A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

by Anthony Marra

A brilliant debut novel that brings to life an abandoned hospital where a tough-minded doctor decides to harbor a hunted young girl, with powerful consequences.

In the final days of December 2004, in a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa hides in the woods when her father is abducted by Russian forces. Fearing for her life, she flees with their neighbor Akhmed—a failed physician—to the bombed-out hospital, where Sonja, the one remaining doctor, treats a steady stream of wounded rebels and refugees and mourns her missing sister. Over the course of five dramatic days, Akhmed and Sonja reach back into their pasts to unravel the intricate mystery of coincidence, betrayal, and forgiveness that unexpectedly binds them and decides their fate.

With The English Patient's dramatic sweep and The Tiger's Wife's expert sense of place, Marra gives us a searing debut about the transcendent power of love in wartime, and how it can cause us to become greater than we ever thought possible.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Book Club, War, Russia, Literary Fiction, Historical

416 pages, Paperback

First published May 7, 2013

About the author

Anthony Marra is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tsar of Love and Techno and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and longlisted for the National Book Award.

Reviews

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The history of ethnic strife in Chechnya is long and confusing. Anthony Marra bypasses the facts and figures and takes us directly into the lives of ordinary people trying to make a meaningful existence amid the rubble and death and ongoing violence. Living in a state of constant trauma changes all the rules. Young and old, ethnic Russians and Chechen Muslims, the characters' lives intersect in such a way that they cannot hate each other with the intensity prescribed by their ancestors.

With a complete absence of emotional manipulation, Marra takes us back and forth in the lives of the characters, moving along a timeline from 1994 to 2004. As they move in and out of periods of war, we see the events that led them to their current behaviors. Their choices begin to make more sense when we see how they have suffered, and the sins they have committed in the name of self-preservation. These are the sins for which they are now seeking absolution, whether from a higher power or from those they have wronged.

I'm a picky reader, and my friends tell me I'm a hard grader when I rate books. I'm always skeptical when I hear raves about an up-and-coming author who's supposed to be the latest writing phenomenon. I always have to give them a chance, though, because once in awhile they turn out to be as talented as promised. Anthony Marra is one of those who deserves all the praise he's receiving. If you like serious literary fiction, this is a novel you won't want to miss.

ADDENDUM:
If you think you're too much of a history dolt to enjoy this book, don't let that stop you. A quick overview here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya, with focus on the First Chechen War, Interwar Period, and Second Chechen War, will give you enough context to understand the impact on the characters, the economy, and the infrastructure of the country.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Verbose and mundane in tone but—somewhat?—enlightening to a reader unfamiliar with Chechen history.

Recently mesmerized by a stunning debut, one that made me step back and look at the people in my life a little more appreciatively, I found myself craving something along the same lines—a story with a deep and resounding message. Having seen a few comparisons made between A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and A Place for Us, in weight of the story, not necessarily style, I thought this would be a smart choice. I have to say, I don’t get the comparisons. From tone, texture and significance, there are little to no similarities.

Utter confusion is my first attributable thought to the storyline and characters that live among the pages. Anthony Marra drops the reader into the midst of the second Chechen war and spends zero time on the background of the region, giving the reader very little to draw from. It took a bit to get my bearings and situate the cast, but it wasn’t all in vain.

Marra presents a character-driven novel and flits back-and-forth between the first Chechen war that started in 1994 and the midst of the second in 2004. The heart of the story encompasses a young girl left fatherless by a family friend turned informer and the people willing to put themselves on the line to keep her safe. The author takes his time unraveling each character’s backstory and in turn examining the relationship dynamics. Incredibly sad and with very few bright spots, it was the culmination of the varying storylines that brought things full circle and made the arduous trek feel worthwhile.

There’s no denying, Marra has a very distinct style. Unfortunately for me, I can’t say it’s one I find myself eager to experience again. His writing is incredibly dense—which meant, I was aware of each word on every page—making this somewhat of a taxing experience.

As I reached the end of the book, I struggled to decipher the point of the story or more pointedly the why. I took a step back, let things resonate for a few days and came to the conclusion that reading isn’t always about turning that final page with a life-affirming message as a token of completion. Sometimes it’s simply about succumbing to the journey—living, breathing and experiencing a time and space I never will.

*Thank you to the Traveling Sisters—Brenda, Jan and Marialyce—for sharing this experience with me. It was the great discussion this book churned up and the resources you all provided that kept me from raising the white flag in surrender.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful and haunting novel is one of my favorite books of 2013. It takes place in post-war Chechnya, but don't be alarmed if you don't know much about the Chechen conflict with Russia — the rich storytelling and the gorgeous prose will draw you in, and by the end of the book you could captivate an audience with these wartime stories.

But first, you must meet Havaa, a precocious little girl whose father was just taken by federal forces, probably never to be seen again. Havaa ran into the woods to hide, which is why the soldiers didn't find her. The girl's mother is dead and she has no one else. A neighbor, Akhmed, helps Havaa escape to a nearby town and convinces a doctor, Sonja, to look after her. Soon our cast of characters will expand and we will meet Akhmed's wife, Havaa's father, Sonja's sister, and other residents in the village of Eldar, each of them with a story to tell.

One of my favorite characters was Sonja, a tough doctor who left Chechnya to attend medical school in London, but she returned to her war-torn country to try and help her sister, Natasha, who later disappeared:

"Though she was the elder, Sonja was always thought of as Natasha's sister, the object rather than the subject of any sentence the two shared. She walked alone down the school corridors, head sternly bent toward the stack of books in her arms ... Sonja had more academic journal subscriptions than friends. She could explain advanced calculus to her fifth-form algebra teacher but couldn't tell a joke to a boy at lunch. Even in the summer months, she had the complexion of someone who spent too much time in a cellar. Everyone knew Sonja was destined for great things, but no one knew what to do with her until then."

Another character I loved was Akhmed, a man who studied to be a doctor but who would rather have been an artist. He jokes that he is the worst doctor in Chechnya, but he still manages to help his patients and their families, sometimes by drawing portraits of those who have been killed or taken by the feds.

Anthony Marra's writing is beautiful, with stunning sentences that made me pause and reread them. If I hadn't been reading a library book I would have underlined innumerable paragraphs. (The page-long sentence on p. 139 was so emotional and breathtaking that I actually gasped.) Each chapter opens with a timeline, pinpointing a year between 1994 and 2004, and the flashbacks illuminate what happened to our characters during the war. While the chapter focuses on one character's perspective, the stories ebb and flow together like overlapping melodies.

This is a novel whose plotting and gracefulness I admired so much that as soon as I had finished it, I immediately wanted to start over and read it again. What details! What connections! This is the kind of novel I love to read -- one that is complex and meaningful and full of humanity and life and I wish I could give a copy to every bookish friend I know. Ann Patchett, who is one of my favorite writers, told The New York Times that this was her favorite book she's read this year. Agreed.

Note: If you're wondering what the title means, it is taken from a definition in a medical dictionary: "Life: a constellation of vital phenomena -- organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation."

[Em Lost In Books · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book for my “read an award winner” challenge. After reading the blurb, I knew this is going to be a sad story but what I didn’t know was that it was going to be this disappointing. So many glowing reviews made me think that it was going to be a book that I would going to remember for a very very long time, that too in a good way.

Story revolves around Akhmed who is taking care of his bedridden wife, but has to leave her behind to take his neighbor’s daughter, Havaa, to local hospital. There he request Sonja to take in Haava. First Sonja refuses to take in Havaa, but Akhmed volunteers to help her with patients in exchange and Sonja relents. Sonja is the sole doctor running this hospital, taking care of ill. She is also looking for her sister, Natasha, who has been missing for some time. Khassan, a 79 year old, is neighbour of Akhmed. His son Ramzan is a Russian informant and the one responsible for killing so many of his own village men.

Author has woven a story around these characters going back and forth in time. Though good at times I have few issues with the book:

1) I had a hard time placing the events because change in time frame was so sudden. Most of the times I was few pages in before I realize that I was reading events from past.

2) Different story lines took too long to converge in the end. Other than Akhmed and Khassan, none of the character was impressive. They were dull.

3) Sentences like these:

“In twenty-eight years and seven months, at a limnology conference in Cologne, the girl would meet the man she was to marry nine years later. At the age of forty-six she would have her one and only child in the same maternity ward she was born in, a boy to carry her father’s name; hers would be the second had sot hold him. At the age of sixty-eight she would hold her first grandson, also to carry her father’s name; hers would be the third hands."

This book is full of these kinds of references. Initially, I was very impressed but halfway through I realized they were not related to the story. They’re part of the epilogue that we don’t have in this book. It was told us through these. I was tired of these by the end of the book.

But there are plenty of glowing reviews for this book here on GR. If blurb impressed you, go ahead. Perhaps you might end up liking this.

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Ο πόλεμος είναι αφύσικος, κάνει τους ανθρώπους να συμπεριφέρονται αφύσικα»
«Υπάρχουν χάρτες που σου λένε πώς να πας εκεί που θέλεις να ‘σαι αλλά όχι χάρτες που να σου δείχνουν πότε να πας εκεί όπου θέλεις να ‘σαι».

Ελευθερώνει τους δαίμονες της Ανθρωπιάς και τους αφήνει να αλυσοδέσουν τον αναγνώστη για να ζήσει υπερρεαλιστικά ενα έργο βαρβαρότητας,πολέμου,βίας και ανυπολόγιστης ηθικής και συναισθηματικής αξίας παγιδευμένο σε μια καταραμένη μοίρα σε ενα μυθοπλαστικό σύμπαν,κάπου σε ένα χωριουδάκι της Τσετσενίας.

