I always feel a certain degree of fear and secret loathing when I start to read a work of fiction that makes claims on my attention of greater than fifty pages. The book I recently had in front of me was of over seven hundred. What made me do it? I must confess: it might’ve been the title—at least to some extent. It’s beautiful—and provoked my curiosity.
After I’d read a few dozen pages, I could say with absolute certainty that I liked the novel. The start was quick; the digression, unexpected; the continuation, intriguing. I felt myself becoming more and more absorbed into the imaginative “texture” of the text itself. No matter what the author apparently chooses to write about, her pen is as deft as the paintbrush of Maarten van Heemskerck. By the way, the author of the novel, Alexandra S. Sophia, is alive and well in the United States—and hers is a name, I believe, worth remembering. She’s one of us; however, her understanding of what people call “life” is much deeper—you’ll just have to believe me.
I like how the author portrays cities in her novel. Regardless of where she sets the scene—whether in Leningrad, Paris or Manhattan—her locations are detailed in such a way as to allow the reader easy access to both place and time. Geography plays a significant role in the narrative: if at the beginning of the novel, the reader wonders whether any of these locations (or other, even more exotic locations) really matters, that same reader is thoroughly convinced by the end of the novel that none of Alexandra S. Sophia’s story could’ve happened any other way—so entangled are the principal characters with the locations in which they operate.
I like the novel’s style. Alexandra S. Sophia knows how to put words together and make prose sound like poetry, yet without sounding forcibly “poetic.” Her metaphors are all fresh and original, not clichéd. The author describes incredible sex with economy and grace, while demonstrating a skilful understanding of the subtle line between what is potentially beautiful between two human beings and what is simply crude—which is no mean accomplishment! The way she skilfully works foreign speech into the canvass of her novel is marvellous. Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Russian and German—even Latin—lines of dialogue (all of which are carefully and artfully paraphrased in English) create a certain atmosphere, lend extra charm, and help to make the reading experience a pleasurable one. This novel is, indeed, well crafted—every sentence of it!
As one whose native language is Russian, I admire the skill of his quite original translation of Yesenin’s poem. I know it was hard work. Some Russian words and expressions are untranslatable due to their very specific nature. The author managed to do the impossible. Her translation absolutely conveys the great poet’s message and spirit. It actually represents a separate independent piece of poetry—and as such, is both remarkable and wonderful.
I’ll risk saying that this story is unique. There’s so much pain and wisdom in it. (Have you noticed that I’ve placed ‘pain’ before ‘wisdom?’) What’s the novel about? I cannot tell. It’s about everything: love; life; war; crime and punishment; pain; the generation gap; professional relationships; career issues; sex; money; history; and many, many other things. A totally unexpected bonus theme occurs in The Lover From An Icy Sea, by the way. Allow me simply to call it “the lichen theme.” This theme of lichens is so important to the narrative that if I now address the issue of character development, I’d have to mention it right alongside that of Daneka and Kit. Actually, to my mind, the title of the novel applies to the particular serenity conjured up by the author’s singular elegy to lichens. The theme is so very powerful, so very unlike anything else I know of in literature, that it puts the novel into a category sui generis.
I am categorically naming Alexandra S. Sophia a Master and declare her novel, The Lover From An Icy Sea, to be a significant contribution to modern American literature—maybe more significant even than Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises was back in the mid-twenties of the last century.
I could easily write a longer essay about the talented Ms. Alexandra S. Sophia’s novel, but I’ll cut it off here with an urgent appeal to you to read it for yourself and make your own assessment. Oh, and one last thing: if my name were Joe Wright, I’d be screening this novel for sure!
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