I've just read the other reviews of this book and seem to be in a minority of one in not adoring it!. I really wanted to; I kept returning to it in the hope the story would grip me. But it just didn't. So, three stars and not two because the language is sometimes so beautifully originally descriptive. It also gained a little from being set in Moscow so I could picture the buildings from memory.

Found on a bookshelf at W. H. Smith in Gatwick.

Mom, I would be curious to see what you think of this?

loved the style of this book. 1980s USSR - an artist turned party line art critic has lost his integrity/himself.

'Haunting', 'Stunning' & 'Heartbreaking' claims the cover. The blurb is something I always take with a pinch of salt - but on this occasion, for me, the book was all those things.

I think it would strike a chord with many, as most people have to compromise and sell out to some degree in order to have comfort and security for themselves or their family - often losing who they are in this life process. Thankfully, these days not many are in the extreme situation that Sukhanov (and others) faced, in which case nor can we truly imagine it - but due to the accomplished writing here, we experience the culminating poignant aftermath of his past life choices along with him.
Poor, dear Sukhanov, my heart was hurting.

As the book progresses, he increasingly wanders in and out of the past. When he visits a place which triggers a memory, he steps right into that memory and relives the events of long ago. The past manifests so strongly that it seems to overlay the present completely, temporarily obliterating it.
As his mind crumbled things progressively became more confused and blurred, and I felt quite dreamlike myself. That was probably because the writing is astounding - and this was Olga Grushin's first novel.

My copy was a library book I had requested, but I have now ordered my own - along with her other two currently available novels. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I liked it very much indeed.

It's difficult to review a book like this. Perhaps I should wait a few days and allow it to sink in before I try -- but it was in the middle of it that I decided I would give it 5 stars, so it should be enough to explain why.

I cannot begin to explain why this book had such an emotional impact on me. Some of it, I think, cut a little bit too close to my heart for comfort. There were moments when I stopped and looked at a sentence and knew that it was my own emotions crystallised into words on a page, no matter the differences in situation between myself and the character in question.

There were a few moments where I stopped and stared because of the sheer beauty of the prose, which at times was like a poem. It painted a picture so vivid and yet slightly too surreal to be within reach -- as though the world we were seeing wasn't clear enough, wasn't obvious, but could be seen through the clouded glass of an abstract painting. At other times it an absolute edge, a perceptive observation that perfectly encapsulated whatever it was describing.

(Do I sound pretentious? I can't help it. I finished the book just minutes ago and the prose style has rubbed off on me. Everything seems to be tinged with a need to be profound. But if this is irritating you, then I apologise. It won't go on much longer.)

And still other times I hesitated before continuing because something had been phrased in such a way that it had brought me to think of something entirely differently to how I had looked at it before, and gave clarity to thoughts which had previously seemed muddled in my head.

This book was philosophy disguised as fiction, and truth pretending to be a dream. The enigmatic narrative style -- the shifting dream sequences, memories and the switch from third to first person every so often -- kept me, as a reader, alert and focused instead of skimming, yet it was compelling enough that I finished it in a day.

My quest now begins to recommend this to as many people as I can.

This is a story of a 56-year-old man, who 25 years earlier traded his life as an underground artist for that of a high-ranking Soviet agent. He ends up betraying his family, his friends and himself. The novel is set in present-day Moscow (1985), then flashes to the past and is full of dream sequences. I thought it was well-written, but I didn't like how it constantly moved from the first to second person.

Shukanov ist ein ziemlich unsympatisch dargestellter sowjetischer Kulturfunktionär (Chefredakteur einer Kunstzeitschrift). Er hat sich in seinem abgesicherten und bequemen Parteibonzenleben mit Chauffeur und Luxuswohnung eingerichtet und dabei seine Ideale und Erfahrungen aus der Vergangenheit erfolgreich verdrängt. Im Jahre 1985 prasselt auf einmal die Perestroika auf ihn ein, es wird von "oben" mehr Offenheit erwartet, seine Kinder begehren auf, seine Frau hintergeht ihn. Gleichzeitig kommen (unplausibel) allerlei verdrängten Erinnerungen aus Kindheit und Jugend wieder hervor. Eine sinnvolle Auflösung findet das ganze nicht, vielmehr ist Olga Grushin, daran gelegen, ihren Protagonisten zu quälen, ihm zu zeigen, dass er nicht mehr in die Zeit passt und sich nie hätte dem System anpassen dürfen.