Ήρωες είναι όλοι όσοι αναφέρονται στον αστερισμό ζωτικών φαινομένων. Και οι πρωταγωνιστές και οι δορυφόροι τους....
Ήρωες βουτηγμένοι στην αγριότητα του πολέμου. Απεγνωσμένα ξεγλιστρούν καθημερινά απο το θάνατο και κερδίζουν άλλη μια αναπνοή. Άλλη μια μέρα ή νύχτα ζωής που καθώς είναι κυριευμένη απο θηριωδία κομματιάζει ψυχές και σάρκες.
Ζωή που σε πεθαίνει. Αυτό το τραγικό δεδομένο είναι το πρωταρχικό στοιχείο όλης της ιστορίας.

Εγκατάλειψη και εξαφάνιση. Απόγνωση και πανικός. Θλίψη και πόνος. Αναμνήσεις και παιχνίδια ζωής.
Νοσταλγία. Πόνος. Χωρισμός. Θάνατος.

Ορυμαγδός ψυχικών και σωματικών βασανιστηρίων και ιστορικές συγκυρίες βασισμένες σε αληθινά γεγονότα διαστρεβλωμένης ενημέρωσης για όλους αυτούς τους συνανθρώπους που βρίσκονται -πάντα- πολύ κοντά μας για να ζεσταθούν απο την ανθρωπιά μας αλλά πολύ μακριά μας για να ανατρέψουμε τη σύγχρονη πραγματικότητα που καταγράφεται στην ιστορία απο τους δυνατούς του Κόσμου.

Ο συγγραφέας υπέροχα ευρηματικός ισορροπεί ανάμεσα στην μυθοπλασία και την ιστορία για να τονίσει με την πένα του την αξία της ανθρωπιάς και της αγάπης μέσα απο το ζόφο και την προδοσία σε ολα τα διαπροσωπικά επίπεδα.

Την ώρα ��ου βουλιάζεις σε πολεμικές αιματοβαμμένες σκηνές καταστροφής,σε οικονομικά συμφέροντα χωρών που συγκρούονται και πετούν μέσα στο «πετρέλαιο» χιλιάδες, άπειρες ψυχές ως εθνικές απώλειες, την ίδια ώρα επιλέγει να σε κεράσει λίγο οξυγόνο ελπίδας που το πληρώνεις ακριβά επειδή ο νους δραπετεύει και αγωνίζεται να βγει απο το βαθύ σκοτάδι αλλά καταλήγει στην εσχατιά όσων δεν μπορεί να αντέξει.

Φανατικοί θρησκευτικοί φονιάδες. Εκτελέσεις. Απαγωγές. Εξαφανίσεις. Βασανιστήρια. Παράνομες συναλλαγές μαφιόζων. Εμπόριο σάρκας. Πορνεία. Ομαδικοί τάφοι. Χωματερές ψυχών. Τρόμος. Εφιάλτης. Θάνατος. Εικόνες σύγχρονης πραγματικότητας. Αυτά συντελούν το σκηνικό του έργου που παρακολουθούμε.
Ατμόσφαιρα ενδελεχώς ανελέητη.

Κάπου στο βάθος αχνοφαίνεται το λιγοστό φως της ελπίδας για ζωή και λύτρωση.
Η Ανθρωπιά που επιβιώνει ως το τέλος καταφέρνει να φωτίσει λίγο παραπάνω, να ανακουφίσει λίγο περισσότερο απο το αναγνωστικό βάρος που σε πλακώνει τόσο μαγικά ρεαλιστικά.


Σε όλη τη διάρκεια της ιστορίας ψάχνεις ένα καταφύγιο, μία απόδραση,μία αιώνια ειρήνη, μία παντοτινή πίστη, μία αφοσιωμένη αγάπη, μία ζεστή αγκαλιά σιγουριάς, μία κουβέντα παρηγοριάς και συμπόνοιας, μία μόνιμη ευτυχία, μία δύναμη να σου ζεστάνει την ψυχή για να χαμογελάσεις στη ζωή. Ψάχνεις ένα ψέμμα που να μοιάζει έστω αληθινό.

Δεν ξέρω αν θα το βρεις.
Δεν ξέρω αν υπάρχει.....



Καλή ανάγνωση!
Πολλούς ασπασμούς!

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As well as being the most cleverly structured novel I’ve read all year A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon also features some of the most memorable characters. Ostensibly the novel is set in Chechnya though in many ways the novel depicts a generic modern war and the terrifying lawlessness that prevails in an invaded country. I have to say I learnt next to nothing about the Chechen wars. Marra uses an invented town in the novel and at times you feel he’s also using an invented country.

As with most novels set during wartime it’s easy to care about the characters whose survival is threatened on a daily basis. Essential to the plot is our emotional investment in Havaa, the eight year old girl whose father is “disappeared” one night and Akhmed, an inept surgeon who prefers drawing and takes it upon himself to ensure Havaa’s survival. Survival is often depicted as the struggle to keep memory of loved ones alive. The novel is garlanded with tokens of memory. Every character carries a key memory of another character and these form a brilliantly executed mosaic of mysteries.

Ostensibly it takes place over five days but the numerous flashbacks scatter compelling mysteries throughout its pages. We wait for the past to catch up with and connect each character. There’s so much excitement to be had in making all these connections and his handling of the order of the flashbacks is masterful in keeping this excitement at a high pitch throughout. Perhaps the connections are too numerous and the characters overly endowed with artistic gifts to make this any kind of convincing appraisal of an historical event. Marra deals with this problem by using a whimsical tone throughout to offset all the brutality and senselessness. It’s a tone that reminded me of Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love and Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated. And it’s another triumph that Marra gets away with it, largely because of the inspired lyricism of his prose. Not once did I have trouble suspending disbelief because he succeeded so well in forging in me a deep emotional connection to his characters.

Probably best to point out this won’t be everybody’s cup of tea. It’s a labyrinth of a novel that requires intense concentration. If you read even a single page with your mind elsewhere you’ll soon find yourself a bit stranded.

[Violet wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthony Marra’s Chechnya is every bit as bleak and brutal as the post-apocalyptic world Cormac McCarthy creates in The Road. Life is valued by the governing powers as cheaply as in the Nazi concentration camps. The novel isn’t so much about the wars in Chechnya per se as how individuals relate to each other when law and order has been perverted out of all recognition and they only have their own moral compass as a guide.

The novel features eight characters who will all have a bearing on each other’s lives. These characters are paired up – a father and a daughter, two sisters, a father and a son and a husband and wife. In common with other contemporary American writers (Foer, Krauss, Lethem and the Australian Peter Carey) Marra’s characters are all of the quirky and socially dysfunctional variety – a 21st century tribute to Dickens’ groundbreaking legacy. These characters of Marra’s made me think a lot about the role of character in the novel. How, for example, the best novels create a new human archetype - Don Quixote, Heathcliff, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, old man Karamazov, Rhoda, Molly Bloom spring immediately to mind. And how rarely 21st century novels have scaled these heights in characterisation. For all DeLillo’s stunning prose and uncanny percipience regarding the modern world he hasn’t really created a new character. Offhand only Elena Ferrante’s Lila springs to mind as a character who has added a truly distinctive and memorable face to the pantheon. Beguiling though Marra’s characters are you can also sense the artifice. There’s something artificially constructed about them. They don’t quite ring true. He’s a little over-anxious that they charm and entertain us.

Marra is a fabulous storyteller. He’s also a very good prose writer. And a highly accomplished architect. Technically he ticks all the boxes. It’s very clever, for example, how five days in the novel bring to a head the emotionally fraught events of ten years in the lives of his characters. And clever too how he uses ostensibly crass artefacts to create plot, continuity and epiphany. But overall I felt the characters let this novel down a bit. They were just a bit too standard quirky, a bit too effortlessly loveable. It’s a novel that appealed greatly to my mind but didn’t quite win over my heart. For all its cleverness I found it a little bit soulless, a bit too self-consciously forged from the mantras of a modern American writer workshop program.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

We all know, as William Tecumseh Sherman once noted, that “War is Hell!” Later, Jean-Paul Sartre concluded that “Hell is other people.” It therefore stands to reason that war is other people. Good thing for me that it's about others because what Marra described in this book sounded awful. We got chopped off fingers, burned down houses, torture-induced ratting, and a whole host of other atrocities. It was set in Chechnya in 2004 with much of the story backfilled from the prior decade of war. Russian politics and regional dynamics were deemphasized, though, so it was somewhat generically about any oppressed, occupied state. The focus was clearly on the human side.

Three main characters filled the pages. The story began as eight-year-old Havaa watched her house burn down from the relative safety of the forest she was told to hide in when the Russian soldiers arrived. She became far safer when neighbor Akhmed, a kindly but inept doctor, walked her to a hospital where there was one remaining doctor, a Russian named Sonja. His best hope for Havaa was that the brusque but talented Sonja would take the girl in. Havaa was precocious, and was maybe one of the few people in Sonja’s league intellectually, so that helped her odds. But these things have to develop at novel-length pace, right? The cumulative conflict along the way has to reach a tipping point.

A secondary set of characters got POV spotlights as well, including Akhmed’s physically and mentally compromised wife, Havaa’s loving father who had just been taken away, Sonja’s beautiful (better liked, now missing) sister, and an old villager named Khassan who had written a massive history of the Chechen people. Khassan’s son, a pariah for informing on his neighbors, had a story, too – a sad, multi-sided one.

