Andrei Volos’s Шапка Шпаковского (Shpakovsky’s Hat)
is an odd kind of book, a pleasant-but-serious-too jumble sort of satirical
novel that doesn’t always hold together particularly very well for a stickler
like me but that reads along nicely enough to finish. I read all 316 pages. The
description on the back of the book promises a novel about a novelist,
Innokenty Dogavtsev (pseudonym Semyon Sukhotrub), who decides to kill off the unkillable
hero of his thriller series, but Shpakovsky’s
Hat is more about the absurdities of modern life, both private and public.
Volos tosses so many plot threads and tropes into this brief
book that I almost expected to find an essay about kitchen sinks somewhere in the
middle. There’s the issue of Sukhotrub’s novel, there’s publisher humor, there
are work relationships (one of which, with an Alisa—she’d be Alice in English,
like the Wonderland girl—quickly becomes far more personal), there are guy-time
outings, there’s a political element, there’s a detainment, there’s freedom,
and there’s the question of the many-layered tin foil hats that
Shpakovsky (one of the buddies) wears to keep out voices. I sympathize about the
hat since heaven only knows there’s way too much background noise in life these
days. Full disclosure: I confess to having worn foil hats more than once during my first
youth, though only when hennaing my hair.
I could go on and on about bits of humor that I marked—a publisher
with big game trophies who proclaims the uselessness of electronic reading
devices, a film producer saying any book with a print run lower than 60,000
copies has no propaganda value, etc., etc.—or mention lots of other enjoyable
or sad-but-funny bits, but I’m not sure there’s much point. Shpakovsky’s Hat is the sort of book that
can be compared to soufflés, meaning that they may be tasty or even yummy, but
they’re airy and thus not especially satiating even if there are Big Topics (the
flavor of cheese? some bits of bacon? the threat of high cholesterol?) involved. Of course I enjoyed the publishing world chunks most, though hope
nobody ever has to go through the contract indignities Dogavtsev-Sukhotrub does.
The most interesting aspect of Shpakovsky’s Hat is that it kept me reading, despite the meandering
plot and despite being rather short on Shpakovsky himself, since I think he’s
the most interesting character, someone who’s tuned in but wants to tune out. It’s
voice—Dogavtsev’s voice—that keeps the book going. His first-person narrative
is chatty and humorous, nattering on and on without getting too dull, and, of
course, blending in a reference or two to Moscow
to the End of the Line for good measure. (Beyond that, NatsBest juror
Veronika Kungurtseva’s review
notes lots of apparent references to Master
and Margarita.) Digging through the book for more notes and details would
be completely untrue to my reading, which was, second confession, fairly
mindless, which probably means careless. I’d been warned going into Shpakovsky’s
Hat that it wasn’t Volos’s best work, though someone who’s been
recommending Volos to me for a long time said I’d enjoy it anyway. Yes, I did,
even if it felt too loose. (For more, Kelderek’s observations on the book, on the Ozon.ru
site, are very, very close to mine.) I have several other Volos books on the shelf so I’m
sure there will be more to come.
Disclaimers: The usual.
Up next: Sergei
Kuznetsov’s Teacher Dymov, a lovely
short story cycle, more books in English, and upcoming award news. I’m still rereading
War and Peace, though focusing more on
Peace than War this time around (there’s enough chaos in present-day life that
the chaos of war in the novel feels a little overwhelming) and still don’t
intend to blog about the experience.
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