The Concert Ticket [Paperback]

The story in this wonderful novel was inspired by a real event - that of the eighty year old Stravinsky returning to Russia in a `for one night only' comeback concert; the queue for tickets started a whole year before.

Set in an unnamed Russian city some time during the height of the totalitarian regime, the streets abound with kiosks selling various goods. When Anna discovers a new kiosk with a queue already forming, despite it being shut and there's no indication of what it will sell, she bags her place, and thus begins a marathon that will involve her entire family. Anna is a school teacher, her husband Sergei is a frustrated professional musician who was assigned to play the tuba after the `change', and student son Alexander helps out too. Rumours spread that the tickets will be for a special concert featuring an exiled composer, and each member of the family dreams of what they'd do if they got the ticket.

The line develops its own life, becoming a complex social structure, with myriad families all holding their allotted place - all taking shifts in waiting to get the single ticket per place. One of its members wonders what's really going on ...

`All I'm saying is, it's a very efficient way of disposing of people's time, don't you see? Thousands of us, some waiting for stockings, others for symphonies. But what if there aren't any stockings, what if there aren't any symphonies, so to speak? What if all of this is just a means to keep the masses occupied and hopeful - a cheap solution to the problem of time?'
`Wait, does this idiot seriously believe that the State is maintaining a system of phony kiosks just so we waste our time waiting for things that don't exist?
`No, no, I'm not claiming that's how it is, I'm only saying it philosophically. Like a metaphor, a metaphor of life, do you understand?'
`Well, metaphor or not, this smells of subversion to me. You'd do well to keep your voice down - `

Waiting in the line becomes an obsession for all of them. Their jobs suffer, they don't talk to each other any more except to arrange shift patterns. They begin to display all the traits of addicts - the line is their life now, their neighbours in the queue replace their families; the line is the only place were hope still lives. Whiling the hours away in the line is preferable to anything else.

I really loved this book. It felt so authentic - well the author is Russian; she perfectly captures the dreary lives of people just trying to get by under the regime but always dreaming of better things - and we get to live their hopes and aspirations with them. Like Vladimir and Estragon, Beckett's two tramps in Waiting for Godot, the waiting is what they do best, always with the lure of things happening tomorrow.

I definitely want to read Grushin's first book, The Dream Life of Sukhanov having read this fantastic novel. (9.5/10)

From other people's reviews I was expecting Dostoevsky meets Samuel Beckett. What I got was a dreary dirge of a book which ambled pointlessly. At least in Waiting for Godot I got the joke. I didn't understand this tedious work at all. Does this make me a Philistine? Not recommended.

Olga Grushin has created a novel with all the characteristics of a Russian classic. The Concert Ticket could have been written by a modern Chekov or Gogol and yet has none of the clunkiness of a translation for it was written in English. Although Grushin's story has a basis in real-life events, the author brings a surreal touch to her story which makes it go way beyond the prosaic, everyday lives of citizens of the old Soviet Union.

The book is loosely based on a real-life event. In 1962 the composer Igor Stravinsky returned to Russia to play one concert. The queue for tickets began one year before the event took place and only 5000 tickets were available. Olga Grushin has formed her story by describing one family's participation in a similar queue and the impact it has on their lives.

In the novel, Anna is on her way home from work as a teacher, when she sees a small queue forming at a lone kiosk. Ths kiosk is nondescript with no sign above it. Its window was boarded up, and a handwritten notice tacked onto it, "Gone to the parade". Anna proceeds on her way home but mentions the new kiosk to her husband, a tuba player in a state-run orchestra, and her mother and son.

A few weeks later she notices that about fifty people are standing in the queue. Nobody seems to know what the kiosk is selling. Leather boots, children's coats, layetrd cakes? The suggestions from the queue are many and Anna discovers in herself a desire to be suprised, saying, "It sure must be something good otherwise all these people wouldn't be here".

Anna joins the queue on her way home from work, then fakes a day's sickness and stays home from work to spend the day waiting with the other people who continue to speculate what might eventually be on sale. Weeks pass and Anna rejoins the queue at every opportunity. Rumours spread as the people whisper of imported good, ingenious toys, exclusive book subscriptions, a vacation by the sea.

Notices appear in the boarded up window - Closed for Accounting. Out with flu, will re-open in January. Restocking. None of these cryptic messages deter the people in the queue who are desperate for something novel to enter their grey-toned lives, where almost any unexpected produce would be welcome.

Meanwhile Anna's husband Sergei goes to his work playing the tuba. A thwarted musician, he is doomed to play rousing marches and patriotic songs rather than the orchestral music he loves, and when he over-hears that the great composer Selinsky it to return to his home-country to play one concert his heart is ablaze.

One day, Anna and Sergei's son Alexander is taking a turn waiting in the queue, when he hears that the kiosk is eventually going to sell concert tickets. Sergei puts two and two together and before long the family have convinced themselves that the mysterious kiosk is the place where the tickets will be sold. By this time others in the queue have also formed the conviction that they will be able to buy tickets for the Selinsky concert, but only one per family - who will be going to the concert? Sergei, the musician who is so desperate to see the ageing comp0ser? Or perhaps Anna's mother, a retired ballet dancer with links to Selinsky? Or perhaps Alexander will sell the ticket on the black market and escape to the West?

I won't go into the details beyond these opening pages. It is enough to say that the desire for a ticket becomes an obsession for the members of this family over the next year, leading them into complex and bewildering events which shake their family. I cannot but compliment Olga Grushin for her imagination and powerful story-telling which leads this book into being far more than an account of a queue, but rather an at times surreal exploration of human desire and longing. The queue is a catalyst for a family drama involving a wide cast of memorable characters.