Having loved [b:Dreams of My Russian Summers|135158|Dreams of My Russian Summers|Andreï Makine|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347769108s/135158.jpg|130243], I was very disappointed in this book. Either it was intellectually above me or too confusing to follow. I did not become involved with the characters nor was I sorry to finally reach the story's end. ( )

ספרו השני של מקינה שקראתי כבר הלהיב אותי פחות מהראשון ( )

The story is mainly that of three pre-adolescent boys growing up as friends in a small peasant village in far Eastern Siberia. Overall, life is quite drab under the Soviet regime, until one evening the local cinema shows a Western-style action-drama-espionage-thriller movie starring the handsome and dashing hero, Belmondo. The boys are quite taken by this view into a world so different and remote from their own that they return to see it again and again, until they can re-enact and live it scene by scene. Not so surprisingly they are inspired , each in their own way, to leave all of the sub-freezing temperatures, 12-foot deep Winter snows and ankle-deep Spring mud of their home town behind, to pursue more exciting lives in their celluloid image of "the West." They do find lives in the West and the story ends with a reunion when they are grown up, where they catch up on events and explain some mysteries which have existed along the way.
This relatively simple story line is told in brief paragraphs and a reportorial style which seemed flat and unimaginative and left this reader short of emotional involvement. The micro-vignettes of life among the inhabitants and of the boy's escapades that are woven into the story move it along in a pedestrian fashion, but again without generating much dramatic tension for this reader. It is hard to believe that, in a year, the same author would become the first in history to win both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis plus the Goncourt des Lycéens. For the superb writing that merited such awards, however, one must look to the later "Dreams of My Russian Summers," and that is where the general reader is advised to start reading Makine. ( )

As a lover of Russian and French literature, this modern Russian writer, writing in French, has proven to me that this superiority in literature is not dead.
This novel, just over 200 pages, was packed with a whole world. With poetic prose, love, life, yearning, death, illusion, fantasy and imagination leapt from the pages and entered the third dimension. I felt myself living inside the scenes as they unfolded around me. I could smell the scents, hear the sounds, feel the intangible. I laughed, cried, smiled, and held my breath. Everything about this novel was fantastic, sensual, and extremely touching.
Andrei Makine has made a new fan in me and I will seek out and read everything that he writes. I am recommending this book to friends with confidence.
An outstanding book, highly recommended.