The People's Act of Love - James Meek

A novel set in Siberia the uncertain aftermath of the Russian revolution, The People's Act of Love charts the reclusive and seemingly simple lives of a religious sect of people living in the town of Yazyk. Under the watchful and curious eyes of Czech soldiers, the town tries to live peacefully without attracting attention. But the town and the secrets of the sect are threatened when a mysterious stranger called Samarin arrives and says he is being tracked by a cannibal called The Mohican.

The novel charts 1919 Russia's political paranoia and volatility with glimpses of brutality littered throughout the novel. From dozens of allusions to women being raped by soldiers to the fate of Samarin's beloved Katya, who was taken to the White Garden prison as a plaything to the prince, to Anna Petrova's camera being removed when she takes photos of unionists being slaughtered, the novel constantly shows and develops the sense of fear and distrust experienced by people at that time. This fear seeps through to the relationships between the soldiers. Even when they are fighting for the same side, they are constantly in fear of their psychopathic leader Matula. With no sense of morality, Matula is a leader to be feared, constantly planning and plotting the downfall of anyone he wants removed. Fearing the respect Mutz has from his soldiers, Matula plots against him, setting him up as a power-hungry soldier desperate to save himself over his colleagues. These machinations act as a microcosm for Russia's political climate at the time: paranoid, brutal, and filled with distrust.

This theme of deception, distrust and lies is woven throughout the novel's plot and characters. From Anna's father, the painter who paints portraits of people as they want to appear, not as they actually appear, to the 'widow' Anna, who is actually married to the castrate Bashalov, to the mysterious Samarin, who turns out to be the monster depicted in his own stories. Upon his arrival, Samarin is given the benefit of the doubt; he is given a chance to explain his story and weaves a number of the townspeople and the soliders under his spell. He tells them he is an escaped political prisoner detained in a the White Garden, a prison in the north which descended into chaos and cannibalism when its supplies were cut off. He tells them he was only saved after being taken under the wing of a cannibal called The Mohican, who fed him and fattened him in order to eventually kill him. Samarin tells them he knew The Mohican's plans and managed to flee from him after they escaped from the prison. He tells the townspeople that The Mohican is tracking him and will arrive in their town.

After securing their trust enough to be released into the care of Anna Petrova, he sleeps with her. But the next morning, he takes her son Alyosha to a train as bait in order to steal it. It is in this time that Anna and the town realise that Samarin is The Mohican, the cannibal prisoner intent on causing a revolution. It is the most dramatic depiction of deception and storytelling in the novel. His stories created a man the town feared more than anything, a man so evil he will mercilessly murder and turn to cannibalism for his own gains, a man he fears more than anyone. In fact, he is that very man, using his ability to conceal parts of his personality, to shift and change, to work achieve his revolutionary gains.

Aside from deception, sex and sexuality is another key theme to the novel. Politically, sex becomes a weapon as the soldiers rape countless women throughout the revolution and its aftermath. That is the fate of political prisoner Katya, who is given to the prince and his friends to be used as punishment for her disloyalty to the state. In Yazyk women who want foo, clothes and to protect themselves become the sexual partners of the soldiers, using sex as self-preservation. On the other extreme, is Bashalov and his religious sect of followers. As a soldier, he had never partaken in the attacks on women and as Anna's husband he had enjoyed the pleasure of sex and even fathered Alyosha. But following his experience at war, he is so repulsed by his male sexuality and convinced of its path to evil, that he is castrated. He believes that castration will make him an angel and bring him closer to God. In the process, he becomes asexual, unable to have sex, to father more children, to physically express his sexuality. Further than this, he then brings this belief to Yazyk and becomes the castrator, spreading the belief that it will bring men closer to God. In the process, he wipes out the town's future as the men are unable to have children. After experiencing the ugliest use of sex by his comrades in war, he embraces the other extreme, wiping out the town's ability to procreate.

On the other end of the spectrum is the novel's depiction of female sexuality, which is represented solely in Anna. Anna is a wife who is sexually widowed by her husband's castration; they can no longer have sex and they can no longer have children. As part of the castration, Bashalov and Anna agree that she should live as a widow and that their marriage should be kept a secret in Yazyk. As a result, Anna lives on the outskirts of the town as a widow, a woman free to be with other men. Her sexuality is portrayed as voracious. After the castration, she literally tries to make Bashalov have sex with her until she finds the castrated gap. After that, she has an affair with Mutz. But her desire goes into overdrive when she sees Samarin and hears his story. She agrees to take him home and seduces him, a seduction which ultimately nearly leads to her son's death. Through its portrayal of Anna, the novel reinforces traditional views of female sexuality; Anna is irrational, hysterical and driven by her desire. Her desire exposes her son, the most important thing in her world, to grave danger and nearly leads to a devastating act of terrorism. This unease about female sexuality is unfortunatley never reconciled in the novel.

An unique, disturbing and graphic depiction of the lengths people go to in times of war, revolution and political unrest, The People's Act of Love is a fascinating insight into how deeply people deceive and can be deceived. Dark and grotesque in parts, it exposes how people can create fictions about their personality and even religion and the devastating results these lies can achieve.

My next read - Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier

A tale surrounding the creation of innovative tapestries for an advisor to the king in 15th century Paris and Brussels, The Lady and The Unicorn exposes the gender, social and sexual politics that govern the lives of the people who commission and create the tapestries. From the initial idea to the tapestries' unveiling, the novel charts a world governed by rules which people are desperate to break.

