Review: 'Isolde' by Irena Odoevtseva, trans. by Bryan Karetnyk & Irina Steinberg

The medieval tale of Isolde is one of sadness, betrayal, and death. From its very title then, Irena Odoevtseva makes clear her tale is one of tragedy. She then infuses this darkness, however, with a childlike sense of wonder and a sensuality that borders on the inappropriate. (In a good way, I think!) Thanks to Pushkin Collection and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 5/11/2019
Publisher: Pushkin Press; Pushkin Collection

A family of Russian émigrés seeks refuge in Paris in this hypnotically dark classic of love, deceit, and wayward youth by a pioneering Russian writer

Left to her own devices in Biarritz, fourteen-year-old Russian Liza meets an older English boy, Cromwell, on a beach. He thinks he has found a magical, romantic beauty and insists upon calling her Isolde; she is taken with his Buick and ability to pay for dinner and champagne.

Disaffected and restless, Liza, her brother Nikolai, and her boyfriend Andrei enjoy Cromwell’s company in restaurants and jazz bars after he follows Liza back to Paris—until his mother stops giving him money. When the siblings’ own mother abandons them to follow a lover to Nice, the group falls deeper into its haze of alcohol, and their darker drives begin to take over.

First published in 1929, Isolde is a startlingly fresh, disturbing portrait of a lost generation of Russian exiles by Irina Odoevtseva, a major Russian writer who has never before appeared in English.

Youth, especially one utterly detached from any kind of parental control and a sense of place and time, is madness. Especially childhood that has just crossed the threshold into puberty and a sense of maturity is full of contrasting impulses and desires, some of which need to be curbed and others which need to be encouraged. The novel's depiction of a sensual and sexual teenagehood, especially where more mature characters come in, might feel very off to some readers. It also did to some readers in Odoevtseva's own time. And it makes sense, that "yikes" feeling, because Odoevtseva is writing about decline and decay, about how the children of a generation torn from its home ends up lost and wandering, getting lost. Teenagehood, the natural time when we begin to discover certain feelings and ideas, is a time where  the neglect of parents and society at general can have its most lasting impact. I think in that sense, Isolde might be quite current in its thematics, echoing a present disconnect between generations, where some linger in dreams of what once was, and others know they will never experience those dreams. 

Cromwell, an English boy of roughly sixteen, meets the fourteen year-old Liza on the beach at Biarritz. He had been thinking of the legendary Isolde, and there she is: blond, beautiful, and utterly alive. Investing her with all the mystical charm his brain can conjure, he takes her and her brother out on plenty of adventures, as long as the money last. When it doesn't, he is forgotten. Liza, young and alive, enjoys Cromwell's interest, but her heart belongs to Andrei back in Paris. Her brother, Nikolai, meanwhile, has given his heart to money and the fast life. With their mother, who insists they don't tell anyone she's their mother, being utterly absent from their lives in any way that matters, the two siblings are left to their own devices, careening from nights on the town with champagne to dark and lonely nights without money for heating. As these four teens find themselves and each other in Paris, a darkness takes over which leads to tragically predictable results. I struggled a little with knowing hwere to place Isolde, because its subject matter initially pushes a reader towards considering it too risque to be a classic. The introduction, however, odes a lot of work to place Odoevtseva among the great Russian writers. I'm still not entirely sure, but I do think that Odoevtseva took care to create characters that are both despicable and yet raise your pity as well, especially when she reminds us of how young they are. As I mentioned above, there is something about youth which is tense and complicated and the circumstances here don't help these kids in any way. I think the biggest artistry of the novel is probably how it's written, how its ease probably belies its careful crafting.

I've never read anything by Irena Odoevtseva before, probably because she is in a large part forgotten, something this edition is attempting to correct. While the subject matter of the novel is one thing, I do think there is a lot of craft in the writing itself. Comparing it to the more classical, detailed, determined writing of authors like Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, you can see where Odoevtseva strays from her literary ancestors. There is a looseness to the writing and to the characterisation which ensures that much of Isolde does feel like a summer's dream. Perspectives switch within a paragraph, time flies by and then moves slow like molasses, characters come to realisations and then laugh them away, only to end up back where they started. It feels impressionistic, if that makes sense. The flightiness and impreciseness of the lives of these characters is matched in how they are written and so it is no surprise that it is in the steady work of Dostoyevskian prose that Liza finds a foothold. As a medievalist, I admittedly did not fully buy in to the Tristan and Isolde parallels, except that there is a general sense of doom cast across the entire novel. We all know this cannot end well and the only real question is just how bad it will be. That atmosphere is created pretty well by Odoevtseva through these impressions of colour, wealth, love, passion, decay, decline, and death which she interweaves into her narrative.

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

Isolde is an intriguing novel which might not be for all readers. Those interested in the experiences of Russian émigrés and conversations around youth and its danger, however, will definitely find something here!