'Just moments after the shots, as Serafima looks at the bodies of her friends, a feathery whiteness is already frosting their blasted flesh'
Damn fine opening line.
' ' ...a meaning that will that will suit his own high and mysterious purposes.'
Stalin immediately looms over the novel.
'These shots will blast their lives and uncover secrets that would never has been found - hers most of all'
We all have secrets but normally nobody looks.
A high end grammar school, for children of the politburo. I might have naively expected that such a thing could not exist. A classic case of some people being more equal than others.
Nine grams in the back of the head. SSM uses this expression a lot in his earlier novel Sashenka. I was so taken with it, I wrote a short story based around the idea. Curiously though I remember it as seven grams.
The central character here Serafima is related to Shashenka. Indeed Shashenka is mentioned in the list of characters.
Closer inspection reveals further crossover. Satinov and his wife appear in both novels.
The writer/teacher Benya Golden is pivotal in Shashenka.
Interesting comparison with the world of Edith Wharton novels.
Second nine grams reference pg 131.
Benya Golden's look of 'deep sympathy' as his enemy is taken away. A small but very powerful observation.
This novel is a lot more accessible than Shashenka, which took me a long time to work my way in to. Perhaps it is the compulsive horror of Stalin's regime?
One can't help but think that if an author created award with Stalin and his regime in it, people like me would decry it as implausible.
The self-inflicted damage it caused to even its staunchest supporters beggars belief.
Stalin says you can 'Learn everything about the parents by talking to children?
True?
Nine Grams p245, p320
The suppression of love (or 'romantic philistinism'), gives the novel a pent up, claustrophobia. The whole thing feels like it might burst at any moment.
The inability to show basic human emotion must have been unbearable. From top to bottom of the regime.
Benya Golden, poet, writer teacher, lover. The real hero of the two novels. Art against the machine.
'Dear friends, beloved romantics, wistful dreamers! Open your books. I hope you'll always remember what we're going to read today. We are about to go on a wonderful journey of discovery.'
Nine grams 339, 405
Will Senka outwit his interrogators? I hope so.
I found the assertion that Stalin loved books astonishing. I have no reason to doubt it, but it seems incredible that a lover of books and creativity could have created the Soviet machine.
'We Bolsheviks are a military-religious order like the Knight's Templar'
As in Sashenka, there is a post Stalin-era wash up. We find out, who survived, who found who. These looking back sections add to the poignancy of the novels. The wasted lives, the shattered dreams, and the hope of a new dawn.