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Review_FICTION

drives the Cuban economy. Disgusted
★ Fox with Spanish brutality toward slaves,
Everett agrees to spy for the Union, put-
Dubravka Ugrešic´, trans. from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac´ and David Williams.
ting himself in even more peril and leading
Open Letter, $16.95 trade paper (308p) ISBN 978-1-940953-76-2
the story to a climactic escape sequence.
grešic´’s soaring, incisive novel uses the shape- Everett’s family melodrama and a romance
shifting avatar of the fox to explore story-making. plot are also included, but the real draw is
Lloyd’s excellent historical detail. (Mar.)
The linked narrative structure is reminiscent of
Uher novel The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, as
Now the Night Begins
an unnamed narrator in exile from the former
Alain Guiraudie, trans. from the French by
Yugoslavia struggles with the complications of 21st-
Jeffrey Zuckerman. Semiotext(e), $24.95
century writing. There are six sections, tonally varied
(224p) ISBN 978-1-63590-005-7
save for the inevitable appearance of a fox in each, that
French film director Guiraudie
cascade together in the thrilling climax, which merges
(Stranger by the Lake) focuses on the
the emotional—the narrator’s love for her niece—and
overlap of violence, power, and rampant
the practical—the narrator’s disappointing visit to a
sexual desire in his psychologically taxing
Holden Caulfield-themed MFA program in Italy (it’s
and deeply disconcerting tale. Forty-
named Scuola Holden). Two sections take on the form of essays, with some factual
year-old Gilles upends a lazy afternoon
material and some invented by the writer. One examines a Japanese narrative by
visit to his neighbors, the 90-something
the Russian writer Boris Pilnyak; the other is a sketch of Dorothy Leuthold, a
Grampa, his daughter, Mariette, and her
minor figure in the Nabokov cosmos. Two sections are set in Europe’s literary
teenage granddaughter, Cindy, by taking
community, as the narrator suffers the minor indignities of life as an “economy-
a sexual fantasy involving Grampa’s
class writer” while she is taught lessons about storytelling by two older women
underwear too far. Before they know
who are each associated with obscure Russian authors named Levin. In the
Gilles is the culprit, Mariette reports the
remarkable third section, “The Devil’s Garden,” the narrator inherits a house in
underwear theft and Gilles becomes the
Croatia and forges a surprising connection. “The urge for home is powerful,” she target of gruesome police brutality. As he
writes; “it has the force of primal instinct.... The greatest feat of every emigrant
bumbles through the rest of the summer,
seems to be making a new home.” Ugrešic´’s novel is a wonder; it’s essential making and breaking dates with former
reading for writers and lovers of writing alike. (Apr.) lovers and cruising the beach, Gilles
struggles with his confusing sexual feel-
ings for Grampa and gives in to Cindy’s
and hypocrisy of the “Marxist nobility,” the tragedy of a utopian ideal betrayed by increasingly brazen advances. In a sudden
the paradoxical haute-proletariat society human foible and vanity is certainly time- shift, Gilles witnesses the menacing chief
of 1920s Russia. Readers see Stalin never less, but, unlike Proust’s work, this one of police drowning a man. The chief
missing a ballet starring the famed doesn’t quite recapture a lost time. (Mar.) attempts to intimidate Gilles and ignites
Marina Semyonova, and Trotsky’s sister a perplexing all-consuming romance
Madame Kamenev and the writer Mikhail Harbor of Spies: between them, though Gilles worries he
Bulgakov meditating on humanity’s end- A Novel of Historic Havana only acquiesces to avoid being killed
less suffering. In Malaparte’s telling, the Robin Lloyd. Lyons, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978- himself. Guiraudie never shies away from
supposed revolutionaries are obsessed 1-4930-3226-6 any darkness, offering frank, unpleasant
with the French fashion designer Lloyd’s second novel, after Rough descriptions of Gilles’s nearly sociopathic
Schiaparelli, chocolates from “the famous Passage to London, is a swashbuckling spy desires and dreams but offering little
Fuchs of Warsaw,” and gossip. While adventure set in 1863 Havana, Cuba, that reason for the reader’s investment. All but
Malaparte’s morbid glee in describing follows Everett Townsend, an American the most steely fans of sadistic thrillers
Lenin’s preserved body as a “precious crus- sea captain arrested for sedition. To gain will find the novel too aimless and dis-
tacean” or the revolutionary hero his freedom, Everett reluctantly agrees to turbing. (Mar.)
Karakhan as little more than “a fabulous become a blockade runner for a corrupt
tennis player” is infectious, the numerous merchant, supporting the Confederate The Girlfriend
French bon mots from Russian party func- cause by using his ship to carry contra- Sarah J. Naughton. Sourcebooks, $15.99
tionaries and German newspaper corre- band war material to the South and return trade paper (368p) ISBN 978-1-4926-5124-6
spondents mean little to a contemporary to Havana with valuable cargoes of cotton. In this stirring but unwieldy novel,
reader. Malaparte described this work as This is lucrative but dangerous work; Naughton (Tattletale) introduces two
“a novel in the Proustian sense,” Everett evades blockading Union war- women intent on avoiding and covering
recounting “the tragic sunset of a revolu- ships, becomes involved with an old up traumatic moments from their pasts.
tionary society” before Stalin’s purges unsolved murder, and discovers British Mags takes time off from her corporate
began in earnest. He is halfway successful; complicity in the Spanish slave trade that job in Las Vegas to visit her long-

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