Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia

Starred review from October 15, 2012
Playing off of its title, Prieto’s formally audacious novel (after Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire) is divided into 26 chapters, organized from A to Z, after a prologue, called “Encyclopedia,” wherein first-person narrator and hero Thelonius Monk (not the music legend) arrives in Russia. Thelonius shares storytelling duties with a cheeky omniscient narrator who may or may not be the author. He, to the reader’s delight, turns out to be an explorer of words, just as Monk is an explorer of fame (and his namesake was an explorer of music). Chapters are broken into mock, though actually informative, encyclopedia entries that conform to each letter and include numerous references to other entries, urging readers to flip back-and-forth and creating an ever-deepening picture of the whole. “H,” for example, is full of droll flights of narrative fact and fancy about Hand-Axes, Hard Frosts, and Hippolyte, woven into the leisurely forward movement of the low-stakes story: Thelonius meets a young woman named Linda Evangelista (not the supermodel; in fact, her real name, according to her entry in “L,” is Anastasia Stárseva) and, after a brief affair and briefer correspondence, he takes her to Yalta, where she records his daylong rooftop speech about “the unbearable beauty of the world.” Though Prieto’s plot is consciously frivolous, it has genuine resonance in the age of celebrity, and it bubbles with energy and mischief. Quirky and consistently surprising. Agent: The Wylie Agency.

November 1, 2012
As the title suggests, this is a novel in the form of an encyclopedia, so the narrative surges forward as the reader moves through alphabetical listings from "A" to "Z." Prieto makes his major characters pseudonymous, and the pseudonyms he chooses reflect the fascination with American culture that lies at the heart of the story. "Thelonious Monk," the compiler of the encyclopedia, has met a stunning woman, dubbed Linda Evangelista, and is convinced he can make her famous, at least in part because of the splendor of her red hair. (He sees her as "the mathematical average of all the beautiful women [he'd] known in Russia, their profiles superimposed.") Through a series of encyclopedia articles, we follow their progress from St. Petersburg to Yalta, with plenty of stops along the way for philosophical musings on both classical and modern culture. Monk is interested in everything from Adam Smith to London dandies (and their distinction from beaux, following the lines of an argument Nabokov lays out about Pushkin) to spitting. He ruminates on the sound of his false name, believing that Thelonious "sound[s] like a Nordic mammal," on organdy, and on Russian white nights. He cites sources in German, French, Latin and (of course) Russian--and fortunately for the reader, provides translations for all of them. At times, he displays the edgy cynicism of Ambrose Bierce: "OCCIDENT, THE. The mirror in which Russia gazes at itself each morning to touch up its own image." Offbeat and witty.

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December 15, 2012
As the title indicates, Cuban writer Prieto's latest novel takes the form of an encyclopedia. Within its alphabetical entries and many cross-references, readers must pick out plot strands and determine their proper chronology themselves. In 1991 Saint Petersburg, as the Soviet Union disintegrates, a foreigner calling himself Thelonious Monk meets a beautiful red-haired flautist, whom he calls Linda Evangelista, and chooses her as the heroine for his novel in progress. Rather than revealing his plan outright, he offers her a job as a model and promises her a fashion-magazine cover shoot in Yalta. As this scenario loosely plays out, the entries delve into Russian history and philosophy while parodying Russians' preoccupation with American commercialism and desire to re-create it at home. Mythic figures are reduced to the level of consumer products; Thelonious and Linda are recast as characters in Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (1966). The lengthy digressions on minutiae can make for dry reading, but the setup is undeniably clever as Prieto playfully pokes fun at the mind-set of a people in the midst of cultural transformation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)