The People's Act of Love

Castration and cannibalism are two of the pleasant topics covered in this novel, which is by James Meek. It is set largely in a Siberian town during the Russian Revolution, and focuses on three characters: a stolid Czech soldier (there was a legion of Czech soldiers who participated in the Russian civil War), a widowed beauty, and a mysterious stranger who wanders into town, telling tales of his escape from a gulag. The stranger warns everyone that a horrible killer is on his tail, known as The Mohican, who has a penchant for eating his victims. The town is also home to a religious sect who, in order to become like angels and refrain from sinning, remove a certain party of their body by knife, which they refer to as "the Keys to Hell."

All of this makes for a lurid, rich yarn, but I really didn't get totally involved in this book. It was relatively easy reading, but it took me about three weeks to finish it, because I wasn't burning to find out what happens next, at least not until the last hundred pages or so. Meek's best talent, I think, is his ability to evoke the sense of smell. Often he tells us what a person or room smells like, by giving us three comparisons, and damn if those smells don't immediately come to mind.

This book also has a couple of twists, involving identity. You may be reminded of a similar twist in the film The Usual Suspects. They were easy twists to predict, but they weren't particularly shocking, either.

The hero of this book turns out to be stolid Czech soldier, and that's appropriate, because this book is similar to the character--steady, reasonable, and without flourishes.