tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7932429135630556215.post3283115801304058441..comments2024-02-26T13:12:10.143-05:00Comments on Lizok's Bookshelf: Grossman’s Mysterious Everything FlowsLisa C. Haydenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7932429135630556215.post-66225966299733389302010-07-22T08:48:51.399-04:002010-07-22T08:48:51.399-04:00Languagehat had technical difficulties posting a c...<a href="http://languagehat.com/" rel="nofollow">Languagehat</a> had technical difficulties posting a comment yesterday so sent a note with what he wrote on LibraryThing about <i>Everything Flows</i>. I thank him very much for sending it: <br /><br />"This is a powerful work and as good a summary of the dark side of Russian history as I've read; in 200 pages it provides unforgettable vignettes of the various kinds of suffering imposed by the rulers of the Soviet Union, as well as sometimes lengthy historical analyses. If I encounter anyone who (after all this time and all the information that's come out) still doubts the horror of what Lenin and Stalin created, I will give them this book and hope they are open to what it has to say. The account of the Ukrainian famine of the early '30s, to take just one example, is crushing and convincing.<br /><br />However, it presents itself as a novel, and it's really not. It starts out as one, with a 50-year-old protagonist, Ivan Grigorevich, returning to Moscow from the east Siberian Gulag and meeting his well-off cousin, but it quickly becomes a series of musings by Ivan about the course of history, and for long stretches Ivan himself is forgotten and Grossman pours out his rage at what was done (tempered by his understanding of the human beings who did it) and reaffirms his belief in the ultimate value of freedom. This is not meant as a criticism, simply as a warning to anyone who might go into it expecting a traditional novel with a plot. This is not that, but it's something valuable in its own right."<br /><br />P.S. I adjusted the commenting settings.Lisa C. Haydenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10139281544357167953noreply@blogger.com