Venus (in the West, black?) is given a copy of her father's memoirs, which are addressed to her. This book is the memoir.
2004. The narrator was born in 1919 in Russia. Thanks to a patent he was rich. He'd been "a tolerably big cheese in Russia" by the time he defected in 1983. Now he's on a cruise back towards Moscow - nicknamed "The Gulag Tour".
After WW2 he raped many woman on his way home, where Zoya lived. She's beautiful, Jewish, outspoken, with several boyfriends. His younger brother Lev, a stutterer, succeeded with her by being her friend first. They "married". The narrator was put into in Norlag, an Arctic labour camp. Lev arrived in 1948 - they were political prisoners. The camp has a social structure. Maybe 1 in 10 of the inmates are informers. The narrator kills a few. Lev struggles, thinking of escaping or becoming an informer so he might be pardoned. There's a revolution in the camp. In 1953 Lev's twin brother is killed in East Berlin while suppressing riots. In 1956 his brother and "wife" Zoya were allowed a night together at a hut - the "House of meetings". Lev wasn't confident before and was depressed after - Zoya wanted to marry him properly.
The narrator's cruise continues - "I am the oldest man in Predposylov by a margin of thirty-five years." He visits the Social History Museum. "the port where I'm heading already shows its outlines through the mist. What I'm doing now, is dead reckoning. I am making a reckoning with the dead." He's carrying an unread letter.
After they're released in 1956, Lev returns to Zoya, and the narrator spends time with his sister Kitty. He becomes a TV repairman, then gets into Robotics. Zoya leaves Lev in 1962. Lev goes to work in a mine, meets 23 year-old Lidiya who he marries and has a child with. The narrator meets Jocelyn (English, with 5 grown daughters) in 1969. He reads English poetry. Lev's lost interest though at 15 his son Artem avidly reads poetry. In 1982 Artem dies on duty. Lev dies on the day Lenin dies. The narrator and Jocelyn split. She returns to England. He goes to Moscow to see Zoya, telling her about Lev's death. She, 53, plans to marry an 81 year-old ex-dramatist. He asks her to come with her to the States. She declines. But later she turns up at his hotel room. He has sex with her against her will. She killed herself when 66.
Lev's effects reach the narrator in 1983 in Chicago. 21 years later he opens them. Poems and a letter. He visits the site of the House of meetings and reads the letter. It says that Lev had a good time in the House but left with a sense of inferiority. He loved only Zoya and his son. He thinks that the narrator will try (and fail) to win over Zoya.
The story jumps around in time. Though events are usually time-stamped, it's a little confusing, and I don't see why the memoirs would have been written like that. There are some noteworthy phrases - e.g. "When a man conclusively exalts one woman, and one woman only, 'above all others', you can be pretty sure you are dealing with a misogynist. It frees him up for thinking the rest are shit" (p.26)
Other reviews
- M. John Harrison (He will go the long way round to avoid a cliché, sometimes he will coagulate from trying too hard and sometimes he will be a pedant - all this is to be expected. But the result is often a prose packed, dense, full of felicities. ... It is a book about ageing, rusting, rotting away. What seemed to be a novel about the decline of Russia is seen to be a novel about decline.)
- Sam Leith (This novella is the best thing Martin Amis has done in fiction for years ... House of Meetings succeeds – triumphantly so – as a literary performance. The problem is that it wants to do more. ... : it wants to tell us something important about the world.
Here, it is less successful. ... His Dickensian comic mode is his strongest suit – gravitas or moral clairvoyancy his shortest. But Amis still fails more interestingly than most of his peers succeed.)
- Magdalena Ball (Martin Amis’ prose is a distinctive combination of droll black humour mingled with near purple theatrics.)
- V.N. Alexander (When I read the “revelation” of the letter at the end of the novel I was disappointed—or thought I had just missed something—because it didn’t seem to be much of a revelation. It told me nothing new. On reflection, however, I can appreciate it as yet another restatement of the theme that develops throughout the texture of the narrative itself. Every line and word of this impressive novel reflects the image of the “Russian cross.” While this may not do much for the dramatic force of the novel, it is an absolutely beautiful, musical way to for Amis to resolve, with a satisfying final chord, the variations on his theme.)
