Europe Central
by William Vollmann
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Book Summary Information
Author: William VollmannEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-11-14
ISBN: 0143036599
Number of pages: 832
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Europe Central
Book Review: "Creepy"
Summary: 4 Stars
The above title to this review refers to the character Elena's (who may serve as a personifying synecdoche for Europe, or may not, depending on how seriously one takes Vollman's jacket blurbs) "favourite English word" as is mentioned time and time again in Europe Central. It also serves as the best one word adjective to describe the book. but "creepy" here is not meant as in the description of some low budget horror flick. It is a word that someone who does not know English has latched onto with passion. Why? If you manage to finish this book, you'll probably have at least an inkling of an answer...or so it seems to me.
The book, as is mentioned by a previous reviewer, relies on various "authorial" voices to tell several different intertwining tales, often in a dreamlike phantasmagorical fashion, all transpiring in the totalitarian countries of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany during WWII, mostly in the former country. The result of immersion in this writing is a rather odd steady changing in perspective, so that, in the end, one feels one knows exactly what it is like to live in such a society and to feel a disdain for the saccharine world of today's American or English "culture."-Mind you, I'm not judging. I'm simply recounting my feelings after having read the book.
Also, unless one has specialised in atonal Musicology at University, a crash course on the atonal compositions of Shostakovich is awaiting you, and, indeed, Shostakovich and his music (particularly "Opus 110"), in one form or another, real or invented by Vollman, comprise the bulk of the work.
And now for a bit of judging: Anyone who knows anything about Vollman biographically knows that he candidly-if painfully- admits that the experience of his sister's death by drowning in a pond when she was six and he was nine (and supposed to be watching over her) has had a profound effect on his life and work. Particularly, the notion of Fate or (to revert to the academy) Determinism has come to occupy a strong hold on his mind. Thus, one is not especially surprised to see this motif recurrently popping up, sometimes rather subtly, throughout this book. It props up very poignantly as the reader nears the end of the book, and Shostakovich nears the completion of "Opus 110":
"...and that selfsame adoration, which empowered her until now to suffer and to endure and even in some measure to remain happy, wavers and beautifully flutters only because a certain extremely cruel God, fate or dialectic, who is not D. D. Shostakovich at all but the unknown suzerain of this known stage we sing our hopes on, wants to exalt her up into sunlight for this instant only so that the shock and depth of her downfall into the uttermost darkness will have been magnified..."pp.701-2
Well, in any event, I can't pretend I truly know what this book is all about. But the above quote gives the prospective reader some idea of the realm he or she is entering. Really, though, I do think Vollman goes on a bit much (as well nigh every other reviewer has averred), and some of the passages are tedious and humdrum enough to detract from the work as a whole-Thus, the four stars.
As a final word, the writer whom Vollman, in the bleak, "creepy" effect of his work reminds me of the most is the early Cormac McCarthy at the height of his powers, particularly, in this order: Suttree, Blood Meridian, Outer Dark.---Vollman readers not acquainted with these (to my mind, better) works, should certainly cast an eye upon them.
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