The Music of a Life

This is really a treasure of a book. A musician is forced to assume the identity of a dead soldier in Russia during WWII to save his life. It's a tight, taut lyrical little novel that can be read in an afternoon. To say too much about it deprives the reader of the magic that awaits them, so I will just say this: read it. If you like historical fiction you will be enchanted by this lovely small treasure.

A train station like a dot in the snow-covered expanse of the Siberian plains. People, thrown together by chance, patiently waiting hours for the delayed train to Moscow. Reflecting on the crowd as a collective sample of "homo sovieticus", the narrator singles out some individuals. He describes them in minute detail, bringing them alive for the reader. Suddenly, a piano tune, played elsewhere, breaks the multitude of muted night noises in the waiting room. For the narrator, the music transcends place and time and reveals a glimpse into a different, luminous reality... Following the tune through the station, he comes across an unlikely pianist. Rough, deeply scarred hands hardly touching the keys, then hesitating, confusing a note - and the pianist weeps. This chance meeting of two strangers in the night frames like a picture the extraordinary and deeply moving story of Alexeï Berg, the pianist. Alexeï grew up during the years of arbitrary detentions and executions of Stalin's reign of terror. His parents, suspects for a while, seem to have averted the worst. The old violin, played sometimes by a family friend, since executed as a traitor, is thrown into the fire by the father in the hope of avoiding a similar fate. To Alexeï's ears, the exploding strings make the sound of staccato played on a harp. This sound is engraved in his memory forever. Yet, on the eve of his debut concert, their time has run out and he must flee to escape his own certain arrest. To survive he follows the road west, hides, and, as last resort, takes on a dead soldier's identity. Creating an imagined personality, always conscious of dangers to his double life, he joins "his" unit on the frontlines in the war against the Germans. Not surprisingly, Alexei's attempts to drown his previous self, that of the high-spirited young pianist on the verge of success in Moscow, only succeeds so far. After the war ends, memories of the past start re-emerging. He can no longer pretend without difficulty. What happened to his parents? Visions of a life not lived lead him to confront his two realities. In the end, it is the piano and the music that heals and at the same time exposes him. By accepting the consequences of his "crime" he recovers the connection to his former life and his inner voice of music. Makine does not need many words to convey the intricacies of his hero's experiences. Using the precise, yet detached, language of an observer, he succeeds in conveying the reality of the Stalin purges, the horrors of war... the challenges of a generation, represented by Alexeï, that is caught in a life beyond its control. His intention is not to give his readers a grand epic of the man and his time. Rather, like a sculptor crafting a relief, Makine chisels out small pieces, highlighting minute details in some parts and using broad strokes in others to create his masterpiece. It succeeds also by drawing on the reader's understanding of the context, his empathy and power of im

This story, told in shockingly clear photographs, details the life of a man, ravaged by the war and Stalin's empire, who chooses against what moves his soul in order to save his body. The book is short, but that's what makes it beautiful. The plot is purposefully underdeveloped in writing; Makine provides the reader with pictures of a time and place, gives them a little knowledge about a man, and leaves the rest to the reader. In this way, Alexei Berg remains mysterious, a shadow, someone who could have been merely part of the homo sovieticus introduced by the narrator in the beginning of the novel. Instead, however, he becomes - in the mind of the narrator and the reader - someone real, someone with a past, but someone who could be one of the a hundred people waiting, silently, on the floor of a cold station, for the train to Moscow. This is the triumph of this novel - not the story itself, but that the story is not Alexei Berg's in particular, but a story of human spirit in general.

Andrei Makine's Music of a Life is a slim book, a mere 144 pages. It a simple story, told in a straightfoward, spare fashion. Yet within the framework of this simple story lies a profund piece of work that has an impact on the reader that, like the most beautiful music, lingers long after the last note fades into the night. Makine, for those not familiar with his work, was born in the Soviet Union in 1958. He emigrated to France as a young man. He writes in French. (Music of a Life was nicely translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan). At the risk of setting out what may sound like a hackneyed cliche, Makine's work for me combines the grace and elgance of the best French writers and the deep soul and conviction of the best Russian writers. Music of a Life is set out as the re-telling of a conversation had between two strangers on a train moving slowly west from Siberia sometime around 1958, the year many thousands finally won their release from the labor camps that dotted the Soviet Far East. Two men sit together. One older man, wearing clothes that mark him as someone just released from the Gulag strikes up a comnversation with his fellow passenger. The story is set out in the voice of the other passenger. As the train moves on the older passenger and the narrator exchange slowly. At some point the older passenger, Alexe Berg, slowly sets out his life story. In 1940, the young Alexe, a classically trained pianist of great talent and promise, was preparing for his debut recital. On approaching his family flat after the dress rehearsal he sees a pre-arranged symbol indiccating that his parents, supposedly dangerous members of the intelligentsia, had been swept up by the NKVD (pre-cursor to the KGB). Alexe makes his escape and finds himself hiding out in the Ukraine in 1941. The devastation of the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June of that year engulfs the Urkaine. Alexe comes upon the body of a dead Soviet solider, a peasant, and assumes the dead soldier's identify. Although this provides him some protection from those who might still seek his arrest, Alex realizes quickly that he must maintain this identity at all costs. Alexe makes it through the war in one piece and, in fact, finds favor with a Soviet general, who keeps him at his side as an aide de camp during the rest of the war. Alexe's survival remains dependent upon his being thought of as a simple peasant. After the war, Alexe finds work with the general's family. The general's daughter takes a liking to the young 'peasant' soldier. Alexe becomes enamored of the daughter. The daughter, whose piano-playing skills are somehwat limited, if earnest, decides to teach the young peasant Alexe a few simple tunes on the piano. These lessons lead, inexorably, to the book's climactic moments. The book leaves the reader (or at least it left me) contemplating the choices and compromises we sometimes make with life. It left me contemplating the question as to how much of myself

This novel is lyrical, wonderully written, economical with language, and deeply emotional. In this age where post-modern writers craft 700 page monsters that are in dire need of editing (of course there are wonderful novels this size, but mostly written before 1970), here is an intimate tale that is excatly as long as the story requires. With all due respect to the two reviews below--ignore them and you won't be sorry. Their criticism reminds me of Salieri's critique of Mozart's work in Amadeus--"sire, there are too many notes"--to which the proper response here is the same--"too many, there are just the right amount". The writing here is wonderful, straightforward and most of all, lacking attitude and artifice (for another writer similarly talented, try Ha Jin). Buy it.