Dreams of My Russian Summers: A Novel

Dreams of My Russian Summers: A Novel

Language: English

Pages: 256

ISBN: 1611450543

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Every summer, young Andrei visits his grandmother, Charlotte Lemmonier, whom he loves dearly. In a dusty village overlooking the vast Russian steppes, she captivates her grandson and the other children of the village with wondrous tales—watching Proust play tennis in Neuilly, Tsar Nicholas II’s visit to Paris, French president Felix Faure dying in the arms of his mistress. But from his mysterious grandmother, Andrei also learns of a Russia he has never known: a country of famine and misery, brutal injustice, and the hopeless chaos of war.

Enthralled, he weaves her stories into his own secret universe of memory and dream. She creates for him a vivid portrait of the France of her childhood, a distant Atlantis far more elegant, carefree, and stimulating than Russia in the 1970s and ‘80s. Her warm, artful memories of her homeland and of books captivate Andrei. Absorbed in this vision, he becomes an outsider in his own country, and eventually a restless traveler around Europe. Dreams of My Russian Summers is an epic full of passion and tenderness, pain and heartbreak, mesmerizing in every way.

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several relapses — like the struggle of that man, battling in a black hole in the midst of the ice, which Charlotte had seen one day in spring, as she crossed the bridge. He clung to a long branch that was being pushed toward him and crawled up the slippery slope of the riverbank, sprawled flat on his stomach on the icy surface, progressing centimeter by centimeter, already stretching out his red hand, as he touched those of his rescuers. Suddenly, incomprehensively, his body shuddered, started

patriarch, met Leconte de Lisle under the canopy in a park. "Do you know what I was just thinking about?" the patriarch asked. And, perceiving his interlocutor's confusion, he declared roundly, "I was thinking about what I shall say to God when, very soon perhaps, I enter His Kingdom. . . ." To which Leconte de Lisle, at once ironic and respectful, asserted confidently, "Oh, you will say to him, 'Cher confrère . . .'" * * * * * * Strangely enough, it was somebody who knew nothing of

Imagine, they pray to their god five times a day! And what's more, they eat without a table. Yes, all on the ground. Well, on a carpet. And without spoons; with their fingers!" The guest, mainly to make conversation, argued back in reasonable tones, "We-ell, 'not like us' is pitching it a bit high. I was in Tashkent last summer. You know, it's not so different from here. . . ." "And their desert — have you been there?" (She raised her voice, happy to have hit upon a good talking point, so that

being, becomes merchandise. Merchandise that is hawked, exposed on market stalls, discounted. My dream was an antidote. And the Notes — a refuge. In those few months of waiting, the topography of Paris changed. As on certain maps where the arrondissements are colored differently, the city became filled in my eyes with varied shades that Charlotte's presence gave nuances to. There were streets whose sun-drenched silence, early in the morning, held the echo of her voice. Café terraces where I

which was trimmed with magnificent garlands of medeola. At one moment he was listening now to some gracious remark from Madame Faure, seated on his right, at the next to the velvety baritone of the president, speaking to the empress. The reflections from the glasses and the glittering array of silver dazzled the guests. ... At the dessert the president stood up, raised his glass, and declared, "The presence of Your Majesty among us, acclaimed by a whole people, has sealed the bonds that unite our

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