About book Sister Pelagia And The White Bulldog (2007)
What a treat! This was the second book by Boris Akunin I have read; a year or two ago I read The Winter Queen and enjoyed that as well.What made this book so fun for me was the voice and setting. We're in Czarist Russia, in the provinces. The plot revolves around an attempted power-grab by a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church. We're rooting for the local bishop and the smart, capable Sister Pelagia (pronounce it pyellaGAYa), to thwart him. Some people (and some white bulldogs) are murdered; you'll have to read the book to see if and how evil is thwarted.This seems simple enough, but it's in Russia, in a period I never read about, so I don't have the cultural background Akunin can assume in his Russian readers. I love that feeling, of being where I don't understand things that the characters know intimately. It's curiously like reading Neuromancer or even anything by Jane Austen. Or consider reading a western: when the sheriff ambles out onto the dusty main street, two six-guns on his hips, we know what that means, but if you were not from around these parts, you'd might need some schoolin'. Similarly, we know that there's a built-in conflict between farmers and ranchers, and that water, fences, and cheating at cards can get a man shot. What a treat to be from outside the culture, and get to observe its denizens going about their lives in the hands of an accomplished writer.An example from this book will show you what I mean. The visiting procurator (the bad guy) tries to get the public behind him to wrest power from the local Bishop (the good guy) by pointing out how soft he is on the Old Believers, who should be brought back to the Orthodox fold. It's dangerous for them to be allowed their faith, bad for the morals of the children, dangerous for society. So I asked my local informant on czarist Russia about "Old Believers"; it turns out that they were (and are) religious conservatives who didn't want to westernize under Peter the Great. "Think of them as Amish," he said. So imagine a church rep in the US trying to stoke the flames of fear about Amish terrorists; it could be a very funny premise. But it's not just satiric references to Russian culture; it's the whole voice of the piece. I suspect it's very well translated, that the nuance of the original Russian is preserved. We hear clearly the way people tiptoe around issues, how they slyly disrespect each other. In addition, the author has a wonderful way of inserting the storyteller's voice; it doesn't smell like 20th or 21st-century prose. It's not from around here, in time or space, and that gentle "otherness" is enchanting.
Grigory Chkhartishvili, the Georgian who writes in Russian under the pen name Boris Akunin, here offers another intelligent, charming, witty and altogether absorbing mystery story in which the meek and unassuming but also fearless and whip smart young nun, Sister Pelagia, contends with and solves a complex, troubling series of crimes. I was totally smitten with Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel, and this volume, which appeared earlier, is a worthy predecessor. These stories take place toward the end of the Czarist period, but they were obviously written with recent Russian political struggles in mind. Sister Pelagia and her politically and theologically liberal mentor, Bishop Mitrofanii, live out in the bucolic province of Zavolzhsk, by the Volga River, where everyone gets along peacefully—that is until Bubentsov, an ecclesiastical inspector from St. Petersburg, shows up, with his entourage, determined to manufacture a crisis that will discredit the local leadership. Bubentsov's aim is to impose a reign of reactionary Orthodoxy on the province and set an example for the entire country. For this diabolical schemer, the imposition of Orthodoxy and the pursuit of personal power go hand in hand. When a couple of headless bodies are found, Bubentsov is off and running, attributing this crime to pagan ethnic groups living into the hinterland and accusing the local authorities of being too tolerant of them.Meanwhile, Bishop Mitrofanii has dispatched Sister Pelagia to the estate of his aunt, the widow of an aristocratic general, whose single-minded passion and preoccupation is the breeding of a special variety of bulldog. To this widow’s extreme distress, she has lost a key part of her breeding stock through nefarious circumstances. Bubentsov is one of the cast of characters that visits this estate. Is there a connection between the headless corpses, Bubentsov’s maneuvers, and the crimes that unfold in this Chekhovian countryside location?Where else can you read a highly entertaining mystery story by a storyteller in the Russian tradition whose work illuminates philosophical and political perspectives? The book even includes includes a section of dialogues in which Bishop Mitrofanii expounds to the young provincial governor his views on how the rule of law can be strengthened and corruption reduced in Russia.
