The story "House on the Embankment" begins with a man, Glebov, who is middle aged, balding, fat, and seeking to buy some furniture. It is around 1970, in the Soviet Union. While looking for the furniture, he notices an worker who appears familiar to him. It turns out to be a former friend, Shulepa, from his childhood days, who ignores Glebov after the latter calls out to him. Now Glebov is an elite member of Soviet society, so the question is raised as to how this successful academic is associated with this alcoholic loser.

The narrative then goes back to a time long since past, in the 1930s, before the Second World War. It is a tale of Glebov, Shulepa, and several other friends with names like "Bear" and "Walrus" growing up in or around a large apartment building in Moscow known as the "House on the Embankment." The House is a place of residence for those of the privileged class. The children are not much unlike those whom you or I may have grown up with. Trifonov does an excellent job of bringing every character in his novel to life. And there are certainly no shortage of characters in this story.

The narrative then gradually proceeds forward in time, to the War, to the 1950s when Glebov and Shulepa attended College, and finally up to the present time in which the novel began. There are many events which occur over the years, many tragic events; for example the disappearances of people during the Stalin era, and also things like unrequited love. As these events unfold, the reader begins to discover what was the cause of the animosity between Glebov and Shulepa in the beginning of the story. But Shulepa isn't the only one who hates Glebov, this man who has so little character.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this novel is the appearance of a second narrarator. The initial narrator is a 3rd person who is in the background; not an active participant in the events. The second narrator is different--he is actually one of the several friends in the story, and it is the readers' task to discover who the second narrator is. I read this story about 3 times before I narrowed down the choices to two different characters. After the 5th reading, and some research in the secondary literature to back up my conclusion, I discovered who it was. (I won't spoil it for you by telling you who it is here, but if you want to know, you can contact me.) Throughout the novel, these two narrators trade places, one distant and passive, the other one active and passionate in his narrative style.

This is a very beautiful novel, certainly worthy of the name "masterpiece." As I indicated earlier, I read this 5 times, and I found each read as interesting as the previous. Each time that you read it, you discover some subtle point which you missed the last time you read it; this is one of those stories in which the plots are so numerous, it is easy to miss something.

About the only thing that could stand some improvement is the translation of this work from the original Russian. (The original appeared in the literary magazine Druzhba Narodov in Jan. 1976, p.83) The translation is not bad, otherwise I might not give a good review here, however the translator, Glenny, leaves out certain intimacies between characters, and on some occasions, inserts or transforms sentences during the translation, of which I didn't see the necessity. I suffer from the belief that you should retain as much fidelity to the original during your translation, at least to the point where you begin to lose the reader because the expression you are translating does not have an equivalent in the second language.

If you can read Russian and have access to a good library, I suggest that you read the original. Otherwise, get this book, you won't be disappointed. There is another story in the book, which comes before "House," "Another Life." I haven't read it yet, so I am not reviewing it here. However, the book is worth the price with "House" alone.

The book contains some short stories; one of them is titled "Divine and Human". The content of the stories varies: some of them are fables with a happy ending others, as for instance "Divine and Human", are stories with bleak atmospheres resembling the ones present in "The Death of Ivan Ilich" or in "Resurrection. The author, anyhow, always deploys a positive message of hope. The author clearly depicts last century Russian peasant's poor conditions of life. These very miserable life styles are the base for the author's reflections and considerations about the morally correct behaviour that rich people should hold in order to be useful to others and to be happier themselves.

Tolstoy, a writer of such undeniable power, proves perhaps by the most extreme scenario that he is not overrated as a transcendant writer: namely, this book is still vital despite a horribly mangled translation by Gordon Spence. Here's one example of the needless contortions Spence plays with Russian/English: "But what he understood now by him to whom he appealed was something he knew to be the most real of everything he knew." Another gem: ". . .and in the same week he drank not only all the money that he had received for the execution, but also all his relatively expensive clothes. . ." Whaat? How does one drink expensive clothes? Yet another: "With the devoted old nurse. . .she sat in her father's closed sleigh, which had been newly repaired for the long journey, and set out on the long journey." Come on. How about ". . .newly repaired for the long journey, and set out."? Yet to read the story "Divine and Human" is a seminal experience nonetheless. Amazing, Tolstoy has to be a titan to shine through this, yet he does.