The title came from an old medical textbook Sonja owned. “Only one entry supplied an adequate definition, and she circled it with red ink, and referred to it nightly. Life: a constellation of vital phenomena--organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.” Marra no doubt wanted this to apply more widely to his entire book, with life intensified by perils of death.

Did he succeed? Well… I’ve been trying to sort that out. It’s safe to say that he’s a young man with promise. And I give him plenty of points for ambition. The parts I’d criticize are really a matter of taste. I know, too, given all the stars this one gets from discerning friends that my own view is not the popular one, but I did find it a tad overdone. This may seem odd coming from a guy whose catch-phrase is “Nothing exceeds like excess,” but at times I felt that A Constellation of Vital Phenomena was an entanglement of florid descriptors or maybe an agglomeration of symphonious hyperbole. More than once I got a sense of him in a creative writing class, vying for teacher’s pet status. The structuring was fine, with the to-and-fro in time generally adding interest. He did have this quirk, though, were he’d randomly fast-forward the life of some insignificant character, telling us for no apparent reason that, say, twenty-eight years after the war a nameless sentry we just met retired from his career as a teacher. It was a device that called attention to itself, and risked breaking the spell. Better to crawl deeper into the skin of someone we’re meant to care about.

I’m giving this 3.5 stars and rounding to 4. The vitality is there, as is the poignancy. The fact that I debated my own feelings about it meant that he made me think, which I should count as a good thing. I’ll be interested to see what a few years of ripening will do to Marra as a writer. It's a good bet his book of short stories, The Tsar of Love and Techno, will influence my eventual view.

[Shelby *trains flying monkeys* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Upon starting this book I had heard of Chechnya. I couldn't point it out on a map though. Or even have told you what part of the world it was in.


This book takes you there. Not just in mind..but in spirit also. The author states he chose to write about this area after hearing about the death of journalist Anna Polikovskaya from her reporting she did from Chechnya. He read up on the non-fiction reports he could find from the area. I'm glad he did it. My eyes would have glazed over from the enormity of it.

The story begins with 8 year old Haava seeing her father taken by soldiers in the middle of the night. Even at that young age she knows that her father isn't returning. Akhmed her neighbors sweeps her up and runs because she is also a target. He hides her with a frustrated Russian Doctor named Sonja.
Sonja and Akhmed are amazing characters. They both come to life in the book. I'll remember Akhmed for a long time after finishing this. His humor in the face of such tragedy. He admits he is a horrible doctor with a wry sense.



The story takes place over 5 days..5 days that will stick with the reader long afterward. The author does use flashbacks so that you become entwined in these characters lives. For a first book this book is absolutely amazing.


I received an copy of this book from blogging for books in exchange for an honest review.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this portrait of ordinary people doing their extraordinary best under the duress of war in Chechnya. Their human spirit shines through like the grass that grows in the cracks of a sidewalk. I was inspired with Marra’s ability to portray how in the face of war’s devastation, people focus their purpose on whatever family members or shreds of community they retain, and when even that is gone, they forge a virtual family.

Most of the story takes place in a few days in 2004, with flashbacks to the two periods of invasion of Chechnya by Russian Federation forces in 1994 and 1999, which was marked by massive civilian casualties by bombings and artillery strikes. During extended periods of occupation, systematic repression and torture was rampant to assure that this republic did not break away as so many other Soviet states did after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book is not concerned with the politics and combat of the specific war, but with the miracles of human nature within the society impacted by such events. Marra stretches hard to make language capture this life as “a constellation of vital phenomena”.

Almost everyone is a hero in this tale. The two main characters are doctors. Akhmed is a Muslim primary care doctor in a rural community in southern Chechnya. He saves an orphan girl, Havaa, from federal forces that killed her father and burned her home. In the first pages, we experience him finding eight-year old Havaa and placing her in sanctuary at the hospital in the nearby city of Volchansk. Sonja is a female surgeon of ethnic Russian origin who has taken over the running of the hospital in this bombed out city. The price she asks of Akhmed in return for the favor is for him to serve on her medical staff, which calls for daily forays from his caretaker role for his disabled wife.

The evolution of Akhmed and Sonja’s relationship was wonderful for me. She is superbly competent but gruff and cynical, with no bedside manner, whereas Akhmed is warm and self-deprecating, but poorly equipped for the task. He was always more interested in art than medicine. His most recent art was putting up around his village large portraits on panels of the disappeared, a touching act Marra bases on a real event. Sonya schools him in trauma care and lessens his despair by instilling a sense of purpose, and he in turn helps humanizes her, makes her laugh, and raises her hopes of finding her missing sister . Humor helps break down barriers between them:

He was an incompetent doctor but a decent man, he believed, compensating for his physician limitations with his empathy for the patient, his understanding of pain.
…”I shouldn’t spend so much time with you. You’ll turn me into a first-rate surgeon and a boor.”
“I think it’s the other way around”, she said. A gauze of afternoon cloud cover had wrapped around the sky and she looked up and into it. “I’m overcome by the inexplicable desire to speak to you with common courtesy.”

Havaa’s story of resilience and poignant efforts to make sense of her family’s loss makes her a hero too. Although Sonja generally hates kids, we see Havaa’s precocity begin to win her heart when the child first speaks to her of her “disappeared” father:
“He’s an arborist. He knows everything about trees. I’m still a minimalist.”
“Do you know what that is?”
Havaa nodded, expecting the question. “It’s a nice way of saying you have nothing.”
“It’s important to know big word”, the girl said, repeating her father’s maxim. “No one can take what’s indside your head once it’s there.”
“You sound like a solipsist.”

Another key character, is Khassan, a friend and neighbor of Akhmed who has worked his whole life on a 3,000 page history of the Chechen. The muted voice of the people is epitomized by the succession of regimes that have refused to allow him to publish any of it except the segments up to the Middle Ages. He is further silenced by the interruption of his friendship and regular chess playing with Havaa’s father and by his termination of all communication with his remaining family member, a son who has been tortured into becoming an informer for Russian security forces. The most moving part of the book for me lies in Khassan’s finding relief from his isolation by disclosure of the story of a secret love affair from his past to Akhmed’s bedridden and demented wife. This story takes place against the background of Stalin’s transplantation of their families along with half a million of native Chechens to Kazakhstan, which lasted from 1944 until repatriation of survivors in 1957.

The prose in this book is what often makes it special to me. Sometimes it calls too much attention to itself, and sometimes it comes off as clumsy, requiring reading the sentences more than once to achieve understanding. As an example of success, here the torment of Khassan’s son is captured as he experiences the impact of having to become an informer:
Snow had thickened the ground. The quiet of the house followed him into the woods. Two hundred meters in, raising his head in a long scream, he tore a hole in the silence through which he could walk more freely.

Here is an example that does well at first in capturing Akhmed’s shock of dealing with a victim of a landmine, but to me it overreaches toward the end:
… he wasn’t the first man he had seen writhing like a noodle in a pot of boiling water, not the first he had seen with half his shin hanging by a hinge of sinew. But when he saw this man it was like seeing the first man for the first time: he couldn’t think, couldn’t act, could only stand in shock as the air where the man’s leg should have been filled the floor and the room and his open mouth. …Then the man’s pulse was a haphazard exertion against his finger.

I admire Marra so much for trying and often succeeding that I have to forgive him for flying too close to the sun sometimes. Here is a final example, which sings so well about Ahkmed’s feeling of loss of his wife to dementia but to me stumbles at the end:
He was losing her incrementally. It might be a few stray brown hairs listless on the pillow, or the crescents of fingernails tossed behind the headboard, or a dark shape dissolving in soap. As a web is no more than holes woven together, they were bonded by what was no longer there. The dishes no longer prepared or eaten. The walks no longer walked, the summer woods, the undergrowth parted by their shins. The arguments no longer argued; no stakes, nothing either wanted or could lose. The love no longer made, desired, imagined, or mourned. The illness had resorted to an innocence he was unwilling to pollute, and the warmth of her flesh cocooning his was a shard of their life dislodged from both their memories.

Against the forces of erasure, the characters nurture life through their memories, spark hopes for each other, and find windows for humor and for love. Morality is frequently compromised, but the wellsprings of their personal integrity are preserved. No wonder 13 out of 15 of my GR friends rendered 4 or 5 stars for this debut novel. Marra looks too young to believe he could create this out of imagination, research, and visits to Chechnya. But he wrote it at 28 years of age, and a Stanford professor where he was a graduate student in creative writing was quoted as saying his skills were already fully developed. In an interview included at the end of this book, he cites the influence of Benioff’s “City of Thieves”, which despite its portrayal of suffering at the Siege of Leningrad is “filled to the brim with life, love, humor, even joy, all of which only enhance and make more real the underlying historical tragedy.”

[Eliasdgian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Την πτώση του Τείχους του Βερολίνου ακολούθησε ο θρυμματισμός του ογκόλιθου που λεγόταν Σοβιετική Ένωση και η αυτονόμηση των επιμέρους Σοβιετικών Σοσιαλιστικών Δημοκρατιών που την συναποτελούσαν. Μεγαλύτερη, σε έκταση και πληθυσμό, από τις δημοκρατίες αυτές ήταν η Ρωσική Σοβιετική Ομοσπονδιακή Σοσιαλιστική Δημοκρατία, η οποία, μετά την πτώση της Ε.Σ.Σ.Δ., μετεξελίχθηκε στη σημερινή Ρωσική Ομοσπονδία. Η Δημοκρατία της Τσετσενίας δεν ήταν μια από τις Σοβιετικές Σοσιαλιστικές Δημοκρατίες που είχαν το δικαίωμα της πλήρους απόσχισης (όπως λ.χ. η Ουκρανία, η Εσθονία και η Λετονία), αλλά ομοσπονδιακό υποκείμενο της Ρωσικής Ομοσπονδίας.

