In his newest work, "Rachel" (Rakhil), serialized last year in the Oktyabr literary magazine and recently released in book form by Eksmo and Yauza publishers, the writer spares no effort to depart from his own experience. "Rachel" tells the life story of a man who is twice the author's age, a renowned Moscow professor and a Jew. A far cry from Gelasimov, who only moved to Moscow recently.
Curiously, Gelasimov's novel is quite similar to Alexander Kabakov's "Everything Is Reparable" (Vsyo Popravimo), reviewed here in late July. Of course, the academic Kabakov is much closer to his hero than Gelasimov to his. And just as Kabakov stumbles when he describes things he doesn't know much about, so does Gelasimov. In the latter's case, such things are numerous.
With numerous plot lines and quite a few narrators, the story comes through "Pulp Fiction"-style, in jerks and criss-crossed chunks. Such devices are nothing new and, in this case, don't really work, largely because the author's voice drowns out the scanty individual features of the characters' speech. Also, it is hardly coincidence that none of the critics have bought Gelasimov's treatment of the Jewish question. "You can say 'Jew' 10,000 times," writes Maya Kucherskaya in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, "but it won't make the hero any more Jewish."
That said, "Rachel" is rich in enjoyable details. The novel within the novel about the stilyagi, an informal youth movement of the 1960s that placed a heavy accent on Western music, clothes and way of life, is funny in a dark sort of way and peppered with nostalgia. The odd relationship between the hero and his kleptomaniac daughter-in-law is amusingly real. So is the hero's father-in-law, who recites poems by Nikolai Zabolotsky and enters his daughter's bedroom at the most inappropriate moments.
In a recent interview, Gelasimov promised that his next book will be nothing like his first opuses, or like "Rachel," for that matter. It's worth the wait.
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