Once Upon the River Love

by Andreï Makine

Book Overview

A fascination with romantic movies leads three teenagers growing up in a small Soviet village in the 1970s to follow their dreams all the way to Brooklyn's Brighton Beach. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140283625
• ISBN13: 9780140283624
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 209 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

East meets West

... through images and imagination. For the western reader it will be difficult, if not impossible, to visualize the utter remoteness of a Siberian village lost in the vast plains of the taiga. Life is completely controlled by nature - winters last seven months or more. Before leaving the land and the people to recover in a short spring, winter hits with another vicious snowstorm. Only the houses' chimneys are seen protruding in the expanse of white. Digging out a path is like hollowing out a deep tunnel back to the surface. Makine's intricate portrayal of the land's extraordinary beauty, whether under snow or during the spring thaw, reveals his deep connection to nature and his Siberian past. It is a backdrop and, almost, a participant in this engaging story. First of all, though, this is a growing-up story of three local boys: Dmitri, the narrator, and his friends Utkin and Samurai. For them "the beauty of the land was the least of the preoccupations in the land where we were born..." It was taken for granted. Still, the reader senses the equilibrium between the boys and their natural environment. A vivid account of their thrill at swimming in the icy cold current of the Olyei River and being confronted with unwelcome onlookers. Taking a steam sauna in a remote bath hut in the forest reflects their intimacy and happiness at being friends. Daily life is also controlled by the political powers: the story is anchored in the early 1970s and Soviet rule dominates all aspects of it. Their village, having played an important role in the past and during the war, it is now only a shadow of itself: controlled by "gold, the gulag, and the taiga". The boys accept their reality while dreaming of a different world beyond their community on the shores of the Amour River and inhospitable Siberia. The Trans-Siberian train speeding by in the night symbolizes the wider world, the link between Occident and Orient. For the three teenage friends, growing up also includes an increasing awareness of sexuality and curiosity for women and love. Eroticism and sensuality, let alone "love", had never been part of the local people's vocabulary, going back to the village's founding some 300 years ago by Cossacks. Carving out an existence has always been rough and challenging. Now, any sense of reality or knowledge of the outside world was filtered through Soviet-style propaganda: reaching or surpassing the monthly quotas; winning whatever battle was being fought. Women and men were, above all, socialist partners with a mission to fulfill the expectations of the system. For boys, eager to explore their blossoming feelings, this was not a good introduction. Into this bleak and harsh reality "strolls" Jean-Paul Belmondo, charming, easy-going and successful ... and the boys and the villagers are changed forever: Belmondo appears on screen in the cinema "Red October". The impact could not have been more dramatic if he had come in person. The political slogan banners

Encountering sex and art in a Siberian wasteland.

In a callous and cold Siberian village, whose inhabitants' lives revolve around timber, prisoners, and gold, there is no room for romance and beauty. Makine tells the story of three young boys who are full of indiscernible longings, until a Belmondo film arrives at a nearby town and gives voice to all their dreams. In one of novel's most poignant chapters, Makine describes how each of the three boys sees a different hero on the cinema screen- for the hardened Samurai, it is Belmondo's feats of bravery; for the crippled Utkin, it is his stoicism in the face of lifelong disappointment; and for the poet Dmitri, it is the alluring Western world of beauty and sensuality. Makine brings powerful emotion to both Dmitri's sexual desire and his longing to experience the West. Perhaps more than any other author, Makine manages to find intense lyric beauty in this carnal desire, devoting pages to blurry visions of female flesh. But most of all, this masterfully crafted novel leaves the reader with an emotional and philosophical understanding of how a single work of art can forever change the course of three human lives.

A beautiful book on growing up in Siberia

Samurai, Oetkin and the narrator, Juan, grow up in a sleepy town in Siberia. Their futures seem to be settled: one becomes a gold digger, lumberjack or prison guard, has sex with one of the local woman and slowly drinks oneself dead. But all three boys are idealists and dreamers in their own way, full of unfulfilled desires, who all somehow realize that there must be more to life. Only when they see the movie "The Red October" with Jean-Paul Belmondo, they realize that they can take their lives into their own hands.Andrei Makine wrote a beautiful novel in which the reader can feel the snow and the Siberian cold and the hopelessness of life in a Siberian village, but also with exquisite descriptions of Siberian springs, romance, melancholy and unfulfilled desires. A great book.

What a beautifully crafted novel

I hope the girl who didn't understand the novel will try a little harder. It is so beautifully crafted. It holds in its pages the heartbreaking longing of youth for love and for their future which is mysteriously yet to unfold. The narrator senses a life beyond his present circumstances through the Transsiberian train's windows. However he sees another future in the harshness of day to day existence there in Siberia. Makine puts a human face on that far unimaginable country. He also teaches us of the loss of war. It is a woven tapestry of character and time in which each piece contributes to the whole.

What a beautiful Novel!!!

This is one of the best novels I have ever read. It does everything a perfect peace of literature should do, which is to transcend the reader to another time and place while feeling every emotion possible through the use of beautifully constructed sentences/words.