Product Description

In a snowbound railway station deep in the Soviet Union, a stranded passenger comes across an old man playing the piano in the dark, silent tears rolling down his cheeks. Once on the train to Moscow he begins to tell his story: a tale of loss, love and survival that movingly illustrates the strength of human resilience.

'A novella to be read in a lunch hour and remembered for ever' Jilly Cooper, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph (20030607)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87425 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-09
• Original language: French
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Scotland On Sunday
'A tale of war, heartbreak and survival. Both powerful and graceful, it has...depth and scope.'

Review
'Makine here is as good as Stendhal - or Tolstoy ... [he is] storyteller, teacher, and enchanter most of all. I would rather read him than anyone else now writing, and then reread him. I think this is his best book so far.' (Allan Massie, Literary Review )

'Beautifully paced and filled with a lyricism that weaves reality and fantasy into a far bigger picture ... engrossing' (Scotsman )

'Geoffrey Strachan's strong and graceful translation of a novel written in French manages to let its Russian soul shine through. "A Life's Music" exchanges the lushness of Makine's earlier work ... for the fiercer pleasures of concise storytelling. This is Makine's art' (Ann Harleman, New York Times )

'With matchless delicacy and economy ... Makine presents a movingly detailed history of survival, adaption and bitter disillusionment ... perfectly conceived and controlled. Its graceful narrative skilfully blends summarized action with powerfully evocative images charged with strong understated emotion ... masterly' (Kirkus Reviews )

'[An] elegant, heart-rending little gem of a work ... entirely fresh and necessary. Highly recommended.' (Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (New York) )

'A Life's Music again proves Makine to be a very fine craftman.' (Times Play )

'Makine makes fresh images that are also profound and poignant, and this gives his portrait of a life derailed by history an irresistible authority.' (Sam Thompson, Times Literary Supplement )

'A tale of war, heartbreak and survival. Both powerful and graceful, it has...depth and scope.' (Scotland On Sunday )

'True to Makine's exquisite and haunting work, with its characteristic atmosphere born of pain and philosophy, this magnificent elegy of loss evokes the sheer size, mystery and chaos that is Russia.' (Irish Times )

'The writing remains both poignant and subtle with the nuances of living a secret life given both colour and gravitas. A Life's Music makes for a fascinating - if all too brief - read.' (Big Issue )

'This is truly a book to treasure.' (Good Book Guide )

'No contemporary writer has expressed his simultaneous love of Russia and hatred of Communism as eloquently as Andrei Makine, and this exquisite, poignant novella is one of his most satisfying works' (Sunday Telegraph )

'An unforgettable testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit.' (Simon Shaw, Mail on Sunday )

'Avoiding a heavy-handed treatment of Russian history, in little more than 100 pages Makine succeeds not only in condensing the life and loves of one man, but in capturing the fear that pervaded everyday life in Stalin's Soviet Union. It is the perfect riposte to anyone who believes that great Russian literature must be unwieldy and crammed with a cast of thousands' (Daily Mail )

Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (New York)
'[An] elegant, heart-rending little gem of a work ... entirely fresh and necessary. Highly recommended.'

Customer Reviews

A beautiful story
Andrei Makine's Life's Music is a slim book. It a simple story, told in a straightforward, spare fashion. Yet within the framework of this simple story lies a profound piece of work that has an impact on the reader that, like the most beautiful music, lingers long after the last note fades into the night.
Makine, for those not familiar with his work, was born in the Soviet Union in 1958. He emigrated to France as a young man. He writes in French. At the risk of setting out what may sound like a hackneyed cliche, Makine's work for me combines the grace and elegance of the best French writers and the deep soul and conviction of the best Russian writers.

A Life's Music is set up as the re-telling of a conversation had between two strangers on a train moving slowly west from Siberia sometime around 1958, the year many thousands finally won their release from the labor camps that dotted the Soviet Far East. Two men sit together. One older man, wearing clothes that mark him as someone just released from the Gulag strikes up a conversation with his fellow passenger. The story is set out in the voice of the other passenger. As the train moves on the older passenger and the narrator exchange slowly. At some point the older passenger, Alexei Berg, slowly sets out his life story.

