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In the Blue House is a fragmented text, with disparate voices answering each other back through the tumultuous decades of the first half of the 20th century. Russian exile Leon Trotsky and beautiful Mexican artist Frida Kahlo are the two characters who join the voices. The couple had a brief love affair in the 1930s when Trotsky was warmly offered a refuge from Stalin in Mexico. Their voices, though, are only two among many. Stalin and Trotsky feature as children in pre-revolution Russia, and as grown men ripping apart their country with their conflicting ideas. Stalin's wife tells of her growing discomfort with her status and with her husband in cold Moscow, while Trotsky's wife contrasts this with her tales of her affection for her husband and their intimacy in the heat of Mexico. The tales and voices of those whom history has forgotten also figure, such as doctors and engineers in the USSR; Trotsky's bodyguard and assassin; Trotsky's father; and a one-legged Mexican Judas-maker.
Delahunt's novel manages to be both an affectionate portrait of "El Viejo", the "Old Man", and also a disturbing insight into the consequences of the revolution of which he was a part. The fragmented structure of the text, with so many voices fighting for attention, darting back and forth from 1932 to 1917, or from 1940 to 1952, can be confusing. A "dramatis personae" would be useful, and perhaps a timeline of Russian history--though this might ruin the effect of the non-sequential narrative. For those readers with very little knowledge of the Russian revolution and its aftermath in the first half of the 20th century, this book reads best entirely as a work of fiction. For those with historical knowledge at their fingertips, it may make real people more real and allow their voices to be heard. --Olivia Dickinson
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
The Good Book Guide, June 2002
"This ambitious novel lyrically and movingly shows the indivisibility of the individual and history."
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