Οι Τσετσένοι, λοιπόν, όσο η Ρωσική κυβέρνηση απέρριπτε ασυζητητί τις όποιες βλέψεις τους για ανεξαρτησία, όφειλαν να συνεχίσουν να υπόκεινται τον διαρκή εναγκαλισμό της Μόσχας. Αυτό για κάποιους ήταν πρόβλημα (Αυτονομιστές), αν και για άλλους όχι (Ομοσπονδιακοί). Κι έτσι, ένας αιματηρός εμφύλιος πόλεμος ξέσπασε στα εδάφη της Τσετσενίας, στον οποίο η Ρωσική Ομοσπονδία δεν άργησε να εμπλακεί. Τον Δεκέμβριο του 1994, λοιπόν, ξέσπασε ο Α΄ Πόλεμος της Τσετσενίας ανάμεσα στη Ρωσική Ομοσπονδία και τη Δημοκρατία της Τσετσενίας. Κατάπαυση του πυρός έγινε τον Αύγουστο του 1996, ενώ το Γκρόζνυ είχε ήδη ισοπεδωθεί και οι απώλειες στις τάξεις και των δύο πλευρών υπήρξαν τραγικά μεγάλες. Τα στοιχεία δεν είναι επίσημα, αλλά υποστηρίζεται ότι περισσότεροι από τριάντα χιλιάδες άμαχοι έχασαν τη ζωή τους, ενώ κάπου πεντακόσιες χιλιάδες άνθρωποι πήραν τον δρόμο της προσφυγιάς.

Το τέλος του Α΄ Πολέμου, ωστόσο, δεν ολοκλήρωσε το δράμα του λαού της μικρής αυτής δημοκρατίας στον Βόρειο Καύκασο. Γιατί ακολούθησε και δεύτερος (Β΄ Πόλεμος της Τσετσενίας), όταν τον Αύγουστο του 1999 οι ρωσικές δυνάμεις εισέβαλαν ξανά στα εδάφη της Τσετσενίας, ανταπαντώντας στην εισβολή που προηγήθηκε ανταρτών (Ισλαμική Ταξιαρχία Προστασίας της Διεθνούς Ειρήνης) στη Δημοκρατία του Νταγκεστάν. Δεύτερος κύκλος αίματος, εντός και εκτός Τσετσενίας.

Σε αυτό το ιστορικό πλαίσιο διαδραματίζεται το μυθιστόρημα του Antony Marra, που δανείζεται τον τίτλο του από έναν ορισμό του λήμματος «ζωή» στο Ιατρικό Λεξικό της Ένωσης Σοβιετικών Γιατρών: Ζωή: αστερισμός ζωτικών φαινομένων – οργάνωση, ευερεθιστότητα, κίνηση, ανάπτυξη, αναπαραγωγή, προσαρμογή. Αλλά ζωή δεν έχει απομείνει αρκετή. Ούτε στο Γκρόζνυ, ούτε πουθενά αλλού στην Τσετσενία.

Το 2004, ενόσω η φωτιά του πολέμου συνεχίζει να μαίνεται, το Βολτσάνσκ, μια μικρή πόλη στην Τσετσενία, αναπνέει τα αποκαΐδια της. Σχεδόν μόνο το νοσοκομείο της έχει απομείνει όρθιο (χάριν της διεθνούς νομοθεσίας που απαγορεύει τη στοχοθέτηση ιατρικών εγκαταστάσεων), και μία και μόνη γιατρός, η Σόνια Αντρέιγεβνα Ραμπίνα, προσπαθεί να βάλει τάξη στο χάος, να περιθάλψει κάθε τραυματία, αντάρτη ή πρόσφυγα, που διαβαίνει την πόρτα του. Η Σόνια, που δεν σταματά να αναζητά την μικρή αδελφή της Νατάσα, η οποία έναν χρόνο πριν έφυγε από το νοσοκομείο σε αναζήτηση του πλησιέστερου στρατοπέδου προσφύγων και έκτοτε δεν έχει δώσει σημεία ζωής, δέχεται την επίσκεψη ενός άντρα, του Άχμεντ, που της ζητά επίμονα να κρατήσει κοντά της τη μικρή Χαβάα, μοναχοπαίδι ενός γείτονά του, του Ντόκα, που τον απήγαγαν οι στρατιώτες το προηγούμενο βράδυ. Σε αντάλλαγμα, ο Άχμεντ θα εργαστεί στο νοσοκομείο.

Παράλληλες ιστορίες ανθρώπων διαπλέκονται (με επιδεξιότητα) σ’ ένα ζοφερό περιβάλλον όπου κυριαρχεί η απόλυτη φρίκη, κι όπου μοναδικός κανόνας είναι η απώλεια κι ο θάνατος. Σταχυολόγησα μερικές δεκάδες συγκλονιστικές αναφορές (θα τις αντιγράψω όλες σε ένα μικρό μαύρο σημειωματάριο που διατηρώ, παραθέτοντας εδώ, ως κατακλείδα του κειμένου αυτού, μία μονάχα από αυτές, τα λόγια του Ραζμάν, ενός ανθρώπου που ‘έσπασε’ και κατέδωσε) σ’ ένα σπουδαίο μυθιστόρημα που δεν μπορεί να διαβαστεί αλλιώς, παρά σαν τραγούδισμα στη ζωή, σαν κατευόδιο σε όλες τις Χαβάα αυτού του κόσμου.

«Δεύτερος πόλεμος. Δεύτερη φορά σ’ εκείνο το μέρος. Ήξερα τι θα γινόταν. Ήξερα ότι δε σταματάει ποτέ. Σου φυτεύουν μια ντροπή που συνεχίζεται σαν ατέλειωτη γέφυρα, την ταπείνωση, τη γαμημένη ταπείνωση να ξέρεις ότι δεν είσαι ανθρώπινο πλάσμα, αλλά μια δέσμη νευρικές απολήξεις που ουρλιάζουν, όπου το μαρτύριο συνεχίζεται, ακόμα κι όταν ησυχάζει ο φυσικός πόνος.»

Αντί επιλόγου: ”Υπερασπίσου το παιδί/γιατί αν γλιτώσει το παιδί/υπάρχει ελπίδα.”

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

December 4th, 2013: This is not on the New York Times' Ten Best Books of 2013 but it should have been.

In a fantastic profile of the writer Colum McCann in yesterday's New York Times Magazine, the writer sat with a class of high school students from Newtown:

"He told them about an organization he recently helped found, Narrative4, which brings together kids from different places — sometimes directly contentious places, sometimes just places with their own hardships — and how over a span of days the kids pair off, one from each place, and exchange the story that most defines who they are. At the end of their time together, they tell the stories to the larger group, taking on the persona of their partner — an exercise, McCann said, in “radical empathy.””

Radical empathy being one of the reasons why I need literature in my life like water, food, air and love, reading "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena" was a shock to me in the best sense of the word. An essential and extraordinary experience told through the lens of a handful of characters whom I will never forget.

Anthony Marra's writing is something to behold, muscular and evocative, bold and infinitely delicate at the same time. There were so many images and scenes that are left imprinted on my brain and heart that at times I felt as if I was watching a film by Tarkovsky, where the physical world melts continuously and effortlessly into bigger existential questions.

Ron Charles already said it all in his review of the book for the Washington Post.

I can only say that "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena" is a brilliant, brilliant novel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/mag...

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...

[Adina]

Dnf at 20%. Not for me, I’m afraid. As another review said: “ I need to stop reading books about oppressive regimes written by Iowa workshop graduates”. I cannot say what went wrong, I just felt annoyed while reading.

[Canadian Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that made me pause, reflect and pause again. To say this was an excellent book would be an understatement. This is a story about death, grief, hope and joy. The story takes place in worn torn Chechny and flashes back over the characters lives during 5 precious days. It begins with the horror of a father, Dokka, taken violently away by the Feds during the middle of the night. He saves his 8 year old daughter, Haava, by forcing her out into the black of night with her already packed suitcase. She is found by Akhmed, the neighbouring doctor, who makes it his mission to ensure her safety and leads her to the one remaining hospital where he delivers her to the doctor, Sonja. The story traces the character's lives and the moral choices they have made in their struggle to survive. This is not a light read and be prepared to be drawn in emotionally. I give it 5 stars.

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

“When they took him, he held your name right there in his chest, and you were with him, even if you didn't know it. When he reached the end, he did not die. He called your name and began to live in you.”

’A Constellation of Vital Phenomena’ is Anthony Marra’s debut novel. If you’ve read this, then you’ll understand how unfathomable that seems to me, and likely so to most people when they’ve just finished reading this.

Set in a snow-covered village in Chechnya, The Chechen Republic, after the dissolution of Soviet Union, this story takes place between the years 1994 and 2004, weaving back and forth through time. As this story begins, Russian soldiers have been busy invading villages, accusing people of having rebel sympathies, aiding the rebels.

”As a web is no more than holes woven together, they were bonded by what was no longer there.”

It is on one of these nights that young Havaa’s life changes, in the middle of the night she watches helplessly as her father is taken away by soldiers, soldiers who have also set fire to their home. A neighbor, Akmed, saves her, and brings her to the hospital, searching for refuge for her. He knows someone there, Sonja, a no-nonsense surgeon, who is now in charge of what remains of the hospital. He needs to find a safe place for her.

