BOOKS | REVIEWS: THE YEAR OF THE COMET

"The Year of the Comet" by Sergei Lebedev, translated by Antonina W. Bouis
"The Year of the Comet" by Sergei Lebedev, translated by Antonina W. Bouis

"The Year of the Comet," in which a nameless man in a crumbling nation questions what is fact and what is fiction, is an interesting novel to explore in 2017. Russian author Sergei Lebedev examines how much of our world is an existing narrative passed down through the generations and how much each individual can remake.

Lebedev's nameless narrator knows that on the day he was born, a great fault opened deep below Bucharest that was felt more than 1,000 miles away in Moscow in the falling Soviet Union. It was as if the earthquake that shook the Eastern Bloc shook the narrator's familial narrative wide open for exploration. Lebedev writes that Soviet families are "overloaded" by history.

"Too many people had died before their time," he writes. "And the family remained exposed to the crossfire of history, constantly reconfiguring itself to the intensity of the losses, finding a replacement for once significant figures."

Lebedev's narrator is that significant figure for his family. Both Grandmother Mara and Grandmother Tanya, the matriarchs of his respected familial branches, remind him that he is a "fantastic win in the lottery, a win in the game with the century; a justification for their suffering, deprivation and loses; justification and meaning."

He feels the pressure. He begins to question everything from his name to his very existence. How can he be expected to replace his grandfathers, men of great merit who died in World War II?

Coupled with constant anxiety, the narrator feels a sense of power. He is supported and driven by the opinion of the dead. His fate, he believes, is predetermined.

But questions bubble up from deep within as he observes, but does not consciously acknowledge, that his world within the Soviet Union is slowly deteriorating around him.

The narrator feels this acutely when he visits Grandmother Mara. She sits dutifully quilting as he explores the room with his eyes. A map of the U.S.S.R. catches him and he is struck with horror-the patchwork of colors representing the individual republics looked like his grandmother's quilt. The Union was supposed to be "indissoluble," if it could be broken apart like quilt squares, who is to say that anything he knows is real? He begins to pick and pull at the strings that tie his family to the past.

Lebedev's child narrator speaks to the reader in an elegant and poetic manner. The time that passes between subheadings within the four parts of the novel is negligible, as if the narrator himself does not feel the passing of time. Lebedev writes that "a child grows in a field of conflict greater than his horizon of comprehension, inheriting historical anxiety as a background and milieu of life."

This passage feels particularly true as the narrator experiences a country life that is sewn together by generations of farms and families, then is slashed open when a serial killer targeting young boys arrives.

The narrator feels a sharp distrust of authority figures. He is not sure that his order-obsessed father or the state police will be able to save him and his friends from the killer's knife. He takes it upon himself to rip out the seams and save himself and his friends, even if it means sacrificing himself at the expense of his family's legacy.

Consider "The Year of the Comet" for those looking for an escape into a world and a time that feels far away, but with themes and questions that transcend.

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