The Big Green Tent

By -
The Big Green Tent, by Ludmila Ulitskaya

Phew, I wanted to get this very long novel finished in time for the end of Women in Translation month, and I did!  AND this is the second time I've written this post, because Blogger ate the first one.  I hope I can remember what I said.

Three schoolboys become friends in post-Stalinist Russia; so do three girls, in a different class.  Their lives are the lattice for the intertwinings of many characters over four decades.  Many of them are involved with underground activities, the samizdat network or political advocacy.  The story moves around in time, following people through years or decades and then turning back again to other stories.

Although the book cover's blurb focuses on the three boys, I really felt that Olga's story is the center of the novel; although she does not appear in the beginning or the end, she dominates half the book, to the point that parts of her story are told twice or even three times, with different emphases.  You could make a really interesting tapestry by mapping out the appearances of various people.

Most of the main characters are involved in literature, art, or music, but we meet all kinds of people: elderly peasants, wise grandmothers, Party hacks and spies, oppressed Tatars and old soldiers.  Ulitskaya is very skilled at handling the transitions from one person to another, and I sometimes didn't even notice for a while that she'd done it and I was immersed in a different life.  The result is one of those sprawling, complex novels that contains a tremendous amount and which I really enjoyed.  It reminded me of A Suitable Boy or In the First Circle.


What is the big green tent, you ask?  It is only mentioned once, in a dream, but its shadow lies over the whole novel.

I really like the cover, by the way.  It's nice that it's not red, for once (even the little Soviet flag!), and the patterns are kind of quilty, which I like.  (It even makes me happy that nobody tried to make the font extra-Russian by reversing the R or anything.  I wouldn't have expected that, since this is not an 80s movie about the Cold War, but it's still something I appreciate.)



Hey, I know, I'll give you a bonus song!  As long as I'm in a Russian mood--a while back I watched this fun little children's series made in about 1985, called Visitor From the Future.  It was hugely popular at the time, and it's a neat piece of history to watch now.  It's fun, kind of goofy in spots, and very sweet.  This is the theme song with classroom scenes that don't give you spoilers.  Watch it sometime if you get a chance!



Comments

  1. Esther | Chapter AdventuresSeptember 1, 2016 at 7:04 PM

    I've seen that cover so many times, but I never knew what the book was about. I love that they chose green instead of red too. What you said about the title is so intriguing! It feels like one of those books that has many details, many characters, many stories, and you feel like you've travelled for a long time after finishing it. I don't know if you ever get that feeling, it's hard to explain haha

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanSeptember 8, 2016 at 2:17 PM

    Nope, I know what you mean, and you are right. This book is like that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ArenelSeptember 19, 2016 at 4:01 AM

    Ah, I'm so glad you've watched the movies! They are indeed super-cute and also very idealistic when it comes to portraying Soviet school :D They are based on the series of books of the same name by Kir Bylychev, and I really recommend them if there are any translations. When I was 13 and in a hospital for 10 days, this is the book I wanted to read, because it's full of adventure and likable characters :)

    Also I'm a bit ashamed I haven't read any Ulitskaya, she seems to be big.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JeanSeptember 19, 2016 at 4:08 PM

    I didn't know there were books---I hope there are translations! But I bet there aren't.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more