The Silver Bone - Andrey Kurkov
Translated from Russian by Boris Dralyuk.
I can probably sum up my feelings about this book by telling you that on the day I started to read it I eagerly told everyone who would listen to me how much I loved it, and then took another ten days to actually finish it.
That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy this, I just felt that it never quite lived up to the promise of the first few chapters. The mystery at the heart is a little lackluster, not even showing up properly until around 70% of the way through the book and then being resolved almost by accident, and the really interesting part of the story - Samson’s severed ear, which he can still hear through even when he’s miles away from it - seems to be forgotten throughout the second half of the book.
It’s a shame that such an unusual and memorable angle to the book isn’t put to better use, especially as this was the thing that was making me tell people how much I loved this novel early on. It’s got that weirdly grounded surrealism you find in Gogol’s fiction (especially stories like ‘The Nose’ and ‘The Overcoat’) that I love, and I wanted to see more of it.
There’s definitely much to appreciate here. The characters are very likeable and the chaos of early-20th century Kyiv is rendered really well, feeling incredibly Kafka-esque at times. I just wish there was a little more to it.