Isolde

September 23, 2019
Odoevtseva’s arresting 1929 novel of dissipated Russian youth appears in English for the first time with this stylish translation. Fourteen-year-old Russian emigree Liza meets English teenager Cromwell while both are on vacation in Biarritz, France, in the late 1920s. Cromwell falls immediately in love, claiming Liza is the precise embodiment of the heroine Isolde. Liza; her brother, Nikolai; and her friend Odette take advantage of Cromwell’s wealth and car until it is time for them to return to Paris. Cromwell, whose mother does not approve of his fast lifestyle, temporarily cuts him off financially, and the Russians lose interest when he admits his lack of cash. After Liza’s neglectful, selfish mother abandons the children to travel with a new lover, Nikolai convinces Liza he needs Cromwell to steal his family’s money so they all can flee to Russia with important royalist documents. Liza, full of confused, fantastical memories of Russia, agrees to take part and ignores the obvious signs the plan is much more sinister until too late. Liza’s overt sexualization by men (teenage and adult) is shocking to read, but Odoevtseva portrays the adolescent mix of naïveté and conviction beautifully. Readers will be entertained by this measured thriller and its self-absorbed characters.

September 15, 2019
First published in 1929 but only just translated into English, Russian novelist/poet/playwrite/memoirist Odoevtseva's arresting tale of teenage Russian expats living in France is as dark as it is dreamy. The book was not an instant hit when it was first published in Paris, where Odoevtseva, like her characters, had fled to escape the Russian Revolution. Among the critical charges against it: It abused "sexual spice"; it was "dry"; it stereotyped the English; it had lesbian overtones. It was, co-translator Karetnyk writes in his engaging introduction, "all much too modern, much too European, much too explicit, much too close to the bone." Indeed, it is all of those things, which is exactly what makes it great; the setting may be dated, but the writing, as translated by Karetnyk and Steinberg, is arrestingly contemporary. When we first meet 14-year-old Liza, the heart and center of the novel, it is on the beach in Biarritz, and we see her through the eyes of a wealthy British boy named Cromwell, who falls in love with her immediately and renames her Isolde, to his Tristan. Men fall in love with Liza--it's just what they do--though except for declaring their devotion, they rarely engage with who she is. Cromwell, the most earnest of the bunch, is a pleasant distraction for both her and her plotting older brother, Nikolai, both of whom bask in his affections and his cash. When the family returns to Paris in the fall, Liza reunites with her boyfriend, Andrei--Cromwell, after all, was just a sweet diversion--but finds herself increasingly uneasy, on the cusp of adulthood, longing still for the half-imaginary Moscow of her youth. When Nikolai and Andrei hatch a plot, using naïve Liza as a pawn, the doom that has been hovering over the novel comes to violent fruition, although the real action all takes place offstage. The novel might have been a moralistic tale about an abandoned generation; instead, because of Liza, it is captivating: Underneath her shallow mania is real complexity, and while Odoevtseva's portrait of adolescence is disturbing, it is also very funny, a ray of light cutting through the misery of an otherwise dark world. A chilling pleasure.

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