The Tsar of Love and Techno: A Very Spoiler-Free and thus Uninformative Review.

I’ll start off by making a confession- I don’t love enormous book reviews. In fact, I don’t love book reviews at all. I think the way people enjoy books is very subjective. And there is no point in being presumptuous enough to pretend to understand someone else’s subjectivity. That being said, I did feel the need to write this review for a very specific reason- I couldn’t not. I will try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible and not go into the particulars but I might have to do that at times. I just want to convince people to read this book rather than analyzing it here. I may actually post a separate analysis later.

First of all, even though this looks like a collection of short stories, it is not. It is much more than that. If I elaborate upon this point any further, I might end up ruining what is possible one of the best surprises that this book contains. There’s nothing wrong with a collection of unrelated short stories, it is in no way inferior to a novel. But a very few novel writers can actually end up writing completely self contained short stories that don’t look like snippets from a larger novel. Short story writers, myself included, often have a hard time in stitching together a large narrative structure. Plot construction is usually not their strong suit. But Anthony Marra displays the rather bizarre talent of, well, being brilliant at everything simultaneously. Let me dive into this characteristic of his.

Most plot-intensive stories do not have great character sketches. And most character based stories do not bother about the plot. Catch 22 is an exception in the first category. And while I love the book, even in its most poignant moments, it does not reach the emotional intensity of this book. Call Me By Your Name and A Little Life were two of the books that I loved reading the most in 2017, but let’s just accept the fact that Aciman doesn’t even try to create a plot and Yanagihara’s plot is extremely implausible at best. I am obviously not claiming that the lack of a plot is detrimental to those books in any way, I am just trying to illustrate just how rare a gem this book is for being technically flawless.

I’ll have to criticize one aspect of the book though. The synopsis doesn’t do it any justice. It made me interested enough to read this book, so I guess it served its purpose but it didn’t come close to describing what this book is really like. But I cannot blame the synopsis for being inadequate. I don’t think any one page summary can properly describe what the experience of reading this book is like. All I can say is, towards the very end of the book, time slows down in the narrative. I actually felt myself incapable of moving at that point. And I am not talking in a figurative sense here. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t because I was literally frozen.

You might want to stop me here and say- Yeah sure. You’re an emotional mess. But what is this story actually about?

Well I apologize for not going into the details of this story. I have two reasons for not doing this. Firstly, I don’t think that I can talk about the details of this book without spoiling it. This isn’t really a thriller but it will surprise you. Secondly, if I start talking about the book while giving you absolutely no idea about the characters or the main narrative, it will sound like a political science lecture on the Russian government from 1930 to 2010. Yes, this book does talk about the social, cultural, economic, and political intricacies of Russia and Chechnya but the technique that it uses to ensure that a non-academically inclined reader does not fall asleep, is very similar to the one that David Benioff uses in City of Thieves. He dives into the intricacies and brings it closer to home. The rations no longer remain a matter of metrical measurements; the author ensures that you see what is, or rather- what is not, being laid out on the dinner table. I will not pretend to know enough about Russia to claim that this is a historically accurate account, especially because it is obvious from my taste in books that I prefer to stick to Americanized accounts of Russia. All I can do is give you the assurance that Lev gives his grandson in the beginning of City of Thieves- this is, after all, a story. Somebody did make it up and you may choose to disbelieve it even though the author lists the non-fiction books that he consulted in order to write this book.

But it still remains an objectively brilliant set of short stories even if we leave every other factor out. The first story “The Leopard”, which is set in Leningrad in 1937, was enough to convince me to finish reading this book within the next two days. And remember, at that point I had no idea that this book was anything more than a collection of unrelated accounts. “The Leopard” is a story about brothers and it is a good thing that this is the introductory chapter because this is ultimately a book about brothers. This might sound like my rad-fem propaganda to many but I actually hate the fact that romantic relationships are valorized over all other forms of human connections. Therefore I have always loved books about siblings. This book is going to be a treat for the very specific group of people like me who have really great brothers. That’s not to say that the others won’t enjoy this book. As I have said before, this book is technically perfect. In fact, students who need to learn how a short story works can totally refer to “The Leopard.” Moreover, a lot of other relationships- filial, romantic and otherwise, also exist in this book and they are beautifully depicted as well. I cannot give you the reassurance that this book has great love stories because this is how a certain character responds to another:

“And do you have a wife?”

“Only a brother.”

But yes, there is an extremely poignant story about the sacrifices which one has to make for romantic love. It is usually not my cup of tea, but I was rather pleased with this particular cup.

I am really tempted to talk about a character called Kolya, especially because my favorite fictional character of 2017 was Kolya Vlasov from City of Thieves (Patroclus from The Song of Achilles is a close contender for that position too). Here you’ll get to meet another Kolya who is just as rare but I am afraid I cannot gush about him without telling you his entire plot line. This book definitely teaches you to look at the same incident from five separate perspectives. I know this is not a particularly novel idea but this is done extremely well by Anthony Marra.

I won’t take up any more of your time because either I have already convinced you to read this book or you have already stopped reading a while back. This book is not a game-changer. It uses a lot of very conventional tropes but the important part is that it uses them well. I really cannot praise the beginning and the ending enough. The middle is not any less great but I don’t think I will read a better short story than “The Leopard” or the concluding chapter anytime soon.