"I keep thinking how difficult and dreary life must be if childhood is as good as it gets. And if it’s all downhill from here, I don’t want to grow up.” She shook her head. “And, you know, I don’t think I ever will."
“Nonsense, Liza. It’s only because you’re fourteen." [loc. 1501]
Liza and Kolya's father, a naval officer, was drowned by his own men during the Russian Revolution. Their mother, who fled with Liza and Kolya to Paris, refuses to admit that she has children at all: they age her terribly. She insists that they call her 'Natasha' and 'cousin' when they're all together, which is not often, as Natasha has a lifestyle to maintain and a pair of lovers (well, one doesn't love her, the other she doesn't love) to beguile.
Liza is fourteen and has a boyfriend, Andrei, who's also a close friend of her brother's. On holiday at Biarritz, however, she meets and captivates English teenager Cromwell, who obligingly treats Liza and her brother to various luxuries, and introduces Liza to the story of Tristan and Isolde -- Cromwell himself, of course, in the role of Tristan. When Liza returns to Paris, she tells Andrei, the third point of the love triangle, that the fling is over. Andrei is unimpressed, but quickly warms towards Cromwell when the English youth arrives in Paris and showers largesse on all three of the Russians.
But Liza and Kolya are almost out of money, and Mama -- Natasha -- is on holiday again, and has no funds to spare. Can Cromwell save them? Can Liza rely upon any of the men she knows?
This novel, by a Russian emigre living in Paris, was written in 1929, the same year as Cocteau's Les Enfants Terrible: the two works explore some of the same territory, of absent parents and children who are too spoilt, or too naive, to respond to abandonment by assuming adult roles. In Odoevtseva's Isolde, however, the story takes place over a shorter timeframe, and the female protagonist is less manipulative. I felt compassion for Liza, though I did also find her selfishness and disdain offputting. The Paris she inhabits is a wintry, rainy spectre of the city I know: it could have been any big European city. Liza's memories -- half fantasy -- of Moscow are more vivid: no wonder she wants to return, to find somewhere to belong.
Isolde is really a very bleak novel: nobody comes out of it (or ... doesn't come out of it) especially well. Natasha is especially monstrous, but none of the adults are much use. The men are all determined to shape Liza -- one suggests that she pretend to be his daughter; another rechristens her Betsy and tells her she'll lose her Russian accent when they go to England -- and the women pay no attention to her.
I can't say this was an enjoyable read, but it was powerful, and the author's refusal to spell out exactly what's happening -- though she was still criticised for writing about teenage sexuality -- bestowed a lingering gloom, an air of shuttered rooms lit by firelight, of an empty facade behind the frenetic glitter of casinos, jazz and cocktails that Liza and Kolya so desperately crave.
I read this for the 'novel in translation, written before 1945' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2019 on Goodreads.
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