In 1940, the young Alexei, son of prominent artists and himself a classically trained pianist of great talent and promise, was preparing for his debut recital. On approaching his family flat after the dress rehearsal he sees a pre-arranged symbol indicating that his parents, supposedly dangerous members of the intelligentsia, had been swept up by the NKVD (pre-cursor to the KGB). Alexei makes his escape and finds himself hiding out in the Ukraine in 1941. The devastation of the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June of that year engulfs the Urkaine. Alexei comes upon the body of a dead Soviet solider, a peasant, and assumes the dead soldier's identify. Although this provides him some protection from those who might still seek his arrest, Alexei realizes quickly that he must maintain this identity at all costs.

Alexei makes it through the war in one piece and, in fact, finds favor with a Soviet general, who keeps him at his side as an aide de camp during the rest of the war. Alexei's survival remains dependent upon his being thought of as a simple peasant. After the war, Alexei finds work as the general's driver. The general's daughter takes a liking to the young 'peasant' soldier. Alexei becomes enamored of the daughter. The daughter, whose piano-playing skills are somewhat limited, if earnest, decides to teach the young peasant Alexei a few simple tunes on the piano. These lessons lead, inexorably, to the book's climactic moments.

The book leaves the reader (or at least it left me) contemplating the choices and compromises we sometimes make with life. It left me contemplating the question as to how much of myself would I compromise, how much of myself would I keep hidden in order to maintain some small amount of freedom in an unfree world.

As I noted at the beginning, this is a simple story, simply told. Yet, as with music, sometimes even simple combinations of notes creates a beautiful mosaic of sound. Makine has done this with the graceful combination of notes that makes up his Life's Music.

Beautifully constructed novella
Makine's 'ALM' is a touching novella set around a chance encounter between two strangers at a remote Russian train station. The unnamed narrator is surveying the others waiting for the Moscow train, examples of 'Homo sovieticus', the modern Russian species. Among the soldiers, the prostitutes, the destitute, one man catches his attention, a pianist who he finds weeping at a piano in one of the station houses. When the train eventually arrives, the two travel together and the pianist, Alexei, tells his life story.
Alexei's story is touching and melancholy, yet strangely uplifting, and revolves around two events of significance. The first is the burning of a violin that belonged to a friend of the family. The friend had become an undesirable, and Alexei's parents burned the violin so that they couldn't be connected to an undesirable by the authorities. The arpeggioed sound of the strings snapping in the fire represent the end of music for Alexei. When his parents are arrested, he flees abandoning a piano recital in the process. He takes on a new identity and tries to lose himself in the war, succeeding in leaving his past, and his music, far behind. Eventually though, seated at a piano surrounded by polite Russian society, he reveals his music and exposes himself as a fugitive. The rediscovery of his music condemns him to face soviet justice, but gives Alexei the inner freedom that he had lost.
'ALM' is a beautiful little novella. It took me an hour and a half to read, and much longer to think about. Makine's use of music as representing what Alexei had lost to the soviet regime is touching and well realised, and the denouement in which he throws off his shackles at the piano is dramatic and powerful. It is a sad reflection on Stalinist Russia, but is in no way political in the narrow sense. Instead it shows one person's story amongst millions, imbuing it with a dignified melancholy and power that belies the simplicity of the story. 'ALM' follows firmly in the tradition of Solzhenitsyn and Chukovskaya, yet is touched with more lyricism than either. It is an excellent example of a novella, and of modern Russian writing, and should be widely appreciated.

Powerful story; excellent writing
Short in length but extremely powerful in impact, this story continues Makine's exploration of the dark side of his Motherland's history. In his usual liquid prose, Makine lays bare the skeleton of a life wrecked by circumstance and prejudice -- all from the starting point of a simple incident in a railway station. The story is resonant and excruciatingly sad. A lot to pay on a per page basis but cheap for the affect it will have on you and the way that it will open your eyes to the fragility of existence. I am a fan of Mr Makine's writing, as you can tell.