The Grosse Point Lighthouse: Landmark to Maritime History and Culture Constructed in 1873, the Grosse Point Lighthouse served for over 67 years as the leading navigational aid into the Port of Chicago, Illinois. It was relighted in 1946 and is still maintained as a private aid to navigation. It is located at the north border of Evanston, Illinois, next to Northwestern University and is currently operated as a nature center and maritime museum by the City of Evanston. The lighthouse is visible from the Sears Tower or John Hancock Building. This beautifully designed and illustrated book contains 112 pages with over 100 black and white and color photographs that bring to life the history, culture and romance of this 122 year old beacon, the proud survivor of a bygone era. Written by Donald J. Terras, the current keeper of the Grosse Point Lighthouse. A must have for any lighthouse library or any resident of Chicago, Evanston, or northern Chicago suburbs!

Terras's book about the Grosse Point Lighthouse is a MUST HAVE for the history enthusiast (especially 19th century Chicago), the Great Lakes maritime nut, or anyone who loves lighthouses. It is obvious that the author has committed a great deal of time in research, and his dedication and care of the subject comes through like a proud parent boasting the accomplishments of a favourite child. Yet, it's not sappy sentimentalism or propoganda. The photography is creative; the graphics/illustraions authentic. This is a splendid effort to bring life to the struggles, mishaps and triumphs of people in a bygone time, and it succeeds admirably. My only qualm against purchasing the book was a slightly steep price, but it was easier to bear when I found out that a third of the purchase price goes directly to upkeep of this National Historic Landmark. If you are considering buying this book, I assure you that you would not regret the purchase. It is a worthy publication.

This book had been so built up by other people who had read it that I expected more. The writing is uneven and the first two thirds of the book seem to have almost no relation to the last third.
The first two thirds of the book gave a few interesting details of life in Russia just before the Revolution, but other than that I foundit very uninteresting. It is not until alomst the end of the book that the element of cocaine is even introduced and when it is the book quickly winds to its unsurprising end.

Having already been a fan of Dostoevsky & Tolstoy, it was Charles Bukowski who pointed me back to the Russians as being the only producers of literature that's worth reading. "A Novel with Cocaine" is a fine example of a novel that has something worthwhile on its pages.

Might we say that it's existentialist in it thinking? The individual caught in a universe that really doesn't give a damn about the individual... and the individual's struggle to find something to do, and a place to fit.

Camus and Sartre are puny little runts compared to Ageyev! Ageyev gives us the moment-to-moment REAL stuff that actually matters. One character goes up in front of his high school math classs to work out a problem... he sneezes and boogers are hanging out of his face while the class laughs. How does he deal with this?

Ageyev keeps his work as something regular folks can identify with. Not all of his situations deal with boogers (or things just as gross), but they're all common enough to keep a reader's interest without drawing the reader into pompous brain-teasers that few of us can access.

Conversely, Camus and Sartre take us into a high-minded realm which is interesting, but when will I ever have to think about whether or not to kill a wheelchair-bound guy because he doesn't have the nerve to do it himself? How many of our lives are impacted by such decisions?

Ageyev is much more interesting. He's a great writer. He's got a great sense of humor and he's FIRMLY rooted in common existence.

Though the book is titled "A Novel with Cocaine," sure there's a great deal about the main characters travels through the underworld of drugs and drug people and the activities between them. But, I think that this is more of a way for the writer to access his more interesting ideas--as opposed to writing a book that's really about cocaine.

Losing his "nasal virginity" in an adventure into the wonders and horrors of cocaine addiction, the central character finds his answer to insecurity and social ineptitude in a potent white powder as his peer in The Overcoat seeks the same comfort in a dark, tattered garment.

If the pseudonym doesn't give it away, this anonymous author provides another dim glance into nineteenth century St. Petersberg that seems a brushstroke within the same portrait alongside those by Gogol and Dostoevsky. Imagine the Underground Man not tormenting his maid, but out in the streets snorting cocaine, searching for a female companion.

Novel with Cocaine is not essential reading, but it is another worthwhile glimpse at the literary products of desperate and dark nineteenth century St. Petersberg. Glorification of drug use is a problem in the late twentieth century. Novel with Cocaine will force you to think again with grave reluctance that neither McInerney nor Ellis have been able to posit in the minds of their readers.

I would have loved some scary stuff. I would have loved some suspense. I would have loved characters with whom I could sympathize. The New York Times Book Review said this book had "the perfect plot for a summer beach novel". A good, long nap would have been better.

