Meek lived in Russia in the 1990s, working as a reporter for The Guardian and The Observer. His years in the former Soviet Union inspired him to write a work of fiction. His novel has several intertwining stories, each focusing on a different character: the young revolutionary Kyrill Samarin, an escapee from a gulag-like tsarist prison camp; Anna Petrovna, a young woman living in the drowsy Siberian town of Yazyk; Gleb Balashov, a member of a sect of castrates who emasculate themselves for the love of God; and Josef Mutz, a lieutenant in the Czechoslovak Legion, lost in Siberia amid the chaos of the Civil War. Add to that the somber chilliness of the Siberian taiga, the peculiar rites of a Tungus shaman, the disorder of the revolutionary years and some nostalgic memories of a more peaceful past -- and you have all the ingredients for an energetic adventure novel.
Yet Meek does not write one. His plot lines are long and meandering; they intertwine but do not crisscross as in a typical thriller. And his narration is mellow and reserved. It is perhaps this trait that made many critics call "The People's Act" a typically Russian novel, albeit one written in English. I think this is a misunderstanding caused by some innocent stereotyping. But the book is diligently researched, and there is very little in the way of klyukva -- or "cranberry" -- as Russians call the unlikely, stereotyped observations of outsiders.
The Russian edition, though, leaves much to be desired. Translator Adam Asvadov is not fully comfortable with English, and the Russian style he chose for the book predates the time of the novel by about a century (that is, if Meek had Chekhov and Nabokov in mind, the Russian text goes all the way back to Karamzin). Finally, there are fake blurbs on the back cover; one, supposedly from The Observer, compares Meek with "Mayne Reid and Pasternak." Not a soul in the West knows that obscure Irish-American adventure writer; his fame was a purely Russian phenomenon. So, kudos to James Meek and a subdued boo to St. Petersburg's Amphora publishing house.
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