The novel begins with nobleman Jean Le Viste's commission of the tapestries by painter Nicolas des Innocents. An aloof, proud and patriarchal man, Le Viste wants a scene of battle and bloodshed, enforcing his masculinity and power. Le Viste's obssession with status is quickly revealed by his demands for the family coat of arms to be prevalent on the soldiers' shields throughout the imagined scene. But Nicolas' encounter with Le Viste's wife Genevive sets the tapestries on an entirely different course: she wants them to tell the tale of a lady and a unicorn. By lying to La Viste and preying on his obssession with status, Nicolas convinces him to change the tapestries' theme.

This beginning establishes a number of key themes in the novel. Instantly the reader is shown that Le Viste believes only his ideas stand when in fact he is being influenced by his wife from afar. Like a puppeteer, she is manipulating him from behind the scenes. This is a central strand to the novel. Women are consistently marginalised, feminised and underestimated by men who do not realise their worth. Although they formally have no way of expressing their voice, feelings and opinions, their influence finds its way through and dupes men. Nicolas believes Marie-Celeste, the Le Viste family maid who lost her job after he made her pregnant, wants to sleep with him again and follows her to her new household; in fact it is a trap and he is beaten to a pulp by her friend. Jean Le Viste believes he has sent his daughter Claude to the convent to mark her impending marriage; in fact it is her mother's plot to keep her away from the man she truly loves. In Brussels, weaver Georges de la Chapelle believes his daughter Ailenor has been made pregnant by Phillipe; in fact she fell pregnant to Nicolas, her plot to save herself from a marriage to Jacques Le Bouef, a man she despises. The novel shows that while women may not appear to have power socially and in their households, they are able to use men as pawns carrying out the plots they aren't allowed to master.

From the novel's outset, the nobility are set up as the people everyone aspires to be. They have power, status, respect, money and time at their leisure. In fact, that couldn't be further from the truth, especially for the women. Jean Le Viste's every decision is in fact influenced by his advisor Leon Le Vieux. And when his wife Genevive asks for the tapestries' themes to be changed, the reader is given a glimmer of lack of respect for the Le Viste family. She explains to Nicolas that a battle scene would enrage the soldiers who fought in the battle and their relatives as her husband had been holed up away from the battlefield. Here we see that Jean's appearance of power and authority may just be an illusion.

For noblewomen, their plight is all the more miserable. Genevive is desperately alone and unhappy, a woman who has failed her husband by not producing a male heir. Sexually rejected by her husband and jealous of her eldest daughter Claude's blooming sexuality, she wants to embrace the antithesis of a sexualised woman: she wants to become a nun. She tries to convince her priest to ask her husband's permission for her to go, knowing he will refuse if she puts in the request herself. When he refuses, she is trapped. She cannot have the one thing she so desperately desires. This fate also befalls her daughter Claude. Infactuated with Nicolas from the moment she meets him, she is desperate to consummate their relationship. When Genevive learns of her daughter's wishes - and the threat this would pose to her "valuable maidenhead" - she does everything in her power to ensure it can never happen. She surrounds Claude with maids, ordering them to never leave her side, and later sends her to the convent she herself is so desperate to join, banishing Claude from male contact until she marries the man chosen for her. Her cruel treatment of her daughter, and sexual jealousy, is complete when she invites Nicolas to the announcement of Claude's engagement, proof that she has won and snatched away her daughter's chance of happiness.

The mother/daughter relationship is similarly marred by betrayal between weaver's wife Christine and her daughter Ailenor in Brussels. As Ailenor is blind, Christine and her husband George have only one suitor offering to marry her - smelly, repulsive wood-dyer Jacques Le Bouef. Ailenor despises Le Bouef, recoiling at the sheer smell of him and hiding from him at every opportunity. Despite Ailenor's disgust, Christine secretly plots her marriage to Le Bouef with her husband, never telling Ailenor. When Ailenor learns of the plan, she has the opportunity to take her fate into her own hands unlike Claude. She sleeps with Nicolas and falls pregnant, meaning she can never marry Le Bouef. Painter Phillippe, who has always loved her, claims parentage and marries her, saving her from a life as an unmarried mother. Unlike Claude, who is constrained and cooped up as a noblewoman, weaver's daughter Ailenor has enough freedom to plan her escape from a loveless marriage, earning herself a happier fate with a man who loves and cares for her.

Aside from social and gender politics, senses are key to the tapestries and to the novel. Each tapestry surrounds a different sense: sound, taste, sight, touch and smell. These senses are woven into the novel as they are woven into the tapestries. Nicolas and Claude's first meeting is filled with the senses, Claude sucking on a clove to allieviate toothache. Touch and sound are key to the novel's sexual themes and is at its pinnacle when Ailenor sleeps with Nicolas. As she is blind, Ailenor relies on touch and sound for her first sexual experience. When she asks Nicolas what she is missing by having no sight, he tells her touch is all she needs. It is here that Ailenor feels most free from being blind; it is finally an experience she can feel wholly without her sight. Nicolas plays with this fact in the tapestry for sight, adding Ailenor's face to represent the sense.

A novel pulling together multiple narratives of people involved in the arduous process of creating tapestries, The Lady and The Unicorn is a lyrical novel which uses the tapestries as a backdrop to expose the very different lives of the nobility and the masses in the 15th century. Rich, evocative and quietly tragic, it shows that status can be built on illusions and that the lives of nobility weren't really anything to envy at all.

My next read: The People's Act of Love by James Meek