Letter-Book (Письмовник)
by Mikhail Shishkin
Synopsis
Mikhail Shishkin’s stunning new novel Letterbook builds on the success of the phenomenal Maidenhair, bringing themes of love and history into a compelling framework. It records the correspondence between two lovers, torn apart by war. They tell each everything they did not manage to say while they were together: they talk about love, growing up, their parents, their childish fears and their hopes for the future. They talk about how they suffer while they are apart and how much they miss each other. But it is not clear when exactly these letters are being written. The young man, Vladimir, is called up as part of an international force marching into China to suppress the Boxer Rebellion. The girl, Sasha, finishes medical school and works as a gynaecologist. But it seems to be the 1960s. But that is not important.
In the novel, time is relative. Everything is relative. In Letterbook what is important is not what is going on outside, but rather the hours, days and years counted out by the metronome inside the two lovers, from birth to death. Sasha fell in love with Vladimir, and he returned that love. It was as if she was born again. Before that she did not exist, but now everything seems more real, and she tells him in her letters about her life, which has now started to make sense. He writes from the front about the military hospital, about the suffering of the wounded, about the fact that all words deceive us, that they can never truly reflect feelings. Vladimir is dying but the letters keep coming. And Sasha continues to write to him, even when he is dead and she is married, about her marriage, her dead child, how she has buried her parents.
Letterbook shows yet again why Mikhail Shishkin is considered by many to be the leading writer of his generation: his mastery of emotions and time, of the broad scope and intimate details make this book unmissable.