Maylis de Kerangal

Two people meet on a train and despite not sharing a language recognize the desperation in each other and form a bond. Aliocha is a teenage conscript headed for a Siberian training camp with his troop. Desperate to escape before reaching his destination, he turns to a foreign woman for help. Hélène had come to Siberia with her lover, but boards the Trans-Siberian train one night with only one thought—escape. As the train moves relentlessly onward toward the east, the tension mounts between the protagonists and between them and the world.

This small novel is incredibly well-crafted. From the start I was drawn in and became increasingly anxious for Aliocha. It was a little harder to inhabit Hélène's mind, as her motivations are not as well-drawn, but the relationship between the two highlights a shared humanity that I found moving. I couldn't put the book down and finished it in a single sitting. Highly recommended.… (mehr)

This story of a Russian conscript who decides to desert while on the train taking him to basic training and eventually to fight in Ukraine was originally published in France in 2012 during the last war on Ukraine. Sadly it is as timely now as it was a decade ago.

Aliosha was too timid to find a way out of service, but now aboard the Trans-Siberian Railroad the reality of what lays before him, the indecency of his fellow conscripts and the cruelty of the Russian military becomes his reality. He realizes he has no choice but to disappear somewhere in the vastness of Siberia. He enlists the assistance of a French woman escaping her own untenable situation, by instilling sympathy and fear in equal measure. This is their story.

The writing in this novella is beautiful (it is translated from French so I can only speak to the English version) and deKerangal is masterful in creating a sense of fear, desperation, and urgency that turns this pivotal moment between strangers into a sort of thriller.… (mehr)

Maylis de Karangal's extraordinary 'Mend the Living' may well have been my book-of-the-year of 2017. I was eager to read this too. Here is a book that shows the same virtuosic and original command of language, the same lack of dependence on what might traditionally be seen as a plot. It swept me away with its initial narrative , bringing together the visionaries, the professionals, the technicians, the foot soldiers, the hangers on, the chancers who see an opportunity in the development on a quite enormous suspension bridge in Coca, Southern California. Some feature often in the narrative. Others less so.

My initial enthusiasm slightly waned: maybe constructing suspension bridges isn't quite my thing. But as a tour de force, giving real insight into the workings of such a project (though that certainly isn't the point: this is no construction manual), as well as tantalising glimpses of often essentially nomadic lives, it's as wonderfully constructed as 'Mend the Living'. All the same, the dramatic interest to be had from the birth of the bridge, or the death of a young man can't quite be compared. 'Mend the Living' won by a country mile.… (mehr)