{"id":6355,"date":"2022-09-07T15:58:32","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T15:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=6355"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:58:41","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T15:58:41","slug":"brisbane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/07\/brisbane\/","title":{"rendered":"Brisbane"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Life in the Present<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Eugene Vodolazkin\u2019s latest novel explores what it means to live in the face of certain death\u2014which is to say, what it means to be human.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Sarah Clark
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I recently sat in on an interview with Father Timothy Danaher for Fare Forward<\/i>\u2019s Death Issue. Danaher has had a lot of experience talking with people who are about to die, but he says that there’s no preparation that can make you ready to talk to a dying person\u2014though in another sense, everyone is equally equipped. \u201cIf you\u2019re constantly learning to be human, and to be Christian, those are the things you go back to,\u201d he says. And in the end, talking to a dying person isn\u2019t really any different from talking to someone on say, a plane. Except that when someone is on their deathbed, there\u2019s a little more urgency to the conversation.<\/p>

Eugene Vodolazkin\u2019s newest novel, Brisbane<\/i>, is about many things, but at heart, I think it\u2019s about precisely that<\/i>\u2014about learning to be human, and to be Christian, especially in the face of death. Which is another way of saying, it\u2019s about the universal experience of learning how to live. That Vodolazkin is tackling these sorts of fundamental questions again will not surprise readers of his last novel, Laurus<\/i>, though this time instead of adopting the idiom and atmosphere of medieval Russia, he has created an equally convincing late Soviet Ukraine and modern-day Munich and St. Petersburg.<\/p>

The novel opens with a section labeled \u201cApril 25, 2012, Paris\u2013Petersburg,\u201d and with a sense of impending disaster:<\/p>

Performing at Paris\u2019s Olympe, I can\u2019t play a tremolo. Or rather, I can, but not accurately, not cleanly\u2014I play it like a beginning guitarist, producing a muffled gurgling, not notes. No one notices, and the Olympe explodes in ovations. Even I forget my failure\u2026 How could I have stumbled in concert?<\/p><\/blockquote>

Our narrator is Gleb Yanovsky, a world-famous guitarist of the sort that people recognize on planes and ask for autographs in the street. He is also an authentically creative artist, happily married, financially successful, and although he doesn\u2019t quite know it yet, dying.<\/p>

Immediately after this ominously imperfect concert, Gleb meets a writer named Nestor on a plane. Spooked by the tremolo he couldn\u2019t play, he agrees to let Nestor write a book about him. They begin right then and there, with the story of Gleb\u2019s first musical failure: when, the night before first grade, he failed to reproduce a rhythm for his father, who promptly declared him the first musically untalented person in the family. \u201cIt\u2019s too bad,\u201d he says. And that\u2019s the end of the conversation.<\/p>

In response to this pronouncement, Gleb ignored the bad news and enrolled in music classes anyway, beginning with the traditional Ukrainian domra when it turned out his hands were too small to properly hold the neck of a guitar. And in response to his disastrous tremolo, he tries for some time to forget what happened at the Olympe and return to his normal life. He continues playing concerts, avoiding his emails, riding his bike through the Munich parks with his wife, Katya. But though he resists getting his tremor \u201cchecked out,\u201d it\u2019s getting worse. It\u2019s clear that something is very wrong, and even Gleb himself isn\u2019t really surprised when he\u2019s finally diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s Disease.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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At one point, Gleb says that his life has always just come to him, like riding on a magic carpet. When the carpet ride stops, he has no idea what to do next.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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There is nothing really to be done about Parkinson\u2019s. It will end Gleb\u2019s career, sooner rather than later, then rob him of his quality of life, and eventually kill him. At one point, Gleb says that his life has always just come to him, like riding on a magic carpet. When the carpet ride stops, he has no idea what to do next. With his diagnosis, the carpet has come to a screeching halt, and he\u2019s at a loss. But he goes on meeting with Nestor and recalling his life, all of the events and details and relationships that have brought him to where he is now.\u00a0<\/p>

One of the stories Gleb tells Nestor is that on his deathbed, Gleb\u2019s grandfather Mefody told him, at another crossroads of Gleb\u2019s life, \u201cFrom the standpoint of eternity, there is no time, no direction. So that life isn\u2019t the present moment but all the moments you\u2019ve lived through.\u201d Gleb replies, \u201cYou\u2019re talking about the present and the past but not about the future, as if there weren\u2019t one.\u201d \u201cIn fact, there isn\u2019t,\u201d his dying grandfather says. \u201c\u2026The future is the scrap heap of our fantasies. Or, even worse, our utopias: people sacrifice the present to make utopias come true.\u201d But mankind always looks toward the future, Gleb protests. \u201cThat man would do better to look to the present,\u201d Mefody replies.\u00a0<\/p>

It is perhaps only with his diagnosis that Gleb is able to accept the reality that life does not consist in the future. He has no future now. He goes through the typical phases of accepting this: he ignores it, he acts out, he gets depressed. But then he and Katya, who have no children, get a letter from a woman Gleb once knew. She\u2019s widowed, and she has a daughter named Vera who is a musical prodigy, just like Gleb, but Vera is terribly sick\u2014her liver is failing. She asks Gleb to help, for old time\u2019s sake. And Gleb, against his own cynical better judgment, does. When he takes on Vera\u2019s suffering and hopes, it makes things even harder on Gleb. But as he and Katya take their newly adopted daughter deeper into their lives and hearts, the time they have together gets more precious\u2014no matter how short.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

The titular Brisbane is a city on the other side of the world, where, unlike in Ukraine, the weather is always warm. It is, in the minds of various characters, a perfect place\u2014and, in the end, it is a place that no one in the novel ever reaches. Brisbane is the future. Brisbane<\/i> is the journey through his past that brings Gleb to a present he can actually live in.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sarah Clark<\/strong> lives in New Hampshire with her husband and daughter. She is a founding editor of <\/em>Fare Forward and the current editor-in-chief, and she owns Scale House Print Shop<\/a>, a letterpress printing studio. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2011 and received an MAR from Yale Divinity School in 2022.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Brisbane<\/strong> was published on May 3, 2022 by Plough Publishing. <\/em>Fare Forward appreciates their provision of a review copy. You can purchase a copy of your own on their website here<\/a>.<\/em>
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Eugene Vodolazkin\u2019s latest novel explores what it means to live in the face of certain death\u2014which is to say, what it means to be 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