”You are mine. I recognize you. We twist our souls around each other’s miseries. It is that which makes us family.”

War begets war, violence begets more violence. Kindness, gradually, perhaps, begets kindness. Hope. Kindness is an antidote to despair, and while it can’t take the place of food, water, shelter, what are we without kindness, without tolerance? The ability to get up each day, face another death-defying day, with horror or the potential for another day of horror always on one’s mind.

”There are maps to show you how to get to the place where you want to be but no maps that show you how to get to the time when you want to be.”

This was a hard book for me to read, overwhelmingly bleak, filled with despair at times, and while there was almost no real reason for hope, these characters hold onto hope as though it were a lifeline as tangible as food, water and shelter.

Intense, dark, this sometimes felt impenetrable, but then again this story is thick with complications, complex back-stories, and, well, difficulties, because life is full of obstacles, impediments. And love, it’s also filled with love. Love is in these pages, with a beautiful underlying message of forgiveness.

There are books we love for the way their beauty makes our heart soar, or for the thrills we find inside their pages, some for the things we learned while reading them. There are thrilling, terrifying moments in this, and there is plenty to learn about this time period in Chechnya, and there are many, many lovely passages. Still, this is not a story that I can say I enjoyed, although it always pulled me back to it until my heart became too heavy once again, and I was forced to put it down for a time.

Now that I’ve read the last page, and many passages over and over again, I realize that this story, like others before, has already become a part of me, a sharing and merging of this story within me, the stories of these souls with mine, and with all of our stories.


Many thanks, once again, to the Public Library system, and the many Librarians that manage, organize and keep it running, for the loan of this book!

[Ron Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anthony Marra’s first novel, “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,” is a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.

Go ahead and sneer at the thin atmosphere of America’s MFA programs, but this Washington-born graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is a testament to the vibrancy of contemporary fiction. Here, in fresh, graceful prose, is a profound story that dares to be as tender as it is ghastly, a story about desperate lives in a remote land that will quickly seem impossibly close and important.

“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” opens in a tiny, blood-soaked village of Chechnya, that part of the world that drifts into our consciousness only briefly — when, say, the Russians crush it again or, more recently, when young zealots detonate pressure cookers in Boston. But the unforgettable characters in this novel are not federalists or rebels or terrorists. They aren’t particularly religious or political; we see only glimpses of loyal Russian officers or fanatical Muslims. Instead, these are just fathers and mothers and children — neighbors snagged in the claws of history.

The book begins with a sentence that forecasts both the horror and the whimsy ahead: “On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones.” Havaa, we learn, is 8 and now almost certainly orphaned. “She had the pale, waxen skin of an unripe pear,” Marra writes. Her father, who nurtured her curiosity with extravagant affection, was an arborist who had lost his fingers in a previous encounter with the Feds and a pair of bolt cutters. When he was gagged with duct tape and bundled away for good, Havaa avoided assassination by sneaking out of the house and hiding in the snow. But those thugs will be back, fulfilling a new order to murder the family members of anyone suspected of sympathizing with rebel forces.

The complicated moral hero of this tale is an incompetent peasant doctor named Akhmed, who lives across the street. More comfortable drawing portraits than blood, he is determined to save his old friend’s daughter, though “she seemed an immense and overwhelming creature whom he was destined to fail.” His only choice is to spirit Havaa out of the village, where the sole remaining career choices are running guns for the rebels or informing for the Russians. Acting on a rumor from a refugee who passed through months earlier, he takes Havaa to an all-but-abandoned hospital in a nearby town that looks “like a city made of shoeboxes and stamped into the ground by a petulant child.”

On one level, “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” covers just five days in 2004. But these are people shaken from the linear progress of time. Their experiences come to us in pungent flashbacks of trauma and joy — meals and games, marriages and affairs, offenses small and shocking that knit their lives together. Each chapter begins with the date highlighted on a timeline that runs from 1994 to 2004, jumping forward and backward, sometimes creating new mysteries, sometimes solving old ones.

Other references draw us outside that 10-year range. A scholar in the village toils his whole life on a history of “this sliver of humanity the world seemed determined to forget.” At more than 50,000 pages, the old man’s manuscript flows from a kind of mania, reaching further and further back to avoid the ire of Russian censors. But then, too, there are moments of mercy in this tale, grace notes when Marra casually alludes to what certain characters will be doing far in the future; yes, he assures us, some of these people you care about — or loathe — will live deep into the 21st century.

Marra, who has traveled through Chechnya, re-creates Akhmed and Havaa’s village in the hard, spare elements of wood and snow and blood. For all the bizarre images and incidents he describes, he stays rooted in the concrete insanity of this conflict, this unstanchable wound on Europe’s eastern side. We see unexploded bombs lying in the street covered with toilet bowls,a clown crying in a basement during an aerial assault,a soldier insisting his prisoners wear seat belts on their way to a death camp. But these aren’t the quirky ornaments that floated through “The Tiger’s Wife,” Téa Obreht’s dreamy first novel about a doctor in the war-torn Balkans. In “A Constellation,” the surreal has been stamped into flesh and bone.

Marra was guided by, among other books, the work of assassinated Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. This is a land once forcibly emptied by the U.S.S.R., then officially repopulated, and now being savaged by guerrilla attacks and merciless retaliations. Two years before the novel opens, 41 villagers were “disappeared” in a single day, shot in the forest or trucked off to be tortured to death in a place only Hieronymus Bosch or the godchildren of Stalin could imagine.

Be warned: There’s a section of “A Constellation” splattered with viscera that will scar your conscience and remind you what the United States risks by blurring the hard-won moral and legal prohibitions against torture. Driving this intense tragedy is an ordinary man, Ramzan, a young neighbor who was poisoned by pain, driven to accept his role as village rat. In pages of almost unreadably creative abuse, Marra takes us into the crucible where bodies and minds are crushed and the elixir of betrayal is purified. “We are the children of wolves,” Ramzan says. “I recognize you,” his father thinks. “We twist our souls around each other’s miseries.”

The almost-empty hospital where Akhmed hides Havaa provides a weird alternative world to the grim village. Staffed by a single nurse, a one-armed guard and a Russian surgeon searching for her sister, it’s a madhouse but also a sanctuary, where strands of absurdity and realism mingle without clashing. From the infinite black space of despair emerges “a constellation of vital phenomena,” an arresting definition of “life” found in an old medical textbook. Marra isn’t above offering snatches of comic banter among this ragtag staff too foolish or compassionate to flee. The surgeon, who assumes she has cauterized her affections, spars with Akhmed in a way that tempts us to anticipate some romantic engagement, maybe even a little happiness.

As the elements of this complicated plot begin to align in ways too tragic and moving to anticipate, the past resolves into focus; the future is freighted with anguish but flecked with hope. I haven’t been so overwhelmed by a novel in years. At the risk of raising your expectations too high, I have to say you simply must read this book.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in awe; Anthony Marra has a rare gift with words.

Marra tells his story set in Chechnya, a country ravaged by wars and occupied by foreign forces. It is the story of a girl who has lost her parents and of the man who saves her and the woman who gives her a place to stay. But it is also so much more. It is a book about resilience in the face of indescribable horror. It is a book about human connection and about how little acts of kindness can create more kindness. It is a book about forgiveness and about things that are unforgivable.

Characters are where Marra shines the most - he has a way of creating precise and concise characters with just a sentence and a half. Every single person showing up in this book is just that - a fully fleshed out person. I cannot think of many authors who are able to create a picture so vivid with so little words. It is beyond impressive.

While I didn't quite love this as much as I loved Marra's second book (The Tsar of Love and Techno), I still think it is an exceptional novel with unbelievable depth to it. It is a book that demands to be reread; it is dense and taxing and so much is happening and so many connections are made, that I am sure a second read would be very rewarding still. While this is a very rewarding book it is also a very human one. Marra does not sacrifice substance to achieve style and his book is as emotionally rewarding as it is intellectually impressive.

I cannot wait to see what Anthony Marra creates next!

[Maziyar Yf · Rating 5 out of 5]

