'Beautifully observed and lyrically exptressed, the novel slowly ... pieces together the mosaic of Olga's inner life as she begins to lose her mind. Returning obsessively to the tiny details of domestic life, the creak of a door, the gap in the curtains and the texture of the surface of a cup the effect is hauntingly claustophobic. But the greatest achievement is in the portrayal of Olga's son, a nameless youth with translucent skin and blood that will not clot, whose spectral presence is sensed, but never captured, in this tragic story of misplaced erotic love.'
Natasha Fairweather, The Times, August 99
Another treasure ... Superb, overwhelming, tragic, a typically Russian novel sculpted in dazzling French (
La Vie)
'this is an intriguing novel about a Russian immigrant woman who lives in a small French town with her only son just after the second word war...the novel is neatly framed....Makine's meticulous, lyrical prose- served well by this sensitive translation- is all the more impressive because his first language is Russian (he writes in French)....he charges space with tension and the inanimate with meaning until the curtain rings are sinister, the position of a shoe is shocking and a lamp base causes a significant turning-point....Makine deserves our full attention: he exerts impressive control over these themes, hops back and forwards through time with ease, and ultimately neverforgets the value of a simple and compelling story.'
Lucy Atkins, The Sunday Times
NEW REVIEW
'The intricate thoughts and fears of a Russian emigre mother take center stage in this elaborately haunting work...Olga's involuted, tormented conciousness becomes a sophisticated pleasure in its own right...That same consciousness, and the events that destroy it, invoke larger mythic patterns- Cupid and Psyche, Beauty and the Beast. Makine's novel possesses the feverish beauty ofa hot-house culture in its final efflorescence.'
Publishers Weekly, 26.7.99
'The effect of reading this is akin to lucid dreaming...Makine [is a] writer to watch'
Anita Brookner, Spectator
'Impressionistic, in the manner, to some extent, of Conrad or Ford. That is to say, it is wonderfully vivid. The descriptions of the terrible, in more ways than one, winter of 1946-7 are glittering. Even readers normally bored by descriptions of scenery will find these compelling...[A] remarkable book ...The French novel is alive again, in the hands of a Russian'
Allan Massie, Scotsman
'We move between an intensely lived present and an evanescent past. Makine is dreamy and suggestive one minute and painfully observant the next...Makine manages plot and atmosphere so cleverly that the reader is desperate to know what happens next, but is held when the action is suspended for arresting and minute descriptions. In his evocation of a golden age long past and his delicate, sensual handling of Olga's relationship with her son, he writing brings Nabokov to mind, but there is no doubt that Makine has his own voice'
The Times Literary Supplement
'The book's fascination, and enormous power, is in the nuanced process by which Olga discovers (and we do with her) what this son, whom she thinks of as a boy in need of protection, has been doing to her at night. Monstrous and delicate, convincing and nightmarish, the process challenges your ideas about madness, self-delusion and mother-love in glowing, gauze-silk prose'
Daily Telegraph
'This searing and poetic mystery novel is a worthy successor [to Le Testament Francais]'
Good Book Guide
'Makine's writing is unfailingly powerful. While The Crime of Olga Arbyelina is a good thriller, it is the intermingling of moods that dominates the story.'
'the evocation of Olga's descent into madness is affecting'
Francis Welch, Literary Review, July 1999
'Makine seduces us with the language of a fairytale bef'Beautifully observed and lyrically exptressed, the novel slowly ... pieces together the mosaic of Olga's inner life as she begins to lose her mind. Returning obsessively to the tiny details of domestic life, the creak of a door, the gap in the curtains and the texture of the surface of a cup the effect is hauntingly claustophobic. But the greatest achievement is in the portrayal of Olga's son, a nameless youth with translucent skin and blood that will not clot, whose spectral presence is sensed, but never captured, in this tragic story of misplaced erotic love.'
Natasha Fairweather, The Times, August 99
