Archive for December, 2010

The first novel by Canadian David Bezmozgis, is a well structured tale of immigration and displacement in the holding bays of 1970′s Rome.  The Free World follows The Krasnansky family -three generations of them- who are escaping Communism (some more willingly than others), lured by the promise of a new life in the USA by way of a short stop off in a cramped, dirty pensione in Rome.

At the mercy of a distantly related sponsor in Chicago, they wait, until inevitably they are informed that they aren’t headed for America after all. The family are then forced to join the masses of immigrants awaiting visas, facing humiliating medicals and trivial obstructions from those holding the forms, unable to agree on their destination even within their own ranks.

Elderly Samuil longs to return to his Soviet homeland and finds no comfort in the alien streets and language of the Italian city. Withdrawing from his wife and sons, he takes comfort only in memories of his life in Riga, Latvia, and the Red Army for which he would still happily give his life. His son Alec, whose gleeful womanizing has landed him in a precarious young marriage to a woman who has left everything behind to follow him, is still playing with fire. Alec’s brother, Karl, dives straight in to the shadier side of immigrant life in Rome, and his wife, Rosa, who promptly enrolls her two children in Hebrew classes, is set on resettling in Israel.  Samuil’s wife, Emma, grasps at the straws of a family life as they struggle to decide where now they should head. This question resurfaces time and again until, absurdly, the adults find themselves huddled in a stairwell, against the clock, having to tick off the options on their fingers and make a choice.

I read this mostly on a series of long train journeys, rather aptly. Speeding through stations as the characters do, trekking back and forth across the sprawling acres of Rome that separate their rented accomodation, work (for some) and the offices of the immigration authorities that they ritually attend for hope of success.  The book gives a different view of this ancient city, too – this is not the classical, clean tourist haven of film and television, but hot and dirty streets full of the signs of overcrowding and poverty synonymous with its temporary communities.

In short, it is a generous book -  several unusual settings (I’ve never been to Latvia – have you?) more than a handful of well drawn characters, and so much icy tension between members of the family at times that your head aches with trying to imagine it all working out well. It emits a clear sense of longing, too - for direction, for lovers, for the past, and for a place to call home, whatever that means.

The Free World is published by Penguin, in April 2011.

(More reviews soon – I have a deliciously – albeit alarmingly – tall pile of proofs and review copies for new and soon-to-be-released books – some of which I hope will end up in the Festivals of 2011 – watch this space…)