منظومه ای از پدیده های حیاتی ، کتابی است از آنتونی مارا ، نویسنده آمریکایی . کتاب او شرح شگفت انگیزی است از یکی دیگر از عوارض سقوط شوروی ، جنگ چچن و آدمیانی که در آن گیر افتاده اند . کتاب مارا داستان جنگی نیست ، مارا به غیر نظامیانی پرداخته که گرفتار جنگی شده اند که گویی ارتباط چندانی با آنها ندارد ، افرادی که در دل جنگ باید زندگی کنند ، کار کنند و عشق بورزند و البته از جان خود و عزیزان خود دفاع کنند .
جغرافیا داستان :
منظومه ای از پدیده های حیاتی در روستایی خیالی به نام الدار اتفاق افتاده ، روستایی که به شهر گروزنی ، پایتخت جمهوری چچن مرکز اصلی درگیری ها ، نزدیک است . روستایی مخروبه و جنگ زده با خانه هایی سوخته . همواره سفید پوش و در محاصره جنگل ، برف و حیوانات وحشی ، حیواناتی مانند گرگها که خود از قربانیان جنگ انسانها هستند . الدار نکبت جنگ را با تمام وجود حس کرده و بیشتر از چهل نفر از روستاییان به دست روسها سلاخی شده اند و حالا به‌جای آنها ، تصویرهایی چوبیشان در روستا ایستاده‌اند و با چشمانی سرد و بی‌صدا، نظاره‌گر اندک بازماندگان‌اند.
در یک طرف روسها هستند و برف و جاده ها و زمین هایی که مین گذاری کرده اند و در طرف دیگر شورشیان و برف و جنگل و میان آنها الدار و روستاییان باقی مانده . مطابق با گزارش سازمان های جهانی ، هر دو طرف هم روسها و هم شورشیان مرتکب جنایت علیه بشریت شده اند ولی در کتاب بیشتر جنایات و شکنجه روسها نشان داده شده . شورشیان گویی با روستاییان همدلی و نزدیکی دارند و آزار آنها کم تر به الدار نشینان رسیده . در این میان، الدار نه فقط یک مکان، بلکه شاهدی‌ست خاموش بر تراژدی انسان ، جایی که برف، جنگل، و چوب‌های حکاکی‌شده، جای خالی انسان‌ها را پر کرده‌اند.
در میان این جنگ ، سرما و گرگها در الدار ، احمد و الا ، حسن و رمضان و دوکا و حوا و همسرش روزگار می گذرانند و چند کیلومتربالاتر سونیا در خرابه ای که پیشتر بیمارستان بود ، طبابت می کند ، طبابتی که بیشتر محدود به بریدن دست و پای مجروحین جنگی بدون بیهوشی و امکانات دیگر است . سونیا اندک امکانات و داروهای بیمارستان را از یکی از قاچاقچیان سرشناس دریافت می کند ، قاچاقچی که به خاطر نجات زندگی برادرش ، مدیون سونیاست .
مارا داستان خود را در فضایی روایت می‌کند که هر فرد، در انتظار سوت خمپاره یا شکستن در خانه به دست نیروهای روس، لحظه‌به‌لحظه با اضطراب زندگی می‌کند. فاجعه سرانجام رخ می‌دهد: یکی از ساکنان روستا دستگیر می‌شود و خانه‌اش به آتش کشیده می‌شود. با فرار دختر خردسال او به خانهٔ همسایه و تلاش برای نجاتش، روایتی آغاز می‌شود که هر سطر آن، فاجعه‌ای فراموش‌شده را فریاد می‌زند. مارا داستان خود را در طول پنج روز روایت کرده ، اما او با فلش‌بک‌هایی به سال‌های ۱۹۹۴ تا ۲۰۰۴، تصویرکامل تری از جنگ میان روس‌ها و شورشیان چچن نشان می‌دهد .
داستان مارا ، داستان خشنی است ، به جز دست و پاهایی که سونیا با اره می برد ، یا وصف افرادی که پا بر روی مین گذاشته اند ، یا تک تیراندازان روس ، مارا شکنجه های وحشیانه روسها به منظور کسب اطلاعات و داشتن خبر چین را با دقت و جزییات توصیف کرده ، از مقطوع النسل کردن پسران تا بریدن انگشت روستاییانی که بدون انگشت ، توانایی انجام هیچ کاری حتی خودکشی هم ندارند و محکوم به فنا هستند . روسها این گونه با وحشت آفرینی ، می کوشند تا روستاییان را از همکاری با شورشیان و کمک به آنها باز دارند .
اما زندگی حتی در چنین شرایط جهنمی هم ادامه دارد ، ساکنان الدار که خبر چین روستا را می شناسند هم چنان به زندگی یا چیزی شبیه به آن ادامه می دهند ، هم چنان کار می کنند و حتی عشق می ورزند یا در غیاب بهترین دوست خود ، می توانند با همسر او رابطه داشته باشند .
مارا قطعات پازل خود را با استادی در کنار هم می گذارد ، او گذشته هر فرد و آینده او را روایت می کند . آینده ای که الزاما تلخ و سیاه نیست ، برخی از این جهنم نجات پیدا می کنند و برخی هم نه . با وجود خشونت زیاد، مارا از جوانه‌های زندگی هم می‌گوید: از بخیه‌زدن با نخ‌دندان، از تولد یک کودک، و پزشکان و پرستارانی که با حضور خود به روستاییان امید می بخشند .
نام زیبای کتاب ، منظومه‌ای از پدیده‌های حیاتی نه‌تنها شاعرانه است، بلکه با مضمون و ساختار رمان هم گره خورده. این عنوان، شاید استعاره‌ای‌ باشد از تلاش نویسنده برای کنار هم چیدن تکه‌های پراکندهٔ زندگی در دل جنگ ، مانند ستاره‌هایی که در تاریکی شب، منظومه‌ای می‌سازند. در دل ویرانی جنگ ، شخصیت‌ها مثل ستاره‌هایی جداافتاده‌اند: احمد، سونیا، حوا، داکا، رمضان، ناتاشا . هرکدام زخمی، تنها، و درگیر گذشته‌ای تاریک. اما مارا با روایت درهم‌تنیدهٔ خود، این شخصیت‌ها را به هم وصل کرده؛ مانند ستاره‌هایی که با خط‌های خیالی، صورت فلکی می‌سازند.
در متن کتاب هم، اشاره‌ای هست به اینکه زندگی انسان‌ها، که با وجود پراکندگی و درد، می‌تواند منظومه‌ای از پدیده‌های حیاتی باشد ، یعنی مجموعه‌ای از لحظات، تصمیم‌ها، و پیوندهایی که در کنار هم، چیزی بزرگ‌تر و زیباتر را شکل می‌دهند
مارا چگونه این کتاب را نوشت ؟
منظومه ای از پدیده های حیاتی را باید یک اثر روسی دانست که به دست نویسنده ای آمریکایی نوشته شده . تلاش های مارا برای خلق چنین شاهکاری سخت ستودنی بوده ، او برای آفریدن محیط جهنمی بیمارستان کتاب های جراح هایی را خوانده که در محیط های مشابه کار کرده و تعدادی از داستان های این جراحان را هم در کتاب خود آورده . هم چنین برای درک تجارت جنسی زنان چچنی در غرب ، مارا کتاب های زنانی را خواند که در روسپی خانه های غرب ، به زور مشغول به روسپیگری شده بودند . مارا هر چیزی را که به فرهنگ ، جغرافیا چچن به گونه ای مربوط بوده را خواند که سرانجام توانست فضایی بی نهایت شبیه به چچن چنگ زده بی آفریند .
در نهایت، منظومه‌ای از پدیده‌های حیاتی تنها روایتی از جنگ چچن نیست ، بلکه بازتابی است از حافظهٔ انسانی در مواجهه با خشونت. آنتونی مارا با کلامی زیبا و نسبتا پیچیده و روایتی غیرخطی، نشان می‌دهد که در دل ویرانی، هنوز پیوندهایی هست که انسان را به معنا متصل می‌کند. این رمان، با تمام تلخی‌اش ، شهادتی‌ست بر آنچه در حاشیهٔ تاریخ دفن شده ، چهره‌هایی بی نام، که هنوز فریاد می‌زنند.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every now and then, a book comes along that restores my faith in the future of the novel all over again. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is such a book.

How can a debut novelist write like this lyrically and searingly? Anthony Marra has “the gift” and his work is more assured than writers who have toiled for years.

I’d like to say I was immediately captured by his novel, but alas, that wouldn’t be true. My lack of familiarity with war-torn Chechnya – indeed, with Russian history – distanced me at first. A number of original and whimsical characters were woven into his rich tapestry of words, and for many pages, I wondered just why such-and-such character was being portrayed in great detail.

But then it all started coming together, and – wow oh wow. The title comes from a description of life in a medical book: Life is a constellation of vital phenomena – organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation. A careful reading reveals that for this community of characters, the description is quite apt.

The novel primarily takes place throughout a decade – from 1996 to 2004 – and a line graph at the top of each chapter centers the reader in the timeline. There are three key characters – Akhmed, an incompetent doctor with a good heart…Sonja, a bone-weary surgeon who labors each day at a bombed-out hospital that serves as the only respite for those who have been injured…and Havaa, an eight-year-old girl who has already been forced to endure and lose too much.

Many other secondary characters populate this epic tale, including a beautifully-detailed portrait of a damaged man who has turned informer: Ramzan. All of these characters will become tied in an intricate web of connections that reveal how human fate is not just in our own hands, but in the hands of all humanity.

The result is a haunting and original look into many universal themes. Ramzan says, “We’re beyond obligation. We wear clothes and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.” Or is it? Rather than embrace Ramzan’s view of the world, this book shines a spotlight on the true meanings of love and sacrifice, and the lengths we will go to connect and endure.

While heartbreaking at times, the book, at its core, is hopeful and proves that an “immense, spinning joy” can occur even when one’s very humanity is threatened. I view this Constellation as a potential classic. It is that stellar.

[Chrissie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know how I felt while reading this book, but why? Why did I constantly want to do anything else but listen? Why near the conclusion did I just listen to get to the end?

This book is set in a small Chechen village in 2004, thus during the Second Chechen War. The story is told through numerous flashbacks. It is of course about the ravages of war. It is grim reading, and until the end there is little that inspires any hope. Although the author does infuse the story with humor, it is ironic humor, sad humor; humor that laughs at the stupidity of man. The humor in this book rarely made me laugh. There is a glimmer of hope at the end, but it is too late and too weak. You must know by now that I do not demand jolly books, but this one is d-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-n-g. You will nod and sigh and shake your heads with utter despair.

So do you learn much about the two Chechen Wars? Not really, other than that they were horrible.

