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April 3, 2009
Flowing and beautiful prose
Olivia Lichtenstein writes about love, marriage and dalliance.
OLGA LIVSHIN
Olivia Lichtenstein's first novel, Mrs. Zhivago of Queen's Park, reads like a diagram of love. And, like many diagrams, it starts from zero: Chloe Zhivago is unhappy. Vague, disturbing feelings assault the 43-year-old woman after 17 years of happy marriage. Is this all there is?
On the outside, everything is great. Chloe has a faithful, loving husband, children she adores, her best friend, Ruthie, a house in London and a successful practice as a psychotherapist. On the inside, she is wrung with dissatisfaction. Her children are almost grown up and don't need her as much as before. Her patients start to annoy her. And her husband, who writes endless letters to dispute his parking tickets, won't have sex with her.
The monotony of her existence bores and frightens Chloe. According to her friend, Ruthie, no woman is expected to live her life without sex: "... it's a human rights issue." Even Torah requires regular sex. But Chloe has no idea how to get it. Should she put a tombstone on her sex life and bury her dreams of ardent kissing? Or should she consider an affair?
The infamous mid-life crisis grips her in its painful, gloomy clutches. And then comes Ivan, a handsome, slightly mysterious Russian man. When Ivan beckons Chloe towards a bit of amorous excitement, he arouses her fascination immediately.
Deprived of sex and starving for affection, she plummets into lust with him, and the sleek Russian beau responds accordingly, like in a romance novel, writing her steaming love notes ... in Russian. She has to beg for translation from her neighborhood Russian deli owner, which adds nerve-tingling to their budding relationship.
Torn between her need to be touched and her fear to wreck her family, Chloe nevertheless falls for the cultivated air of the misunderstood tragic hero that surrounds Ivan. Blinded by her passion, she doesn't recognize his mask as a trademark of Russian intellectuals, immortalized in Russian literature of the 19th century. Her husband has long ago stopped wearing masks in her presence, and she is dazzled by Ivan's esoteric glamor. Yearning for an adventure, she decides to indulge herself with an extramarital fling. The danger of being discovered only adds to the thrill of rainbow pleasure that finally dissolves the greyness in her life.
Their short affair is full of sexual fireworks and verbal innuendos, often conducted over cellphones. Chloe calls her text messages from Ivan "textual intercourse," and she loves them as much as the actual experience of his hands on her skin.
Unfortunately, her unequivocal joy doesn't last. Guilt rears its head, screaming at Chloe, making her squirm. Her husband starts suspecting something and withdraws even further. Her 12-year-old daughter, Kitty, watches her mother like a jealous tigress, ready to pounce. Only Chloe's father, Bertie, and Ruthie don't disapprove: they understand.
In her mind, Chloe is divided. She wants both: a husband for stability and a lover to assuage her passion. She loves them both and is ready to compartmentalize, but society doesn't accept such unconventional arrangements. She has to choose. After much soul-searching, hours of kvetching to Ruthie in their mutual Kvetchatorium, and a few brushes with near-exposure, Chloe finally ends her dalliance. Her deep love for her family wins over Ivan's magnetism. Although she misses him terribly, suffering from withdrawal, she is, like most women, "genetically programmed" to preserve her family at all costs.
The conclusion of the novel is anti-climactic. Chloe's father dies, and she gets pregnant; both events like deux ex machina, gifts from heaven to make it easier for her to break the affair. I wonder what would have happened if her father hadn't died and she hadn't gotten pregnant. Would she have continued her illicit relationship with Ivan? Would she have divorced her husband, like so many women do these days?
If the affair made her so deliriously happy, why should she deprive herself of that happiness? Why should any of us? Perhaps we shouldn't even try keeping the same partner for life but exchange them after 20 years? Reality seems to support such a proposition, no matter how "anti-social" it sounds at the moment.
Despite all the inherent questions, Lichtenstein's novel is very low-key, with none of the explosions or world-shattering revelations that characterize many American novels. Instead, it's elegant, funny and utterly European. Most chapters start with culinary recipes: some for pies or meatballs, others for adultery or revenge. All of them read like delicious treats, making the reader eager to try them out.
The writer's prose is flowing and beautiful, and her metaphors are unexpectedly fresh. She uses the Roman alphabet for Ivan's notes instead of Cyrillic, to let the reader feel the music of the Russian language, which she obviously loves and knows well. For me, a native Russian speaker, those notes were an ecstatic experience, especially the last poem by Pushkin, which, incidentally, is my favorite poem in the universe. No translation does justice to the haunting words of Pushkin's tiny, sparkling gem of a poem. "I loved you," it starts. Lichtenstein's novel can also be considered a designer's chart to love – in all its varieties.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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