Diese wütende Pointe wäre für einen Anfang der 90er in Russland herausgebrachten Roman sicherlich verständlich. Tatsächlich stammt dieser Roman aus den USA, in denen die Autorin zum Zeitpunkt des Erscheinens 2005 bereits 10 Jahre lebte und sie hat das amerikanische schwarz-weiß denken vollumfänglich aufgenommen, weswegen sie die von ihr selbst aufgeworfenen interessanten Fragestellungen ignoriert: Der Vater des Protagonisten hat sich vor seinen Augen umgebracht, nachdem er mehrere Jahre unter Stalin im Lager war. Sein väterlicher Freund, ein Kunstpofessor, wurde eines Nachts abgeholt und nie wieder gesehen. Ist es da nicht nachvollziehbar, dass der Protagonist sich aus Angst anpasst. Viele der Freunde des Protagonisten haben sich in der "Tauwetter" Phase mit Kritik hervorgewagt und wurden dann weggesperrt oder zumindest in Nischen verbannt. Ist es da nicht nachvollziehbar, dass Sukhanov Glasnot und Perestroika nicht traut? Das Aufbegehren der Kinder ist vor allen Dingen der Genussucht geschuldet und wäre nicht möglich, wenn sie nicht der privilegierten Bonzenklasse angehören würden. Warum stellt sich die Autorin so entschieden auf diese Seite?

Über Kunst lässt sich freilich streiten und das Thema Kunst war es, was mich an diesem Buch interessiert hat aber viele der Thesen der Autorin zeugen doch eher von einem antiquierten, postsowjetischen Kunstverständnis und mangelnder Bildung. So finden sich immer wieder Bezüge auf Kandinsky (der von der Autorin als Formalist abgetan wird, was eine orthodox sowjetische Sichtweise ist und von dem immer nur Werke aus seiner orphischen Werkphase als Beispiel genommen werden), auf Chagall (dessen "liebliches" Spätwerk gepriesen wird und dessen wesentlich bedeutsameres früh- und Mittelwerk, das man in den Museen der USA nicht findet ignoriert wird), auf Tatlin (dessen Werk der Autorin wohl nur durch Paraphrasen bei Kabakov bekannt zu sein scheint), sowie auf Dalí (dessen Werk der Autorin wohl ausreichend gut bekannt ist). Wer ein Buch in der Kunstsphäre ansiedelt und Dialoge über künstlerische Entwicklungen in den Mittelpunkt stellt, sollte seine Hausaufgaben machen.

Kurzum, eigentlich 2 Sterne, den dritten gibt es, weil es ein Erstlingswerk ist und viele der Mangelerscheinungen für Erstlinge typisch sind.

The Dream Life of Sukhanov is an elegantly written and richly imagined novel.

A quick glance over the jacket copy left me reluctant to plunge in. The story centers on the 50-something protagonist. Who wants to read a book about someone in their 50s? I thought before I, of course, remembered that I'm in, er, that is, near, er, that is, closer than some of you to my 50s.

And who would want to read a book set in Russia, the most frozen and depressing place on earth? But Sukhanov's Russia is a place of champagne, fine wool coats, parties under chandeliers. Sukhanov belongs to the privileged class, you see, although events fix that. Best say no more, lest I give things away.

The story can get a little confusing as it shifts between the real world and Sukhanov's dream world. It took me a couple rounds to recognize the we're-in-dream-world signals, but I picked up on it. At the very end, though, I wasn't sure what was real and what was not.

Kniha se sice odehrává v Rusku nebo spíše Sovětském svazu ale řeší otázky, které jsou obecné a univerzální. Také umělecké, konkrétně výtvarné prostředí je taková třešnička navíc, protože otázku, zda se vzdávat svých snů, názorů a přesvědčení ve prospěch úspěchu, peněz a materiálního zabezpečení své rodiny, řeší i lidé z jiných profesí. Stejně i to, kam až v tomto prodávání sebe sama dojít aniž bych pak musel sám sebou pohrdat.
-- Příběh chudého idealisty, který podlehl lákání peněz jsme mohli číst v mnoha podobách. Zde je to ještě trošku zamotanější a vyhrocenější protože zde hraje roli i umělecká svoboda a zločinný režim, který tuto svobodu potlačuje ale zároveň nabízí bezpracný zisk podložený kolaborací. Když máte bohaté rodiče, rebeluje se velice snadno. Vždy se zpravidla můžete pokorně vrátit do zlaté klece. Pokud válčíte neustále s penězi, pak může být rozhodování složitější, protože nabídky ďábla jsou lákavější a šanci vyhrabat se z bídy již příště nemusíte vůbec dostat.
-- Trošku mne zklamalo, že výtvarný umění a osobnosti jako Rublev, Chagall, Dalí nebo Malevič nehrají v příběhu tak významnou roli, jak by se z anotace knihy mohlo zdát. Každopádně asi s hlavním hrdinou v těch pasážích, které se odehrávají v přítomnosti (což jsou v knize pozdní osmdesátá léta) nebudete moc sympatizovat. A většina otázek, situací a konfliktů, které jsou zde zasazeny do Sovětského Svazu ve fázi klinické smrti, nebo v případě flashbacků do minulosti tak stalinské nebo chruščovské éry, musí řešit lidé i ve svobodném světě a proto je poselství knihy víceméně universální.

