Man, I had a pickle of a time reading Edward Docx’s second novel,
Pravda. Fifty pages in, I was fit to throw his twisted knot of
metaphors at the wall. Two hundred pages in and I’d calmed down
considerably, even if Docx’s use of literary whatzits was still as
thick as London fog. Fortunately for my wall, Pravda is much
like a bad beauty school perm: It starts out overly taut and ends with
a faintly pungent beauty.
Mostly set in St. Petersburg, Pravda chronicles the lives of
thirty-something twins Isabella and Gabriel Glover after their Russian
mother dies of a stroke. The British-raised twins go through the
motions of grief and depression, all the while trying to come to terms
with their relationship with their estranged, dandified father. And
lurking beneath the conceit of the twins’ mourning is a subplot about
Arkady, a talented Russian pianist who discovers that the Glovers’
mother was also his own. Arkady’s journey to the UK to claim his
birthright and inheritance eventually changes much about the twins’
lives.
Riddled with grandiose turns of phrase, Docx’s semi-autobiographical
novel is a hard pill to swallow. Isabella’s sorrow surges, “Oh Christ.
Christ. Christ. She felt the grief kraken rising from the deep, sending
ripples through the underground lake of her tears.” Overwrought and
overflowing, Docx manages to whip up zinger after cringing zinger, but
the novel is salvaged by his fastidious descriptions of St. Petersburg,
the interior lives of Russians, and his cast of unlikable but
believable characters. The sum of its parts becomes a descriptive and
ultimately well-composed novel.
Pravda (or Self Help, as it is known in the UK) was
long-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize, and I suppose it’s
understandable—it’s certainly not the sort of book I like
reading, but it’s enjoyable enough once you get past its wordy temper
tantrums. But yeesh, some are hard to stomach: “[Gabriel’s] heart was
pestling itself mad against the mortar of the present, suffering now
from some inarticulate dread—a terrifying feeling that came at
him as he reached the staircase in the corner of the quadrangle,
grinding his very quick to powder.” Docx would be well served to take a
respite from his metaphor mongering—take a load off, dude.
Chillax.