Sergeyich lives with his six bee hives in a small village in the no-man's-land between the Ukrainian army and the Russian-backed separatists of the Donblas region. Only one other person lives in the village: Pashka, his friend whom Sergeyich has disliked since school. There is no electric power, so the TV doesn't work and Sergeyich can't even charge his mobile. During the long cold days of winter, the boredom is broken only by the sound of artillery overhead, Sergeyich's scheme to rename the villages two roads, the arrival of the post during a truce and the occasional visitor. There is a dead man in the field behind the house and a sniper somewhere in the village.
The first half of the book describes how Sergeyich endures. It reminded me of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In the second half, Sergeyich spends summer in his beaten-up old Lada, seeking an orchard where his bees can find pollen and make honey while he lives with them in tent, occasionally making forays to town. His first stop, an idyll with a lady shopkeeper, comes to an end when the hostility and suspicion he faces boils over into violence. Sop he travels to Russian-held Crimea where he meets a family of Tartars.
In the blurb, the Telegraph reviewer describes the author as a "post-Soviet Kafka". I looked up 'Kafkaesque' in as thesaurus and discovered synonyms such as nightmarish, surreal, phantasmagoric and illusory, all words which I would associate with Ishiguro's The Unconsoled but not this novel. There are similarities with Kafka. When Sergeyich confronts the state, usually in the form of law enforcement or the military, he is baffled by it but often it treats him well, letting him pass through borders with ease; in my experience it can be more difficult gaining access to the USA. Another similarity to Kafka's prose (and Solzhenitsyn's) is the deadpan delivery. Sergeyich does this and thinks that: there is no melodrama here, even though he confronts life or death situations. But I wouldn't call this book Kafkaesque.
It reminded me more of a picaresque in which the lovable rogue is replaced as protagonist by a lovable innocent. In some ways Sergeyich is the holy fool found in Russian literature such as Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov. His adventures reminded me of Candide in Voltaire's Candide or the hero of The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek (although I read that a long time ago and it is rather hazy in my memory).
But he wasn't particularly innocent. He tells Petro, the Ukrainian soldier, where the sniper's hideout is and shortly afterwards the sniper is blown to bits by a land mine placed under his lair. Clearly Sergeyich is responsible for this death. You can forgive this. The man was a sniper; he probably killed the man Sergeyich sees lying dead at the start of the book. But you can't describe Sergeyich as innocent.
The foreword, which refers to the Russo-Ukrainian war, suggests that the author intends this book to convey a message, although what that message is rather bewilders me. Is it that a holy fool, clumsy in the way he interacts with other people (though invariably getting away with it) can, by his meddling, cause harm? Or is it simply to show how an ordinary man, bumbling through live without ever taking sides, can survive when the rest of the world is riven by conflict?
Why is everyone so nice to Sergeyich, starting with Petro but continuing with ex-wife Vitalina, occasional girlfriend Galya and beekeeper Bekir? Almost everyone, including border guards, help and support Sergeyich; some journalists even hold a whip-round to pay for the damage to his car. There are a couple of villains, but even they aren't very effective.
The characters are fascinatingly under-drawn. Precisely what is Pashka's relationship with the separatists; is it sinister or is it no different to Sergeyich's relationship with the Ukranian soldier Petro who, for some reason I didn't understand, repeatedly risks his life to service Sergeyich's smallest whims? Perhaps the fuzzy drawing of the other characters reflects Sergeyich's own lack of interest in other people. He's only really interested in his bees.
This is the second 'beekeeper' book I have read recently, the first being The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri in which the hero is a refugee from the Syrian civil conflict. Perhaps there is a cultural meme which uses beekeeping as a shorthand for 'innocent fleeing war'. Although the hero of TBoA isn't an innocent either; he also causes a bad man to be killed.
Selected quotes:
- "You live somewhere long enough, and you'll have more family in the ground there than above it." (Ch 4)
- "He listened to himself coughing as if were outside his body, as if he had been split in two: the patient-self and the healer-self." (Ch 10)
- "The sun appeared to be weakening, as if its voltage had dropped." (Ch 16)
- "Sergeyich missed work ... Not the kind you have to travel to in packed minibuses, but the kind your hands itch to get done. Labour like that can distract you from idle sadness, and can even bring you joy, if it has an immediate goal - like the removal of snow, for example." (Ch 21)
- "Smoking kills - vodka thrills." (Ch 24)
- "He wouldn't always show up drunk, of course; sometimes he wouldn't show up at all." (Ch 25)
- "It's better to talk when you're with a person - when their voice isn't torn loose from their body, when you can see them." (Ch 38)
- "He found himself in a fairy tale, where nature not only serves people but dotes upon them." (Ch 46)
April 2024; 349 pages
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