The book is choppy in that you flip back and forth in time. It is confusing, not so much because of the different time settings but because the author never says anything directly. The language is convoluted. What is said, is implied. This is not to my taste. I prefer a more direct, simple language. I remember at one point they had to go around a dangerous spot, but what does Anthony Marra say? They circumnavigated the area. Over and over I muttered - just say it straight. I felt like I was supposed to be impressed with his clever words. I admit, the author did occasionally express himself beautifully. There were times when he blew me away in his ability to beautifully depict a situation, an event or an idea.

The narration by Colette Whitaker was not to my taste either. Much of the time she droned on in a dispassionate manner. This was not so bad when the horrors of the war were related, but it was almost numbing. Neither did I like the so very typical Eastern European accent attributed to the Chechens.

What did I get from this? After reading it, have I a more detailed, better understanding of the Chechen Wars? Scarcely! It is mostly about how the people suffered, and that I knew. Did it impart an important message that was new? No.

Most people seem to be head over heels in love with this new author. Not me.

[Larry H · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you read as much as I do (or even if you don't), you're bound to come across a book that is hailed by literary critics and readers as one of the greatest things ever, but no matter how much you try and read it and are determined to love it, it just doesn't click for you. I know that happens most often with the classics, but it certainly happens with "regular" fiction and nonfiction as well.

Anthony Marra's debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, is such a book for me. Reviews have hailed it as everything from "brilliant" and "haunting" to "a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles." One reviewer even said this book "restores my faith in the future of the novel all over again."

One day, in a snowy village in war-torn Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa hides as Russian soldiers abduct her father, Dokka, in the middle of the night. Their kindly neighbor, Akhmed, fears the worst when he sees the soldiers setting fire to Dokka's house as they take him away, but he rescues Havaa from her hiding place. Fearing she will be discovered, Akhmed takes Havaa to the local hospital, abandoned but for one doctor, Sonja, who alone (with the help of one cantankerous nurse) has been treating all of the victims of war and illness that enter the dilapidated hospital's doors. Akhmed, who was a medical student at the very bottom of his class, promises to work as a doctor with Sonja to ensure Havaa is provided for.

Sonja comes with her own set of issues, most notably her sister, Natasha, who has continuously disappeared and reappeared in Sonja's life, but has been missing for some time. And Akhmed is caring for his own bedridden wife, and worrying about his neighbor and childhood friend, who is an informant for the Russians. But Sonja and Akhmed forge a reluctant partnership, one which opens both of their eyes to the surprising connections that tie them together.

For me, while there's no doubt that Marra is a tremendously talented writer who has created some memorable characters and some beautiful sentences, this book just didn't click the way I hoped it would. It's a very dense story—in order to give gravity to his narrative, Marra packs a great deal of Chechen history and details that seemed to run on for far too long. The book takes place over a 10-year-period, and switches perspectives frequently and abruptly. And although he weaves all of his storylines together at the end, before that point I wondered why he spent so much time dwelling on certain details about secondary characters.

I'm not usually an outlier in this fashion; I usually like books more than others. So if the story and people's reviews make this book sound like one you think you'd love, have at it. And then perhaps we can discuss what I'm missing.

[آبتین گلکار · Rating 4 out of 5]

برای پی بردن به فجایعی که در چچن اتفاق افتاده واقعاً کتاب خوبیه. فقط تأسف می‌خورم که چرا یه چچن نباید همچین کتابی رو بنویسه یا اگر هم نوشتن، به زبان‌های دیگه ترجمه بشه

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.7 rating for me!

This story is set in Chechyna between 1994 and 2004: Interesting 'wartime' history --(I actually wish this book had developed more visuals of the Chechen 'culture' than it did) --as I didn't know much about clashing cultures of the Chechnian State within Russia.

The history was disturbing --(WAR is DISTURBING) --
The writing style is a combination of extensive flashbacks --
And...'Jumping Ahead' (sometimes decades), to relay what will happen to characters in the future.

I had mixed feelings about the writing. I enjoyed it most of the time --yet thought it was somewhat fragmented--leaving me with too many unsatisfying questions about the characters. I wanted to know more about 'why' Natashia left?

I wanted to know more about 'Haava'. I tried to imagine 'preparing' my six year old daughter for facing the world alone in the middle of the night? How would a parent do that? A suitcase was packed?/!! How, who, why, when ...(what conversations went along with it?)

The strongest parts of the books (for me) were:
...The beginning and the ending.
...My favorite character was Akhmed
...Dr. Sonja is a kick! (interesting human being)
...The 'comic relief's were a plus throughout this book: A 'favorite' was the conversation about "Ronald McDonald" ... (too funny).

Weakness: The book feels a little long.

Overall: 'Most' of the time --this story is gripping-engaging!

I'm left with: War is war -is war -is war -is war -is war -is WAR!!!!!!

[Rae Meadows · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, what a joy to read a fully-realized, beautifully written, totally engrossing novel. I haven't read what GR friends have said about this book--I'm coming to it a little later than most--which made it all the more of a pleasure. The novel brings to life the cruel absurdities of war with moments of light and humanity. I knew little of Chechnya, and Marra does a masterful job of supplying enough information without weighing down the narrative. I have a few small quibbles, the first being the over reliance on coincidence after coincidence. It can feel satisfying on one level with everything fitting so neatly (who has crossed paths with whom, etc.) but it made me think really? one time too many. An extension of that point is the flash forwards with all the random characters. This, too, can feel satisfying--yes, life will go on from all this awfulness--but I felt the heavy hand of the novelist here, a little too much.

But those are small things. This is an ambitious novel--hard to believe it is a debut--and an incredibly moving one. (I admit I cried multiple times.) I'm looking forward to Marra's story collection and future work. Highly recommended.

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night and then set fire to her home. When their lifelong neighbor Akhmed finds Havaa hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.

For Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weaves together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.

My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is the twenty-first, discuss a book you expected to hate but ended up loving.

Life: a constellation of vital phenomena—organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.

Yes.

Now, there is always a matter of taste when it comes to appreciating or otherwise a given writer's work. Do the writer's words ring you like a bell? Do they smack you in the chops? Do they slither into your ears emitting glassy slime like a hagfish? That's the chief factor in determining your ultimate response to a work. I think some writers are equivalent of chocolatiers, making bonbon after truffle upon caramel. Lovely taken one at a time; urpsome in bulk. I think Marra is a chocolatier of a writer in this book.

There is something miraculous in the way the years wash away your evidence, first you, then your friends and family, then the descendants who remember your face, until you aren’t even a memory, you’re only carbon, no greater than your atoms, and time will divide them as well.

Mmmmm. Yum. Sing it, Brother Anthony, sing it.

Invader and invaded held on to their fistfuls of earth, but in the end, the earth outlived the hands that held it.

Yes. I concur. A bit baroque, permaybehaps, but yes.

For their entire lives, even before they met you, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree.

Oh gag me! A milk chocolate strawberry creme-filled emetic-level Whitman's Sampler spitback!

So here I was, alternately uplifted and revolted, and still...this story made me stop what I was thinking and attend to it, and that's no mean feat. The horror of stories about war is, for me, only partially touched by the battles and the soldiers and the wounds they inflict on themselves and each other. The people whose lives are utterly upended by wars fought in their name and on their land are so often simply disappeared in toponymic abstraction (eg, the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848). This novel doesn't look so much at the war as at the warred-over place and its inhabitants.

Marra's gift is in making images of the place vivid:

The trees they passed repeated on and on into the woods. None was remarkable when compared to the next, but each was individual in some small regard: the number of limbs, the girth of trunk, the circumference of shed leaves encircling the base. No more than minor peculiarities, but minor particularities were what transformed two eyes, a nose, and a mouth into a face.

And the people who live in the violated, wounded place:

As someone whose days were defined by the ten thousand ways a human can hurt, she needed, now and then, to remember that the nervous system didn't exist exclusively to feel pain.

It's a very well-made book, it's got a helluva wallop of a message, and it's fun to read. I was expecting nothing more than a flashy MFA-from-Iowa-Writers'-Workshop meretricious bauble. Some parts of the book are, in fact, that very thing. One's own taste determines where the balance point lies. Are there more surprisingly good moments than there are expectedly Shiny-Brite ones?

Entire years had passed when he was rich enough in time to disregard the loose change of a minute, but now he obsessed over each one, this minute, the next minute, the one following, all of which were different terms for the same illusion.

And there I say yes. Yes, this is more beautiful than brummagem.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Time became more important the closer to death one was, so an extra few hours to make peace with the world were worth more than years.”

This is Marra’s debut novel, and in it we see his queerly outsized talent and deep knowledge of human motivation and possibility. Where did he get the knowledge from which he created this book, and how did he come to know it? In what he calls his Bibliography, Marra credits Anna Politkovskaya’s A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya, Åsne Seierstad’s The Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten War, and Allah's Mountains: The Battle for Chechnya, New Edition by Sebastian Smith for giving him much of the background he needed to imagine this place, in this time, a ten–year period between 1994 and 2003.

Constellation immerses one in the East—at no time does one imagine oneself to be anywhere but in that place east of Europe and west of the Caspian. I suppose everyone will have familiarized themselves with Chechnya now, after the 2013 Boston Marathon, but it is north of the Caucasus Mountain Range that separates Russia and its “rind of former republics” from what westerners term The Middle East. It has been the site of grim partisan wars, fought by hand and in person, back when one actually had to show up to kill another.

This hard-hitting novel shows us the broken families littering the landscape there, some forced into unseemly alliances with enemies, and the nearly limitless capacity of humans to inflict pain. Among the legion who are broken, there are still some who retain a measure of humor, dignity, and goodness that they share with other good souls. They recognize one another, these folks who hold themselves aloof from the cruelty, and it is because of them that we can even dream of a day when the sun shines on a peaceful patch of land where they can grow the food they need, play chess in the shade of a large tree, make music and make love and laugh without fear.

