Name: Monsieur Ka
ISBN: 9781473546233

Vesna Goldsworthy

'A beautiful haunting novel... looking at a familiar London through a frosty, snowy lens. Wonderful' Caryl Phillips The London winter of 1947 is as cold as St Petersburg during the Revolution. Albertine, the wife of a British army officer often abroad on covert government business, finds herself increasingly lonely. Eager to distract herself with work, she takes a job as companion to the mysterious 'Monsieur Ka', a Russian émigré. As she is drawn into Ka’s dramatic past, her own life is shaken to its foundations. For in this family of former princes, there are present temptations which could profoundly affect her future.

Monsieur Ka

'Without quite realising that I would do it until it happened, I raised myself on my toes and kissed his frozen cheek. In Paris, it would have been an unremarkable gesture. In Alexandria, an invitation. I still had no idea about London.' The London winter of 1947. As cold as St Petersburg during the Revolution. The Karenins keep their vodka under the layers of snow in their suburban garden, in bottles entombed like their Russian past. But when a young Frenchwoman arrives to work as a companion to the aged 'Monsieur Ka' he begins to tell his story... Albertine is the wife of a British army officer who is often abroad on covert government business. Lonely, yet eager to work, she begins to write Monsieur Ka's life story a as a secret gift to him, and even learns his mother tongue. To her ear it is like 'the sound of falling snow'. As she is drawn into Ka's dramatic past, her own life is shaken to its foundations. For in this family of former princes, there are present temptations which could profoundly affect her future.

Moray Lyle McIntosh

For me, everything was wrong with this novel. The structure was ill chosen with most of the stories told in long conversations that revealed little of the characters and allowed them to develop even less and allowed to narrative to a glacial pace. The central conceit of Anna Karenina as a true story was painfully contrived (it doesn't help that I hate the original), particularly where it was echoed by the "present-day" narrative.

Everything became terribly forced and predictable and yet as each event occurred I found them impossible to believe. The weak characters and lifeless relationships were just incapable of supporting the cumbersome central conceit. There was a total lack of chemistry between the different protagonists in the insipid love triangle that was genuinely painful to read and certainly did not come close to the life and fire of Tolstoy's original characters. 

Yet if it were kept simple and free of ludicrous and frankly presumptuous trappings there could have been something worthwhile in Albie and Albertine's story. I would have liked to have seen more of Albertine's émigré struggles and I certainly would have liked to know more of Albie and his experience of war and peace. There could have been emotion and tragedy in that enough without shoehorning in the spectre of Anna Karenina. There was a story with potential here but it was buried so deep beneath an ill-conceived and poorly-executed conceit that it was totally smothered.

Monsieur Ka

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