Mikhail and Margarita

Starred review from January 30, 2017
Himes’s confident, carefully crafted debut novel begins in 1933 Moscow with poet Osip Mandelstam and satirist Mikhail Bulgakov sharing a quiet moment at a restaurant. Later that night, Mandelstam is arrested because of his unpublished poem about Stalin. The Writers’ Union selects Bulgakov to draft a letter pleading for the poet’s release. Bulgakov witnesses the determined efforts of Mandelstam’s wife to save her husband and his work. He also becomes better acquainted with Mandelstam’s mistress, Margarita, who eventually becomes Bulgakov’s mistress and inspiration for his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita. While the Mandelstams are sent into exile, Margarita is condemned to a prison camp. Bulgakov follows her to Siberia, as does the government agent who loves her. The story blends political and literary history with fiction, alternating among moments of gritty realism, deep emotion, irony, and insight. Himes evokes a world of geniuses and hacks, dangerous men and endangered men, muses and martyrs. She adeptly details brutality and betrayal as well as creativity and the uncertainties of censorship: one moment the not-so-secret police trash Bulgakov’s apartment, the next Stalin insists a commissar give Bulgakov his jacket. This novel offers two profiles in courage: a satirist struggling under a dictator who has no use for satire, and the woman Himes imagines inspired the iconic novel about the survival of love and literature under bureaucratic tyranny.

February 1, 2017
An imagined relationship between a great Russian writer and the inspiration for one of his characters.Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita famously imagines a visit to Moscow by Satan. Written during Stalin's reign, the novel wasn't published until 1966, a quarter century after its author's death. In her debut novel, Himes attempts to resurrect the brilliant Bulgakov and to give shape to his fictional Margarita. In Himes' imagining, Margarita is mistress to Osip Mandelstam, another real-life Russian luminary, until Mandelstam is arrested, tortured, and banished to the hinterlands. Then she takes up with Bulgakov. They're more or less happy together until they start noticing a mysterious figure who seems to pop up at auspicious moments. Ilya is an intelligence agent, and he's out for Bulgakov, right up until he falls in love with Margarita himself. Then things get blurry. There's an arrest, exile to the barren steppe, a labor camp, an escape attempt--but Himes' plot never really comes together. The narrative shifts from Bulgakov's to Margarita's point of view, but neither perspective is convincing, and the characters aren't exactly lifelike. Himes' choice to invent a fictional mistress for a real writer is an odd one. Actually, Bulgakov apparently based his Margarita on a woman named Yelena Shilovskaya, whom he married; but there doesn't seem to be a connection between Shilovskaya and Himes' Margarita. Himes might have been better off inventing all her own characters. Bulgakov's presence in her narrative serves as an unfortunate, and unwelcome, reminder of the discrepancy in talent. While Bulgakov was a vicious satirist, wickedly funny, Himes' tribute is startlingly humorless. Despite vivid prose, Himes' debut seems to wander aimlessly, unconvincing and bleak.

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February 1, 2017

Not unlike her main character, Himes is both a physician and a writer. Her debut novel reflects these two worlds, underscoring the necessity of artistry and imagination within the clinical application of objective science. Set during the Soviet famine of 1933, the story unfolds around Mikhail Bulgakov, a playwright and eponymous protagonist of the novel. Although struggling professionally and creatively under the Soviet censors, Mikhail finds an inexplicable fan in Joseph Stalin. While currying favor with the Soviet political elite, he is also being shadowed by Ilya Ivanovich, an agent of the secret police, for his association with Margarita, the mistress of his recently imprisoned friend. As Ilya's interrogations of Margarita slowly evolve into affection, both men find themselves fighting for love and freedom within an oppressive system of order and discipline. VERDICT Drawing inspiration from Bulgakov's novel, The Master and Margarita, unpublished in his lifetime, Himes pens a whirlwind tale of romance and intrigue that approximates, if not exceeds, the talents of one of Russia's most heralded authors.--Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Lab., NM

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