This book is about female family relationships between three generations of women. Each feels that they can't do anything right for the generation that follows them. Then slowly they begin to understand each other and each others needs, but with the threat of a stalker hovering over them. They work through old problems and old hurts, but the threat is still there. I enjoyed reading this book a lot and would recommend it to anyone who wanted to spend some time thinking about their own relationship with their mother. Not a book for a quick read. I really thought about when my mother and I were going through this particular stage, when I was reading this book. I can't give the book away, but I was very surprised who the "stalker" turned out to be. Enjoy this book, it is suspensful, but without all of the gross, really scarry things like in a King novel.

This is a rattling good yarn, crisply written and neatly plotted, with three-dimensional characters you'll care about. It transcends its thriller genre to offer a compelling portrait of three generations of women: the heroine, her daughter, and her widowed mother. To use the handy cliche, the women come alive off the page. The hard-pressed widow has returned to the workplace as a department store clerk, and, for me, the book's most suspenseful passage portrays her confrontation with a bitchy customer and a hi-tech cash register. For good measure, there's a love triangle. And the book nicely captures the flavor and texture of its Chicago setting. (The author was once a topflight newspaper reporter in Chicago.) The book has but one flaw; the heroine in the end clearly winds up with the wrong man.

The reviewer who says that this novel hasn't weathered the test of time got it right. Even as someone with a fair amount of background in the literature and history of twentieth-century Russia, I couldn't make it through this one. The plot (such as it is) alternates between the question of whether a particular Cossack leader in the Civil War was loyal to the Bolshevik cause or "merely" a Cossack nationalist and the machinations of several couples to acquire rights to a dacha, circa 1980. Fighting through the former requires a high level of interest in the various parties to the Civil War, and struggling through the latter requires a high degree of willingess to ponder Soviet law pertaining to the occupation of property. Throughout, the plot is thin and the character development virtually nonexistent. The reader gets a large platefull of arcane details that, I suspect, will primarily be of interest to historians and literary specialists of the Civil War period. (Or, as the other reviewer suggests, to those who focus on the literature of the Brezhnev era.)

I found Trifonov's "Another Life" similarly unreadable but I did enjoy "The House on the Embankment," the story of a man who conveniently looked the other way whenever his friends found trouble during Stalin's reign.

Though book blurb descriptions often exaggerate, the person who linked Tolstoy and Turgenev to Yuri Trifonov on the cover of my edition of THE OLD MAN was a true master of hyperbole...This lightweight tale of an old civil war veteran who survived purges, battles, disease, starvation, and exile to grow old by the 1970s may evoke sympathy on human grounds, it may arouse awareness of what the generation of 1917 in Russia went through, and it may bring to mind the paltry reward such suffering brought...I cannot say that this book will fascinate many readers in the world today, but that is not to say that it has (or rather HAD), no merit.

THE OLD MAN is above all a book that has not weathered time very well. It belongs to the Brezhnev era of the now-extinct Soviet Union, a time when speaking the truth was a risky act, if not as life-endangering as it had been under Stalin. Most authors preferred to play it safe and write works that did not challenge the official version of history or contemporary life. Trifonov deserves all credit for bringing a breath of fresh air into the stifled literary climate of those days. But if telling the truth about Party and individual behavior during the Civil War of 1918-1921 and showing the corruption and cynicism of later generations was attractive and courageous in 1980, it is not extremely startling today. No one now, in Russia or in the West, need remain in doubt about historical events or...mistakes (not to mention crimes) committed in the name of the Revolution. The old man himself was part of those crimes, committed perhaps in the fervent ardor of the desire for change, even forgotten by perpetrators, but crimes nevertheless. People lost all individual merit and were lumped into classes, pro or con. The Soviet Union was built on rigid class definitions, but by the 1970s, new classes had sprung up, the old did not matter. Trifonov notes (p.189) "The pharmacist's approach to humanity---or, more exactly, to individuals---survived for decades, for there is nothing more convenient than cut-and-dried formulas, but now everything has grown turbid. The vials have been broken and all the solutions and acids have run into one pool." To utter such sentiments, the author took considerable personal risk, but the book remains a relic of Brezhnev's times, right down to the inability of the author to use the word "Jew" in any shape or form, equivalent of Faulkner or Warren writing a novel without mentioning the words "black", "Negro" or "African". I sympathize with, maybe even admire Trifonov, but I can give his novel only three stars.