PositiveThe Village VoiceThe stories bleed together, with character parallels and conceptual continuations. Often at the center of the fugue is Soviet ‘formalist’ composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who aches as part of a Vollmann-invented love triangle with shape-shifting translator Elena Konstantinovskaya and Roman Karmen … Still, the most compelling stories stick to military maneuvers, as in the closely observed family drama that retells Nazi infiltrator Kurt Gerstein’s attempt to keep ‘Clean Hands’ while sabotaging the SS, a claustrophobic Stalingrad standstill in ‘The Last Field-Marshal,’ and traitor General A.A. Vlasov’s ‘Breakout,’ which buzzes with nervous, melancholy energy. Linkages grow playful: Germany’s Sixth Army vs. Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet, East/West Germany, De/Pre-Nazification, Berlin portrayed as both a brain and a quartered heart, and Europe Central (both book and place) as a telephone or octopus.
