A Life's Music

Andrei Makine's Music of a Life is a slim book. It a simple story, told in a straightfoward, spare fashion. Yet within the framework of this simple story lies a profund piece of work that has an impact on the reader that, like the most beautiful music, lingers long after the last note fades into the night.Makine, for those not familiar with his work, was born in the Soviet Union in 1958. He emigrated to France as a young man. He writes in French. (Music of a Life was nicely translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan). At the risk of setting out what may sound like a hackneyed cliche, Makine's work for me combines the grace and elgance of the best French writers and the deep soul and conviction of the best Russian writers.Music of a Life is set out as the re-telling of a conversation had between two strangers on a train moving slowly west from Siberia sometime around 1958, the year many thousands finally won their release from the labor camps that dotted the Soviet Far East. Two men sit together. One older man, wearing clothes that mark him as someone just released from the Gulag strikes up a comnversation with his fellow passenger. The story is set out in the voice of the other passenger. As the train moves on the older passenger and the narrator exchange slowly. At some point the older passenger, Alexe Berg, slowly sets out his life story.In 1940, the young Alexe, a classically trained pianist of great talent and promise, was preparing for his debut recital. On approaching his family flat after the dress rehearsal he sees a pre-arranged symbol indiccating that his parents, supposedly dangerous members of the intelligentsia, had been swept up by the NKVD (pre-cursor to the KGB). Alexe makes his escape and finds himself hiding out in the Ukraine in 1941. The devastation of the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June of that year engulfs the Urkaine. Alexe comes upon the body of a dead Soviet solider, a peasant, and assumes the dead soldier's identify. Although this provides him some protection from those who might still seek his arrest, Alex realizes quickly that he must maintain this identity at all costs.Alexe makes it through the war in one piece and, in fact, finds favor with a Soviet general, who keeps him at his side as an aide de camp during the rest of the war. Alexe's survival remains dependent upon his being thought of as a simple peasant. After the war, Alexe finds work with the general's family. The general's daughter takes a liking to the young 'peasant' soldier. Alexe becomes enamored of the daughter. The daughter, whose piano-playing skills are somehwat limited, if earnest, decides to teach the young peasant Alexe a few simple tunes on the piano. These lessons lead, inexorably, to the book's climactic moments.The book leaves the reader (or at least it left me) contemplating the choices and compromises we sometimes make with life. It left me contemplating the question as to how much of myself would I compromise, how much of myself would I keep hidden in order to maintain some small amount of freedom in an unfree world.As I noted at the beginning, this is a simple story, simply told. Yet, as with music, sometimes even simple combinations of notes creates a beautiful mosaic of sound. Makine has done this with the graceful combination of notes that makes up his Music of a Life.

Another extraordinary book by a marvellous writer who ought to receive the Nobel Prize soon. I have read and re-read this book many times, both in the translation and in the original as I am French. I was never so deeply touched by every episode of the life described. I can still hear the few notes heard in the freezing waiting room of a small station in the middle of Siberia packed with human beings waiting for a train that does not come..Its author, who is Russian but lives in Paris, writes all his novels in French and says that only the French language can express what this book, and his other books also, are about. I agree with him two-hundred percent. The translator has done an excellent job, BUT the English language, however elegant and well used, cannot come close to produce the extraordinary work of art created in French by Makine in La Musique d'Une Vie, nor express properly the exquisite sensitivity of his Russian mind.No English translation can be as good as the original work in the case of Andreï Makine' writing, as well as in the case of Proust whom, by the way, Makine rates as the best French writer.But I don't want to discourage the majority of British readers at a loss when faced with any sentence that is not in their mother tongue!!. It is still a great and unforgettable book in the English translation, and it will stay with them, as it stays with me for ever since I first read it.

While waiting for a train back to Moscow, the narrator meets an older man playing the piano in a back room and they strike up a friendship and the older man then tells his life's story.A promising young pianist, it was the night of his first concert, when he was given the message 'Don't go home'. He never gets to perform, finding his parents arrested, and has to run away to a relative in the country where he has to remain hidden. Then when war reaches the farm, he assumes the identity of a dead Russian soldier. He ends up as the driver for a Russian General whose life he saves and whose piano-playing daughter he worships. But he has to find out about his parents, and this raises questions about who he really is.This novella is beautifully melancholic and elegaic. The young pianist seems to take the loss of his musical career with a philosophic shrug, for he still has it in his head. With his assumed identity, an unmusical peasant, he sometimes has to struggle not to let his real personality burst out. His life's music has to play to a different drum.

What a beautiful, lyrical, short book, with mystical moments woven into the prose.The story starts in a crowded Soviet train station somewhere in the cold middle, where stranded passengers eye each other with resignation. Sonorous music wafts from a piano somewhere in the cavernous building, leading us gently into the life of the piano player and his painful encounters with the unforgiving authorities …

The narrator, snowed in in a railway station, is waiting for his train. He meets an old man who will tell his life story during the course of their long journey.The story takes place in Russia during the second world war. A young pianist is about to give his first performance. The war is going to deprive him of that long awaited pleasure and plunge his life into chaos.The fact that the war is seen from a Russian point of view is extremely interesting.It is a poignant story, very intense. The violence of the war is merely suggested but the reader feels it and imagines the horror lived at that particular moment of History.It is a very rich text similar in style to all the recent books I have read from Andrei Makine. To mention only a few: "The French Testament", "An Unknown Man", "The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme". Fantastic literature! One cannot help associate him with Proust and Saint-Exupery.

A beautifully written and translated book. It really makes you understand the challenges and tragedies of being Russian in the mid- twentieth century. It gives vivid impressions of the vastness of the landscape, the hardships of life, the constant need simply to endure and survive. One man’s story, told to a stranger he meets one snowy night at a station in the deep snow, represents that of a whole nation. Outstanding, and superbly crafted.