The Tattered Cloak And Other Novels

From Library Journal\nParis in the Thirties and Forties provides the setting for these six short novels detailing the lives, losses, and loves of Russian emigres in a style reminiscent of Chekhov. The Paris of Berberova (now 89 and living in the United States since the Fifties) is not a gay or exhilarating place. Instead, her stories of middle-ranking Russian exiles new to poverty are filled with despair for their crumbling old world. Many of her characters meet painful ends through suicide or illness, and a common theme is the fruitless search for love and a little comfort. In the title story a young girl describes a series of losses and descent into poverty experienced by a bureaucrat and his St. Petersburg family. Their eventual arrival in Paris is not the stuff that dreams are made of: "I'm going to Paris. We've come to Paris. . . . But what I saw my first day resembled neither silk nor lace nor champagne." Beautifully told stories, but not for the faint of heart. For serious fiction collections in public and academic libraries.
- Amy Lewontin, Bentley Coll., Waltham, Mass.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.\nLanguage Notes\nText: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian\nFrom Publishers Weekly\nThose who lament the passing of the golden age of Russian literature may now take heart--the American debut of Russian emigree Berberova (b. 1901) is marked by the psychological profundity, the painterly attention to detail and the exquisite storytelling powers of the masters. In length and scope more like novellas than novels, the six pieces collected here all focus on characters whose heritage has been left in tatters by the Russian Revolution. Accustomed to lives of ease, they are cast into sorely straitened circumstances, taking up residence in Paris or the U.S. (where Berberova herself has lived since 1950), nourishing their nostalgia for the all-important past as they labor as laundresses or clerks, or search for a wealthy lover. Perhaps the most extraordinary work of all is "Atashev in Paris," in which a man from a formerly upper-class family teams up with his late father's second wife to establish himself comfortably in Paris. Becoming a life insurance agent, he sells policies by mouthing metaphysical truisms ("Allow me to inform you of some important news. . . . We are all mortal"), to which he himself is oblivious. Berberova's delicate structure diffuses the irony of her plot, conveying a portrait that is equally sensitive and detached.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.\nFrom Kirkus Reviews\nQuintessentially Russian in mood and theme, the collected novellas of 89-year-old Russian ‚migr‚ and former Princeton professor Berberova now make their American debut. Set mainly in Paris, where Berberova, like so many other Russians, lived after the Revolution, the six stories are of men and women ill-prepared for exile and irrevocably shaped by their Russian past. In ``The Resurrection of Mozart,'' the Russian hosts of a party in the French countryside on the eve of the German invasion are relatively prosperous, but the hostess--when asked whom she would choose to resurrect--suggests Mozart, because she connects his name with her earliest childhood and because he lives on as something ``transparent and eternal that might take the place of happiness.'' In ``The Waiter and the Slut,'' the aging Tania, who has lived off men since she came to Paris, moves in with an old ‚migr‚ waiter and decides to take revenge for her unhappy life by inciting him to murder her. Meanwhile, in the longest two pieces- -''The Tattered Cloak'' and ``The Black Pestilence''--a woman and man respectively cannot escape the past. The young woman, who works in a Parisian laundry, is sustained by the story of the legendary ``Tattered Cloak'' told to her in St. Petersburg. And like the diseased pearl earring he must sell, the man in the second story- -despite friendship and an advantageous move to America--is slowly being destroyed