Product Description

In 1919 Siberia, in the outer reaches of a country recently torn apart by civil war, lives a small Christian sect and its enigmatic leader, Balashov. Stationed in their midst is a company of Czech soldiers, on the losing side of the recent conflict and desperate to get home. Into this isolated community trudges Samarin, an escapee from Russia's northernmost prison. His arrival intrigues many of the locals, including Anna Petrovna, a beautiful young war widow, but when the local shaman is found dead, suspicion and terror engulf the little town..."The People's Act of Love" is an epic drama of desire and sacrifice, a grand table for modern times.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17499 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-02
• Released on: 2006-02-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 391 pages

Review
"The People's Act of Love has a timeless quality; it will be read, referenced, studied and talked about for years to come." Irvine Welsh "A great book, rich and illuminating and impossibly imaginative." BBC 2 Newsnight Review "This is a book to read." Helen Dunmore, The Times His book is a humdinger; brace yourself for a shock or two, but be sure to read The People's Act of Love." The Spectator "This remarkable and ambitious book succeeds as a savagely colourful, always-astonishing entertainment of elegant and bold storytelling." Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard "A quite extraordinary novel!" Philip Pullman "An exceptional event in English literature." Anthony Beevor "A big, bold, thrillingly different story told with uncanny authority." Michel Faber "By turns gruesome, beguiling and beautiful. I know I've found my novel of the year." Alan Warner"

Philip Pullman
A quite extraordinary novel. The language is so fresh and crisp and sparkling. What a narrative! What a story!

M John Harrison, Daily Telegraph
More than a thriller and much more than an homage to the Russian novel.

Customer Reviews

A long trudge
I bought this book on the recommendation of Amazon after it was suggested as the "Perfect Partner" to Harry Thompson's magnificent "This Thing Of Darkness". Intrigued by the plot summary I decided to give it a go and it has left me with very mixed feelings.

The quality of writing is undoubted as Meek writes with a fine eye for detail and he paints a very vivid picture regarding the most trivial matter. While I applaud authors for taking the time to do this, Meek has taken it to extremes at times much to the cost of the flow of the novel. Furthermore, while he lavishes two paragraphs on the description of an office where very little happens, he tells us virtually nothing that helps gauge the size of the town where the majority of the book takes place so I had no sense of scale regarding the setting.

The characters are varied and well drawn, but with the exception of the sinister Samarin who occasionally raises a smile, nearly all of the rest are a rather po-faced bunch. As such, it's hard to feel anything for them and by the time I reached the end I really didn't care anymore. The ending is, I might add, a massive letdown and holds no surprises.

The plot summary suggests a town in the grip of fear, but I would say apathy is more accurate and that soon spread to me as it lurches along in fits and starts before getting bogged down for long periods and just when things seem to be getting going, it goes off on another tangent so while some parts were quite exciting, I was very bored for a fair chunk of it.

What this book is crying out for is a good editing as I would suggest it is a good 100 pages too long. Some may like the lush descriptions, but after a while you'll probably find yourself longing for something to happen. The cover features glowing testimonials from Irvine Welsh, Philip Pullman and Louis De Bernieres who all rate this book very highly. I only hope that none of them ever write a book as weary as this. Read it if you like detailed descriptive prose. Don't read it you want an exciting yarn about spooky goings on deep in the woods. Holiday reading it isn't.

A review of the reviewers
Rarely before have I read such a diverging set of reviews. One reviewer refers to this book as "ridiculous", someone else calls it "stunning", and another "boring". Allow me to try to make some sense of all this.

Most reviewers find the book well-written, although a few found the language to be slow-going. A novel doesn't need to be an easy read in order to be well-written. I agree that the reading was a little slow at times, but I attribute that to the richness of the language.

The plot and setting are definitely original, and the author can only be given credit for that. The story focuses on the arrival in a small Siberian village of an escaped prisoner, who claims he is pursued by a cannibal. As the novel unfolds, we meet a group of stranded Czech soldiers, a community of eunuchs, and are left wondering who the cannibal really is... Most events, like the presence in Siberia of Czech soldiers, are based on historical fact.

The author spends much of his efforts on character development. He devotes large chunks of the first 150 pages to the lives and background of the various characters. This may give the impression at times that the storyline is going off on a tangent, and can explain why some reviewers found the plot boring or confusing.

However, character development is fundamental to the understanding of the book's main theme, which centers on different people's perception of love and the acts of stupidity and folly it can engender.

I will conclude by agreeing with one reviewer who claims that although all the ingredients were there, the author could perhaps have mixed them better. Had he done so, the book would have been a true masterpiece. A good and entertaining read all the same.

A journey into a harsh place
This is not a cosy little murder mystery. In superficial terms, the plot turns on an isolated community in Siberia discovering that there is a cannibal in their midst. But don't read this if you are looking for yet another 'police procedural' with an exotic setting; this is not a tale of 'good guys' versus 'bad guys'.

Disperate characters act out of conflicting motives; some we might identify with, some may feel very foreign. Those who act out of the purest idealism may perform the actions that a observer would categorise as the most horrific; those characters who at first may seem most alien to us may act out of the simplest motives, the motives with which we can most easily identify.

If the above paragraph seems obscure,it is because I do not want to spoil the twists and turns of the plot for the reader! Other reviewers praise Meek's prose; for me, the strength of his writing lies in his characterisations; he has the ability to make the unusual sympathetic, and the mundane monstrous.

But he does not shy away from the realities of a terrible period - as Meek points out in his afterword, the use of a human "cow" is not an invention of the author's, but a documented practice. Similarly, the Skoptsy self-castration for religious purposes - which seems to so disturb another reviewer! - was an integral belief of this unusual religious sect, who flourished, despite severe persecution for around a hundred years. Personally I find the absence of any concern for human life demonstrated by some of the secular zealots of the story far more chilling.

This is a novel that deals with disturbing ideals, and the lengths to which people will go to achieve them. It deals also with various types of love, and the way in which a common emotion produces very different effects on different people. By bringing the scale down to the personal and intimate, we get to sympathise with each character to some extent, however monstrous their actions.

The more unlikely elements in the book - the Skoptsy, the trans-Siberian railway line as Czech territory, the human "cow" - are true. The one element that is fictitious (as Meek admits, the description of life in a katorga fits the Soviet period, not the tsarist), is permitted by context.

However, this is not a freak-show; the novel asks, "What rules can be broken, to achieve [heaven/a socialist utopia/a good upbringing for your child/a return home/the survival of the one you love]?" "What can be sacrificed?" "Should *you* make that sacrifice... or should it be someone else...?"

The introduction of various characters may seem to shatter the focus of the narrative, until their stories interleave, but it is necessary to know the character's backgrounds. One has to know the 'normality' from which the events of the novel precipitates them, as they are stretched, and learn new things about themselves