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| Compartment No. 6 / Rosa Liksom Translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers London: Serpent's Tail, 2014, c2011. 182 p. |
The bad: the revolting man who travels with her in her carriage all the way to Ulaanbaatar.
A young Finnish student suffering from a tragic love affair heads out of Moscow to the end of the line, as an escape. But into her train carriage comes Vadim Nikolayevich Ivanovo, a middle-aged ex-soldier who is crude, talkative, smelly, and rides with her for her entire trip.
I guess having strangers sharing sleeping cars, despite the age and gender difference, wasn't so odd in the Soviet Union of the 80s? At least they seem to take it as a given, even if she does find him a bit annoying. It was just strange to me. I don't know what the purpose was, what role he was supposed to play in her life. His constant talk of sexual conquests, his crude language, and his coming on to her was disgusting and showed the worst possible side of Soviet men. Our female lead seems to just take it in stride, and by the end is ready to head back to Moscow quite happily -- what did she possibly learn from this trip? That her young husband wasn't half bad in comparison? I'm not sure, but I certainly didn't see Vadim as an earthy, realistic man with something important to say, as some reviewers seem to think. If I was her I'd have pushed him out of the train early on.
I ended up flipping through a lot of the conversations they had, anyhow. He irritated me immensely. I stopped and read the descriptions of the land they were travelling through, and her thoughts about her own past. And I enjoyed the parts where she gets off the train and stays overnight in one of the many stops. The best parts of the book are simply the evocation of the places she sees.
But other than that descriptive power, and the evocation of the Soviet landscape, I didn't much like this book. The female lead was passive; Vadim was unbearable. There wasn't much plot other than movement through a landscape, and the conclusion was a bit weak also. There wasn't too much to conclude anyhow, other than the train ride.
Not a huge hit for me, unfortunately.
It sounds like one I would not like at all, either!
ReplyDeleteProbably not!
DeleteI had very similar feelings about this book, perhaps stronger since I didn't quite finish it!
ReplyDeleteI used to enjoy taking overnight trains when I lived in Russia and, yes, I very often rode in compartments with strangers. (I was lucky to have some very nice compartmentmates: one was a grandfatherly man who called me "daughter" and made sure to wake me up in the morning so I wouldn't miss my chance to get off the train in Moscow!) I think my biggest problem with the book was that I felt like it, unlike the train, just wasn't going anywhere. It did feel like Lola Rogers, as always, did a nice job with the translation.
I admit, I did kind of skip to the end as quickly as possible. It didn't sound unlikely to me that strangers would share a compartment, but this combo was creepy!
DeleteI agree, though, that the translation read very well.
I agree about "creepy," given the character! I often like a good claustrophobic novel but this one just didn't do it for me. (I'd really been looking forward to it, too, because I'm very interested in Finnish fiction.)
Delete