I will honestly never be over this book.

I wrote my A2 English coursework partly on this book, and as a result my copy (not the edition listed here; I wanted to leave my other review intact) is full of thematic index tabs marking particular quotes. I haven't reread it since, but was prompted to do so by a concert I went to where they talked about Shostakovich, because it gave me a similar vibe. The tabs were funny, actually; sometimes they helped me pick out key ideas, and sometimes all I could think was how I'd missed other quotes that would have been perfect. I almost wanted to start annotating and analysing the whole book again.

But this book. I don't even know how to describe it.

As I mentioned, I went to a concert on Saturday. One of the pieces they played was the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, with a truly amazing soloist. It's a fantastic piece -- impossibly hard, deeply intricate and beautiful. I started crying partway through the first movement because I was overwhelmed by the piece itself. And the thing about the Tchaikovsky violin concerto is that once upon a time I was planning to learn (excerpts of) it. It was going to be my ambitious musical goal once I passed my grade eight violin, except I injured my wrists two weeks before the exam and never took it and still can't really play. So when I hear it, what I remember is those ambitions. Those lofty dreams, and the impossibility of them.

This book makes me feel a lot of the same feelings as the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. On the one hand, it's absolutely beautiful. Some of the sentences are just fantastic. The use of language is anything but conventional, and the imagery regularly caught me out with how utterly unusual it was -- pairings of words and ideas that I never would have expected to see juxtaposed. Once or twice, there were phrases so beautiful I had to blink away tears. Secondly, the book fills me with an overwhelming urge to make something as beautiful as it. To seek out and create art. To imitate it, to make it my own. But I'm aware that I will probably never be a good enough writer, just as I would probably never have been a good enough violinist for the Tchaikovsky violin concerto even if I hadn't hurt my wrists.

This book also puts me in the odd position of mimicking Sukhanov himself, because it has so many memories attached to it. Now and again I had to put it down because I was overwhelmed by a vivid burst of remembrance of exactly where I was and how I was feeling when I read a certain passage for the first time. Just as Sukhanov is 'assailed by his past' when he sees certain works of art or certain people, so was I while rereading after four or more years.

And my reading of it is all tangled up with the feelings I was having in 2013-14. I'm not sure I would ever have responded to it in quite the same way if it hadn't spoken to the broken, crazy parts of me. I read it while doubting my own sanity and scared of the inside of my head. I was in pain, I was developing quite severe anxiety, and I had no coping mechanisms because my injured wrists had taken them all from me. Struggling with my own mental health, the last thing I wanted to do was write a coursework esssay on mental illness for English Literature, and reading The Bell Jar in class was constantly, relentlessly triggering. So I wrote about this instead. Oh, I still looked at the Bell Jar, but I didn't look at depression. I looked at dissociation and literary doubles instead.

And this book, of all the books I read that summer and for that coursework, was one of the most hopeful portrayals of a mental breakdown that I'd seen. Sukhanov is not sane. But his breakdown is one that is creative rather than solely destructive, and that was a narrative I needed at the time, and possibly still do.

earlier this year i read Grushin's The Line and i liked it so much that i went in search of this earlier novel. The Dream Life of Sukhanov has the best of the Russian novel about it. the uncertainties of a shifting reality wherein people gain and lose favour and the paranoia that state produces .... well, it makes great fodder for stories.

and damn this Olga Grushin is a good writer.

as the story progresses, Grushin switches between a first and third person narrative and flips through time like one of those old fashioned books with the drawings in the corner that produces an animated transformation when one flips through the pages fast enough. (what is that called anyway?) the lines between fantasy -or nightmare- and reality become increasingly blurred. how much of what unfolds is Sukhanov's paranoia? how much is reality and how much the result of a nervous breakdown?

AND .... when you have state politics that can change the rules at any moment ... does it even matter what is real and what is delusion? there is a Russian saying that goes something like this: anyone can change the future but only the Czar can change the past.

this is the political context that coloured every aspect of Russian society and breathed life into the best of the Russian novelists. Grushin keeps the tradition alive and kicking.