... as they say in Russian, 'life is better there where we are not'. This, said in an extremely categorical and depressing voice, is probably the best Russian saying of all time. Is there any more fatalistic thought in human existence? [p. 128]
Viv Groskop grew up believing herself to have Russian ancestry, and became a devoted Russophile in her teens. Russian literature was her gateway drug, and as she takes us through a series of 'life lessons' (ranging from 'How to Know Who You Really Are: Anna Karenina', via 'How to Not be Your Own Worst Enemy: Eugene Onegin', to 'How to Know What Matters in Life: War and Peace') she describes her own love affair with the great Russian novels (and with a less-great Russian rock star), and how she learnt to appreciate the quintessential Russian obsession with Fate and Soul.
Groskop is very funny, sometimes uncomfortably so: her account of a Russian funeral, and her gradual realisation that she'd been asked to bring cosmetics to make up the corpse's face, made me wince even as I laughed. She's also good at making these classic novels feel more accessible, and at combining literary and historical commentary with her own experiences, and with plenty of pithy commentary. Of Nabakov's translation of Eugene Onegin, which adds more than 1500 pages of footnotes to the original text, she notes 'quite possibly the biggest act of pedantry in the history of literature', and goes on to detail Nabakov's Onegin-inspired feud with critic Edmund Wilson.
Amid the humour and the anecdotes are some really valuable insights: A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Groskop points out, is 'the account of someone whose head is bowed', who does not look up. I suspect what spurred me to finally finish reading this book was my recent reading of The Half Life of Valery K, which begins in a gulag: Groskop's analysis of Solzhenitsyn's work also gave me a greater appreciation of Pulley's descriptions.
I enjoyed The Anna Karenina Fix more as a work of literary criticism than as a self-help book, though Groskop has tempted me to read those texts with which I'm unfamiliar. And the 'life lessons' are straightforward and relatable, though it can be hard to identify the sweeping grandeur of Tolstoy or Pasternak in one's own daily grind.
Groskop, incidentally, turns out to have Polish rather than Russian forebears:
It’s good to know where you come from in the past, but it’s more important to know who you are right now.
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