BY G. CONNOR SALTER

Brisbane: A Novel. By Eugene Vodolazkin. Translated by Marian Schwartz. Plough Publishing House, 2022. ISBN: 978-1-63608-045-1.

In an age where culture critics often report the literary establishment frowns on religion, Eugene Vodolazkin is one of Russia’s most acclaimed current novelists. He speaks openly about his Christian beliefs, but his novels are literary works that wouldn’t fit in the typical American Christian bookstore. They are permeated with his passion for the past, particularly medieval Eastern Europe (he is a respected scholar on medieval Russian literature). Russia Beyond notes that Vodalazkin has been compared to Umberto Eco.

Even for readers familiar with Vodalazkin’s reputation, his 2018 novel Brisbane (translated into English in 2022) is a surprising book. His best-known novel, Laurus, has a medieval setting (as does his most recent release, A History of the Island). Others (The Aviator, Solovyov and Larionov) take place during the Russian Revolution of the early twentieth century, with genre elements (time travel in the former, detective fiction in latter). Brisbane is a realist novel whose events extend from the USSR’s last days to the 2010s. However, even in new narrative territory, Vodalazkin finds ways to discuss how the past informs the present and how faith informs Russian life in unexpected ways.

The year is 2012, and Gleb Yanovsky is Europe’s most acclaimed guitarist. As he’s wrapping up a Paris concert, fidgeting hands make him wonder if he has Parkinson’s. Flying home, Gleb meets writer Sergei “Nestor” Nesterov, who asks if he’s considered being interviewed for a biography. After visiting old sights and family members in Kyiv, Gleb returns to his Munich home and tells his wife Katya about the offer.

Nestor listens to Gleb describe his past. Raised in 1970s Kyiv, Gleb was talented enough to attend music school in the first grade, but his father was disappointed that his son didn’t have perfect pitch. He watched his Ukrainian father and Russian mother drift apart, his mother devoting her time to a pen pal in Brisbane, Australia. As Gleb’s recollections (his schooling, his early romances, meeting Katya, his early success) near the present, surprising figures from his past reappear. New hopes and dreams may make up for what he has lost. But is it too late to hope in a new thing that will bring new life?

Brisbane is, in one sense, a very melancholy book. It follows a man in his late forties discovering he has a disease that will end his career, combining general midlife regret with a particular cause for regret. Vodolazkin has been quoted as saying the title, Brisbane, is “a symbol of being on the other side of the globe, the goal of dreams, of effort, which, of course, is unattainable.” The sense that dreams may not be fulfilled permeates the narrative, as Gleb considers what he never achieved (child prodigy success, fatherhood, reconciliation with his father). As new surprises open up new avenues, Gleb faces the fact his new dreams don’t have guarantees either.

While the melancholy is clear, the story never comes across as depressing. The characters are too interesting, too tough-yet-tender or tough-yet-humorous, to make this an exercise in nihilism. When Gleb’s father and grandfather secretly introduce him to the Russian Orthodox church, the story gains an understated sense of hope to transcend circumstances.

The tenderness mixed with melancholy and understated spirituality resemble Dekalog, a USSR-era TV miniseries made by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski. Like Gleb, Kieślowski’s characters grow up in a Soviet state where most aspirations are cut short. Still, they find little ways to emphasize human dignity, to cultivate livable lives.

Brisbane’s emphasis on music—scenes inside Gleb’s head where he describes learning to play stringed instruments, starting with the domra—adds another tender element to the story. It’s been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but here it works. Readers fully enter Gleb’s head and feel the beauty of what he’s creating. The music adds another interesting connection to Kieślowski. Kieślowski’s 1993 film Three Colors: Blue follows a composer’s widow haunted by flashes of music from a piece her husband never finished. Eventually, the widow’s need to finish the piece helps her see that she can’t shut everyone out. Again, beauty and hope prove to be visible in the ashes. 

While the novel’s political references mostly follow Gleb’s experiences in the USSR’s last decades, his experience being half-Russian and half-Ukrainian makes the book very topical. Several scenes feature his troubled half-brother fighting people or Gleb’s near-misses when he visits Ukraine during the 2014 February Revolution. Gleb struggles back and forth between his loyalty for his father and his mother. Between love for each’s culture and language. He wonders whether he can reconcile these two sides of his heritage. Vodolazkin doesn’t advocate for a particular political answer to this problem. Instead, he shows how this rift informs politics, culture, ethnicity/race, and history, and the need to prioritize human life over power.

Vodolazkin weaves grief, joy, romance, and a sense of life’s redemptive surprises together to create a story about hope that surpasses understanding.