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(More customer reviews)Who are you? Are you defined by your country? Your gender? Your language? What about your body?
Soerine's story for us begins when she's expected to pop out of a cake and sing a song in Russian to the visiting Tsar Peter. It's a humiliating premise and from her refusal to play by the rules, we see her not only assert her deeper humanity, but let us know that she's not going to give up her dignity that easily.
We find her personal history interleaved with the story as it unfolds in Russia, a world of stark and cold whiteness, a perfect emblem for her unemotional state. She hates everybody, or claims to.
This is one of the real keys to this novel: first person narration is always unreliable, and in Soerine's case, she thinks she's telling us the truth, but she's lying to herself. As much as she claims insults don't hurt her, she hates this person or that person, we figure out pretty quickly she means the opposite.
She's in search of her humanity, and even more, her purpose on the earth, when of the countries (Denmark and Russia) are themselves wrestling with the problem of self-definition. That's what makes this novel a step forward in the Moll Flanders tradition: While Moll was an eighteenth century woman trying to free herself from dependence on men, Soerine is an eighteenth-century woman trying to find her purpose, especially tough in a time and place where women were thought not to have souls, and deformities were the sign of the Devil. Her purpose is not to dance and sing for money, exploiting her 'freakishness'; but what is it?
Options open up and are pared down by Soerine herself: we see her shutting one door after another, growing ever more worried that no more doors will be opened. The real crux of this novel is 'should she succeed' just as much as 'will she succeed'.
The prose is sparse and bleak, fitting Soerine's perspective, and more than a little vulgar. But it reads itself, like Soerine, deceptively easily--if you go back and reread, many passages are understatedly elegant. It's deep and rich and the sparsity of language allows for a wonderful complexity of symbolism--cold, herbs, letters, tales, etc. And though Soerine doesn't want you to like her, you end up caring very much. She's a character that will stick in your memory long after you've put this novel down. And, if you're like me, you might cry a bit at the end, which is always my test of great and moving literature.
Click Here to see more reviews about: The Tsar's Dwarf
Soerine, a deformed female dwarf from Denmark, is given as a gift to Tsar Peter the Great, who is smitten by her freakishness and intellect. Against her will, the Tsar takes Soerine to St. Petersburg, where she becomes a jester in his court. There, she lives a life that both compels and repels her. Soerine eventually gives in to the attentions of Lukas, the Tsar's favorite dwarf, and carves out an existence for herself amidst the squalor and lice-ridden world of dwarfs in the early 18th century. In this inhospitable milieu, Soerine's intelligence and detached wit provide her some small measure of protection — until disaster strikes in the shape of a priest who wants to "save" her. The Tsar's Dwarf is a masterfully told and brilliantly translated novel about aberration, endurance, and the human condition.
