it, invoke larger mythic patterns- Cupid and Psyche, Beauty and the Beast. Makine's novel possesses the feverish beauty ofa hot-house culture in its final efflorescence.'
Publishers Weekly, 26.7.99
Structured like a crime novel, but told in the language of a poet... It's a thrilling book, lit with the soft light of despair, withpassages which should shock but whose style caresses, melting this scandalous story into a captivating melody. The readers of "Le Testament Francais" will rediscover in "Olga Arbelina's crime" Andrei Makine's beautiful and supple writing, his relish for the waking dream.' (FIGARO LITTERAIRE)
The stunning new novel by the author of the international bestseller Le Testament Français, a dramatic, sensuous tale set in a Russian emigré community in post-war France.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherArcade Pub
- Publication date2011
- ISBN 10 1611452430
- ISBN 13 9781611452433
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages256
- Rating
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