The far horizons

by Michael Wagman

At the beginning of the Russian Revolution, three generations of rebellious and dynamic men are born when Jacob Moisei renounces his Jewish heritage and seeks wealth and prosperity.

565 pages, Unbound

Published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 1 out of 5]

This started out okay, but went downhill as it went on. The characters were flat and often their actions didn't match their motivations.
It needed a better copy editor to check for consistency. At one point two characters were married at ages 18 and 17, but when their son was born the parents were ages 23 and 19. Another character compared how her lover touched her with the violence of her husband on their wedding night, but the earlier chapters about how she and her husband came together didn't include anything about a loveless wedding night. She seemed happy with him until months afterwards.

Although the main characters are Jewish, that seemed to be more of a plot point and not something that helped create characterization or identity. At one point someone mentioned a meeting to take place at midnight on Saturday, and another character commented on it being the Sabbath. The Jewish Sabbath is from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, so midnight Saturday would not have been the Sabbath.

Things like this threw me out of the story.

Although much of the book was set around the Russian Revolution, there was no distinction between the Reds and the Whites. Both were portrayed as interchangeable oppressors. There were repeated mentions of huge posters of Lenin, but historically Lenin did not support a cult of personality and these did not appear until after his death.

I finished this because of a challenge, but otherwise would have given up around page 300.

If someone is looking for a historical novel about the Russian Revolution I would recommend Ken Follett's Fall of Giants. The sections about Russia actually make sense about who was revolting and why.

[H · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing of this novel is obviously sexist but I do appreciate the particular tameness he describes the terrors of war as many male authors in my experience love to paint it as pornographic as possible. That being said there is a BLATANT rape scene between husband and wife in which it seems to pin the blame more on wife than husband. I was also disturbed by the fact that this couple was wed at ages 15 and 26 and it is only acknowledged once how depraved that can be. Some women were described as "beasts of burden" due to having bodies tanned and muscular having been affected by hard manual labor and I found basically all the males in this novel to be deplorable or outright irritating. Soybel, the teenage bride I referred to was the most compelling character to me that suffered greatly not only from the horrific events of her life but a severe under writing of personality. To write her only quality as vanity was lazy. The same goes for her daughter, Daniella, who arguably had a much, much more interesting life and perspective than her brother Grisha, which the latter half of the novel follows narratively with only negative snippets of his sister. That being said it was not all terrible and I did enjoy a lot of his descriptions pertaining to landscapes and such. I would never recommend this book but I don't regret reading it.

[Mermarie]

[Karen Karr · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like historical fiction, this is a good one.