The Body Outside the Kremlin

a book review of sorts...

I just finished reading The Body Outside the Kremlin, the debut novel by James L. May. I love mystery novels and usually have one on the bedside table waiting to be opened. I picked this one up at the library last week because the title intrigued me. It checked a lot of boxes for me: Russians/Soviets, gulags, historical fiction, icons.

The protagonist of the novel, Tolya Bogomolov, is serving out his sentence on the Solovestky Islands. Originally, the islands were home to the Solovetsky Monastery, then, as we learn in the novel, the islands were converted into the first of the gulag prison camps, the Solovki prison camp. . Tolya is telling the story 30 years after the events when he’s been released from prison, but not rehabilitated. It seems there’s no hope of that in the Soviet system.

Tolya’s tale, a detectiv, begins with the murder of Gennady Antonov, an elderly prisoner who restores the icons as part of his prison work, and Tolya’s role as assistant to the elderly detective assigned to solve the case. The novel was a bit slow in parts, but overall enjoyable and interesting. May’s descriptions of cold and hunger, of the desperation of life in the camps, and the single minded focus needed to survive were particularly good.

Coincidentally (or not), this morning I read Chapter 2 of Lost in Wonder, where De Waal brings up icons and the role they play in personal and pubic faith. Referring to icons, she writes, “a whole world opens, a world which reveals God’s utter strangeness and yet simultaneously his immediacy, his vulnerability.” I think this is right. There’s something about icons, the perspective, the intimacy, the unusualness of them and yet at the same time their familiarity that can draw us closer to God, to mystery. If nothing else, to really see an icon is to be arrested, stopped for a moment outside if time.

No discussion of icons is complete without at least mentioning Andrei Rublev, the master Russian painter and Russian Orthodox saint.

Here’s an interesting interview withVladimir Grigorenko, who lives and works in Dallas.

Thanks again for reading!