[A] subtle and deeply intelligent novel ... Monsieur Ka refuses to be an homage to Anna Karenina. Instead, it tries to reimagine the characters of Tolstoy’s novel as real people who could have been its prototypes ... The premise is simple and intensely engaging ... [a] delightful literary tangle ... Still, the richest and the most wonderful aspect of Monsieur Ka is not its literary gaming but rather its incessant attempts to make the reader question reality. All these fictional, factual, defictionalized, refictionalized layers allow Monsieur Ka to capture that elusive feeling every serious reader has experienced at some point: what if our lives are less real and not more real than the lives of literary characters? ... This question stays with you long after you put down Monsieur Ka.
The question for writers returning to works of literature from the past is what to do about style ... In Monsieur Ka, there’s a more aesthetic engagement with the Russian novel, but this isn’t just homage or pastiche because the nature of linguistic translations and dislocations is itself a theme of the book. Goldsworthy, who is writing in her third language, is attentive to the way that thoughts and gestures are inflected by the language in which they are formulated ... Much of the pleasure of reading this remarkable novel comes from its passionate dedication to the power of stories.
Monsieur Ka is more than a sophisticated 'what happened next?' exercise. Goldsworthy is an elegant writer, skilful at building atmosphere. Her fiction-within-fiction device is clever and intriguing ... Not all the threads of the story are satisfactorily wound up, but between its setting of relentless winter and the intrigues of exiled Russians, the novel could hardly seem more of the moment.
Complicated though this may sound, it makes for compelling reading, in what unspools into a curious, cool and powerfully atmospheric view of souls struggling for meaning while tossed on the seas of political and psychic chaos ... Goldsworthy deftly creates a dark, chilly and foreign world as viewed by the outsider ... While the Russian reminiscence can sometimes lie too thickly on the page, the powerful European mood – of sorrow, of catastrophe – lends heft to this vivid re-animation of not-so-distant history. Goldsworthy, author of Gorsky and Chernobyl Strawberries, emerges as a plangent, persuasive voice.
Besides a compelling protagonist and the memorable portrait of England during the unusually arctic winter of 1947, you'll find a sharp-eyed observation of the emigrant experience, the ways language can bedevil, and English manners – all wrapped in layers of deceit, discovery, love and conflicting loyalty ... Goldsworthy's imaginative intertwining of Anna Karenina's story is at once complex and straight-forward - the human themes of language and love and family history that are mainstays of Tolstoy's tale are all present, but – (how to put it?) – Anglo-fied.
This is an interesting little book, seeking to cover quite an array of themes and stories. And, if I am completely honest, a few too many irons were in this fire for me; at times, I am found myself unsure of the essence of this book - what was it really all about? I have walked away from it a little unsure and a feeling like it’s unfinished ... All up, it’s about the stories we are told, or tell ourselves, but I just feel the delivery could have been a little smoother. That is not to say that the writing suffers - it is clearly evident that Goldsworthy is a serious writer.
