Vesna Goldsworthy: Monsieur Ka, 9781784741181, hardcover, Chatto & Windus (Penguin Random House UK), pub date 22. February 2018

 

With her wonderful new novel “Monsieur Ka” Vesna Goldsworthy created an exceptional atmosphere reminding me so much of the underlying melancholies found running like a current through Russian classics. She is such a skillful writer. The idea to continue telling a story based on the Karenin family from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is exquisite and she pulls it off beautifully. “Monsieur Ka” is one of these quiet books I always longed to go back to, perfect storytelling.

It is the bitter cold winter of 1947 in post war London. Albertine Whitelaw, a young, newly wed Frenchwoman who met her husband Albie in Alexandria, is trying to feel at home in her cold Earls Court house while he is travelling on covert government business in Europe. Feeling even more lonely and estranged during Albie’s absence, she accepts a job as a companion to elderly Monsieur Carr, a Russian count whose son Alex is looking for someone who can converse and read French to his father after a stroke. Albertine soon discovers Count Carr to be none other than the son of Anna Karenina, Count Sergei Karenin. A deep friendship and trust develops between these unlike exiles and Alex Karenin’s family over the ensuing months which begin to have an effect on her life. As Count Karenin starts telling her about his dramatic life, Albertine decides to surprise him by chronicling his life in a book.

One feels like one is sitting right next to Albertine as she unravels her own life story and that of the Karenin family. An atmospheric literary page turner I greatly enjoyed.