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When books are translated, there is a two-step vetting process. First the book needs to be deemed worthy in its original language and then again in the second. One expects a good novel, but this went well beyond. Russian literature is often more than what is seen on the surface. Akunin’s historical mysteries are by purpose slightly arcane and a passing knowledge of Russian society in the 1800s is helpful much like it would be to know something about the American West when reading an historical western. It is not absolutely necessary, however, and both the Sister Pelagia and Erast Fandorin novels stand up quite well as narratives. One thing I have always liked about Russian literature—and these books are as much that as simply mysteries—is that there is always some significant thought to hang onto. Akunin’s treatise on Government: “People are different, there are good ones and bad ones, His Grace taught him, but for the most part they are neither one thing nor the other, like frogs that take on the temperature of the air around them. If it was warm, they were warm. If it was cold, they were cold. What was needed was to act so as to make the climate in our province warmer, then the people would become warmer and better. That was the authorities’ only responsibility—to create the correct climate—and as for the rest, the Lord would concern Himself with that, and people would do the right thing.” And on Fear: “Suddenly it was clear that fear was another name for hope. And if there was absolutely no hope, there was nothing to fear.”Highly recommended to everyone.
—Dan Beaver
A tale of murder and mystery in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Bishop Mitrofanii has managed to establish an enviable level of peace and prosperity in his region by exerting measurable influence on many of the local nobility and officials. In matters of faith, he tends to his flock and tolerates those who may not follow the beliefs of the Church strictly, but are otherwise harmless. But this equilibrium is endangered by a letter from his extremely wealthy aunt and a visit from the Synodical Inspector Vladimir Lvovich Bubenstsov. The letter contains a plea for assistance in the ongoing murderous attacks on the wealthy woman's white bulldogs she has devoted much of her life to breeding. Three perfect specimens, almost completely white, bow-legged, and extremely slobbery, have become the target of an assassin, and these attacks have had a detrimental impact on the owner's health and well-being. The discovery of the headless bodies of a man and child is a harbinger of the tensions Bubenstsov presence will provoke. He attributes these murders to pagans taking souvenirs for godless ceremonies and sees this event as evidence that the Bishop has been neglecting his duties to extirpate disbelief. Bubenstsov has the zeal and ambition of a reformed sinner, and is therefore feared by most. Fortunately for Bishop Mitrofanii, he has a secret weapon to help him solve the mystery of the bulldogs--Sister Pelagia, a young, clumsy nun who is a devoted, if poor knitter. Sister Pelagia is very astute, observant, and intuitive despite her youth. In discovering the fiend behind the attacks on the bulldogs she will uncover fiend behind the even bigger mystery. It's all extremely satisfying.
—Monica
#1 in the Sister Pelagia series, featuring this red-headed nun who is an assistant to Bishop Mitrofanii in a remote Russian province in the 19th century. The Bishop sends Pelagia to investigate who is poisoning his aunt's rare white bulldogs, which are near and dear to her heart--even moreso than her human family, really. While investigating who is harming the dogs, a murder mystery with a human victim takes place and Pelagia goes under cover as a noblewoman (Pelagia's supposed sister) to be the Bishop's eyes and ears during this time of political unrest and religious upheaval. I have to be honest and say that had this not been a book I was reading to complete a Challenge for one of my groups, I probably would not have read beyond page 50. It began verrrrrrry slowly, and although the story did eventually become more cohesive and interesting about mid-book, the writing style was just generally off-putting, although perhaps that may be in part the translation? I don't know. There were way too many peripheral characters all with long names (for example, Vladimir Lvovich Bubentsov and Marya Afanasievna Tatishcheva) that were repeated time and again over and over. It was very confusing as to who was who for the longest time. I also never really got a sense of who Pelagia was, what she stood for. I don't mind a richly detailed, slow-moving so-called literary mystery, but this one was just not my cup of tea. I'm glad I finished the book, but I won't be carrying on in the series, even though I've got the next two here--will trade them off to someone who will doubtless enjoy them much more than I would!
—Spuddie
