It’s not so easy to get Makine novels in Australia. In the end the purchase of this, along with a couple of others, was convoluted. I discovered what was supposed to be the best, or thereabouts, secondhand bookshop in Melbourne, Fully Booked. It has no web presence, no email, no phone number. Strictly in person purchases. Luckily my friend Noela doesn’t live far from Thornbury and was happy to make the trip, no doubt being an avid reader herself was an inducement. I gave her a list of authors I was after, including Makine. Then, on her next flight to Adelaide, Noela delivered them, fittingly, in a French bistro.
I cannot claim to be happy with this book. At the time I was reading it, I thought it was because I was between a couple of truly sensation authors – Murnane and Ejersbo – and however good Makine is, maybe he doesn’t cut the mustard in that company. But now I read that it is the third and last in a series and I haven’t read either of the others. I loved the setting, how he writes about his Russia. The love story aspect to me had something false about it and maybe that’s because he used it as a rationale for what he wanted to write. The ending in France is unsettling to say the least and I wonder what French nationals thought of it. It seems I have to read numbers one and two, and then revisit this one, much as it feels like a stand-alone to me.
Somebody online said that Makine’s great theme is how we in the present undervalue, for no good reason, the past. The historian in me agrees. Maybe that’s why I am drawn to reading him.
A little tea, a little chat 