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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A review of the reviewers, 16 Feb 2007
Rarely before have I read such a diverging set of reviews. One reviewer refers to this book as "ridiculous", someone else calls it "stunning", and another "boring". Allow me to try to make some sense of all this.
Most reviewers find the book well-written, although a few found the language to be slow-going. A novel doesn't need to be an easy read in order to be well-written. I agree that the reading was a little slow at times, but I attribute that to the richness of the language.
The plot and setting are definitely original, and the author can only be given credit for that. The story focuses on the arrival in a small Siberian village of an escaped prisoner, who claims he is pursued by a cannibal. As the novel unfolds, we meet a group of stranded Czech soldiers, a community of eunuchs, and are left wondering who the cannibal really is... Most events, like the presence in Siberia of Czech soldiers, are based on historical fact.
The author spends much of his efforts on character development. He devotes large chunks of the first 150 pages to the lives and background of the various characters. This may give the impression at times that the storyline is going off on a tangent, and can explain why some reviewers found the plot boring or confusing.
However, character development is fundamental to the understanding of the book's main theme, which centers on different people's perception of love and the acts of stupidity and folly it can engender.
I will conclude by agreeing with one reviewer who claims that although all the ingredients were there, the author could perhaps have mixed them better. Had he done so, the book would have been a true masterpiece. A good and entertaining read all the same.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A journey into a harsh place, 12 Jun 2007
This is not a cosy little murder mystery. In superficial terms, the plot turns on an isolated community in Siberia discovering that there is a cannibal in their midst. But don't read this if you are looking for yet another 'police procedural' with an exotic setting; this is not a tale of 'good guys' versus 'bad guys'.
Disperate characters act out of conflicting motives; some we might identify with, some may feel very foreign. Those who act out of the purest idealism may perform the actions that a observer would categorise as the most horrific; those characters who at first may seem most alien to us may act out of the simplest motives, the motives with which we can most easily identify.
If the above paragraph seems obscure,it is because I do not want to spoil the twists and turns of the plot for the reader! Other reviewers praise Meek's prose; for me, the strength of his writing lies in his characterisations; he has the ability to make the unusual sympathetic, and the mundane monstrous.
But he does not shy away from the realities of a terrible period - as Meek points out in his afterword, the use of a human "cow" is not an invention of the author's, but a documented practice. Similarly, the Skoptsy self-castration for religious purposes - which seems to so disturb another reviewer! - was an integral belief of this unusual religious sect, who flourished, despite severe persecution for around a hundred years. Personally I find the absence of any concern for human life demonstrated by some of the secular zealots of the story far more chilling.
This is a novel that deals with disturbing ideals, and the lengths to which people will go to achieve them. It deals also with various types of love, and the way in which a common emotion produces very different effects on different people. By bringing the scale down to the personal and intimate, we get to sympathise with each character to some extent, however monstrous their actions.
The more unlikely elements in the book - the Skoptsy, the trans-Siberian railway line as Czech territory, the human "cow" - are true. The one element that is fictitious (as Meek admits, the description of life in a katorga fits the Soviet period, not the tsarist), is permitted by context.
However, this is not a freak-show; the novel asks, "What rules can be broken, to achieve [heaven/a socialist utopia/a good upbringing for your child/a return home/the survival of the one you love]?" "What can be sacrificed?" "Should *you* make that sacrifice... or should it be someone else...?"
The introduction of various characters may seem to shatter the focus of the narrative, until their stories interleave, but it is necessary to know the character's backgrounds. One has to know the 'normality' from which the events of the novel precipitates them, as they are stretched, and learn new things about themselves
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32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
“No deep and strong feeling, 10 Mar 2006
such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.” Yuri Zhivago, who uttered these words in Boris Pasternak’s classic tale Dr. Zhivago, would no doubt find common bond with the setting and characters that inhabit James Meek’s wonderful book “The People’s Act of Love”. Most of the People’s Act is set in 1919 in the village of Yazyk, in Siberia. To call Yazyk the middle of nowhere is to give it too much credit. Russia, now the USSR, is in the midst of its post-revolutionary civil war that has caused untold deaths and facilitated illnesses and famine. Yazyk’s end-of-the earth location does not insulate it entirely from these events. The town is run by a stranded division of a Czechoslovakian Legion with no apparent means to return to Prague subsequent to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Legion is commanded by Captain Matula who for all intents and purposes is both insane and sadistic. The civilians in the town consist mainly of a mystic sect of eunuchs (the “Skoptsy”) who believe their self-immolation removes the one body part responsible for most of the world’s sins. As far fetched as this may seem, the presence of stranded Czech soldiers and the existence of a sect of castrati inhabiting parts of Siberia is a matter of record and was not a piece of fiction created by Meek solely for this novel. The town is also inhabited by Anna Petrovna, who appears to be a widow, and her son. The Red Army is making its way towards Yazyk and intends to seek revenge for an act of brutality committed by the Czechs. A younger stranger, Samarin, makes his way into the town. He tells a fantastic story about escaping from a Siberian labor camp. He indicates that he was fattened up before the escape by his prison ‘guardian’, Mohican, so that could eat Samarin after their food ran out. (This tale of cannibalism is also based on real events.) The story of each group of protagonists is woven skillfully into the narrative. Although written by a British journalist and author in the 21st-century the narrative tone has a very Russian feel to it. The sentence structure, the formality of the conversation between the characters, and a somber, fatalistic tone will resonate with anyone who has read 19th and 20th century Russian literature. This particular structure holds up extremely well as the stories of each protagonist merge and the novel’s conclusion approaches. The book’s title is taken from a line uttered by one of its characters. It is a very appropriate title in the sense that despite (or perhaps because of) the macabre nature of some of the events in the novel one theme that remains constant is the question of love and what we flawed creatures do in its name. In an interview about the novel the author made the following statement: If there is one thing which the four central characters in the book . . . agree on, it is that love exists and matters. What they disagree on is what love may be. This theme of the infinite variability of love and the horrors transacted in the name of love may sound trite or too well worn a path to go down for some. However, in the hands of Meek it comes across as masterful and compelling. The People’s Act of Love was one I had trouble putting down once I got past the introductory chapters. If the test of a good novel is whether or not one continues to think about the story after it has been concluded – then People’s Act of Love passes with flying colors. It is a compelling and thoughtful book and any evocations to Russian authors of the 19th-century should be viewed as a well deserved accolade.
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