Marra gives us all this—what is there and what is not yet there—through the depth and strength of his writing of a people, place and time. His descriptions linger in the memory and stop the eye on the page. The Russian doctor, Sonja, was “a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside a set of unattractive but very white scrubs.” She returned to Chechnya from a safe place in London to find her beloved sister Natasha. “Though she was the elder, Sonja was always thought of as Natasha’s sister, the object rather than the subject of any sentence the two shared.”

She met Akmed, a better portraitist than he was a doctor, who helped her in the hospital and in life. In the midst of the betrayals and the shortening life horizon, for a brief moment “the circumference of the world tightened to what their arms encompassed.” But that moment passed and Havaa, beloved daughter of Dokka, remained, the daughter upon whom everyone’s hopes were pinned.

The “Constellation of Vital Phenomena”, gotten from an ancient medical text, is a term to describe life and in this definition consists of “organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, and adaptation.” Couldn’t the very same words be used to describe any work of art in the process of construction, like for instance, a novel?

This is an extraordinary piece of work, especially for a newcomer. I challenge you to forget this book, and your first up-close glimpse of that place called Chechnya. It distinguishes itself by its subject and the incisiveness of the writing. Despite the horror, or perhaps because of it, one wishes to see the place, to care and bear witness for the folks that stood up for their most basic rights—to live in peace, if not happiness.

“Not knowing what to do, [Kassan] walked back and forth [in the snow], urging the dogs to do so likewise, turning the snow into a riddle no one could solve.”

An early essay of Marra’s when he graduated from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop is a deferential tug-to-the-forelock to other authors but does not reveal the man, only his leavings. I look forward to seeing more of his work.

[Marialyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 ever so tragically poignant stars
My reviews can be found here: https://yayareadslotsofbooks.wordpres...

“Life: a constellation of vital phenomena—organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.”

War and its aftermath, lives and their destruction, land and its carnage, and the people who are left behind to try to pick up the pieces of lives trying to hold on to something, anything that will prove that you are more than the carbon you leave behind. Akhmed, Khassan, Ramzan, Dokka, Sonja, Natasha, Havaa, these are all the main characters of Mr Marra's powerful novel. They, in their lives, their words, and their actions show us the brutality of what they suffered under the ruinous Russian rule. They become real to us, like family members that we ache to touch, to help, knowing that they live in a war torn country and knowing all our need to be with them can never be.

The multidimensional nature of all the characters shed light on a conflict that regrettably so, I knew little of. The novel spans ten years, telling the story of three families who were neighbors in Eldar, as well as two sisters who lived in Volchansk. As the story starts, we meet Dokka and his daughter, Haava. Dokka is being taken to the Landfill and his neighbor Akhmed, a somewhat failed medical student almost doctor, takes Haava to safety to Volchansk where he encounters Sonja, the only surgeon to whom he makes his case to allow both he and Haava a sanctuary for Haava, a mere eight year old, will become the next to die if not protected. Sonja acquiesces knowing that she needs help, any help, even it it comes in the form of a semi doctor who graduated in the bottom of his class. Sonja herself is searching, searching for her sister, Natasha, gone missing for two years.

Haava has a suitcase that contains souvenirs of a sort that she has collected from people who have passed through her home on their way to finding a better life if such is to be had. Within that suitcase lies a key to Natasha, but that key is not revealed until the novel's conclusion.

There are other sad poignant characters we meet like Khassan and his informant son, Ramzen, who were neighbors of Akmed. Khassan does everything he thinks he needs to do in order to save his father's life, including much needed insulin. Father and son are at odds with one another and have not spoken in months and it is through Ramzen and his actions that the story that Mr Marra tells is set in motion.

This was not an easy story to read. There were so many levels of understanding, so many multi directional paths that were taken that one needed full concentration of the task of reading a novel that was so well constructed it made the reader an integral part of the story. The scenes depicted were brutal and raw, the lives that were lost were beyond tragic, the story so interwoven that it demanded one's constant attention. “We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.” Truly in this novel, Mr Marra does indeed show us exactly who we are.

Thank you to my local library and the Traveling Sisters Reading Group here on goodreads who read this brilliant novel with me.

[Nikki · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yet again I am left baffled by the glowing reviews and the hype. This book proved tedious, convoluted and an insomniac's dream.

There was no plot, at least not a discernible one for the majority of the book. There are tedious, long-winded entries of characters that end up giving little to the overall book. There is repeated foreshadowing in the variety of "in seven years he will become a [insert profession here]," and mind you these little inputs added nothing to the main characters or the story overall. Simply stated much of the book is superfluous. T.E.D.I.O.U.S

There is nothing to distinguish the Chechen wars from any other war. Don't expect to better understand Chechnya or the Chechen wars after reading this. Do expect to feel like you've wasted your reading hours.

The writing was annoying, especially the author's love of entire paragraphs composed of a SINGLE sentence (sometimes they featured a semi-colon, why that is almost TWO sentences!). No thank you Mr. Verbosity, I do not need lists of what the human body is composed of to pass the time reading. This adds to the book? Really?

I chose a quote at random, if you like this sentence you may like the book:

"Khassan was studying the sheet of paper in his hand, where in the fifth sentence of the second paragraph, in the gap of a missing comma, he found the sorrow of his life."

I won't miss this book.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Updating this review 10/28/15. Wishing I could read this again for the first time.

In a hospital in Volchansk, Chechnya, on a boarded-up gash where a window once sat, a crude mural depicts the city as it had been before it was reduced to rubble. Looking at the mural the viewer is spared, for as long as she can pretend, the reality that the open space would offer: a void of destruction and death.

In his astonishing debut, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Anthony Marra paints a mural of war so vivid in its awfulness that we tremble as we gaze, but we enter the tableau and become so caught up in the power of Marra’s narrative that we tread heedlessly on the landmines of heartbreak.

The war in Chechnya occurred not once but twice in our recent past. Its roots are so deep and tangled in the history of the North Caucasus region—which one character tries to tell in a six-volume, 3,300-page history—that most of us are helpless to identify who is fighting whom and where. Forget even trying to tackle the why. But if you can grasp that Chechnya tried to break away from Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, you’ll have a glimpse of the First Chechen War. If you understand the first war obliterated the infrastructure of the country and left it vulnerable and run by corrupt warlords, then you’ll have an inkling why Russia invaded a second time. But don’t worry that you still don’t know where this place is or why it’s fought over like a scrap of meat between starving dogs. You’ll get there. Be patient. Take a few minutes to Google a map of Chechnya or Wikipedia, but trust Anthony Marra help sort it out, through the graceful and tragic voices of his characters.

Marra unveils a time so awful it’s hard to get the head around, but with a sense of whimsy and just a touch of the surreal that the reader smiles, feeling awash with affection and hope, before being plunged again into the viscera of war. Akhmed’s exchanges with Sonja are delicious. Akhmed, who is so inadequate as a physician that he does less harm by drawing portraits of the dead and missing than treating the wounded, offers his skills to Sonja, who can sew up a man’s chest with dental floss. Yet she finds use for him in the hospital she runs with the assistance of an ancient nurse who speaks in the third person. Akhmed represents humanity—a flawed man, but one imbued with tremendous compassion. The child he saves, Havaa—the daughter of his best friend—is the shining star in this constellation of survivors. Sonja’s sister, Natalia, is a comet that sears past so quick and bright it takes the breath away. If you’re lucky, the comet will return again in your lifetime, as Natalia does between the two wars, but know that it will burn fast and disappear while your heart is still pounding. And Sonja is the sun—a strong and shining beacon of intelligence and ferocity—that keeps the stars in alignment. As much as a vulnerable, tired, angry and frightened human can.

It takes some time to settle into Marra’s style and the jarring construction of the narrative, but let go of logic, let go of linear structure and let the characters show you what they need to tell their story. The surface story takes place over a few days in 2004, when Havaa’s father is “disappeared” and Akhmed takes her from their village to the nearby city of Volchansk, to shelter her in the crumbling hospital. But expect shifts of time between the first and second Chechen wars—that is to say, between 1994 and 2004—with a few jumps to World War II, as the nesting dolls of history are dumped out and scattered on the table. There is a steady stream of characters, each with his or her own tattered tale to represent the ancient and modern history of Chechnya, each illustrating the madness of war.

War is absurd. The very idea that modern societies continue to resolve conflict with wanton destruction is beyond explanation. Regardless of our obsession with history, our pop culture fascination with wars distant and current, we seem destined to do the same thing over and over again, expecting but never achieving a different result. Einstein’s definition of insanity. In this arena of the absurd are ordinary people forced to live extraordinary lives.

Marra’s novel reminds us why art is vital to the continuation of the human race: art keeps us human, despite our avid attempts to obliterate humanity. Art exposes history that we tune out while it’s happening, because we’re just trying to get through our daily lives. Ah, the irony: experiencing at our leisure—with an act most of us find pleasurable (reading) —a past that we couldn’t make sense of when it was happening. The absurdity continues. But so does humanity.

[Jennifer nyc · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

A good book, but one I mostly didn’t enjoy, all the colors shades of gray or beige, with one bold, orange scarf. It felt like a zombie apocalypse with a few survivors. The decimation was from two wars in a small village in Chechnya, from 1994 to the very end of 2004. I thought I’d need more history going in, but really this could’ve been any number of ruined worlds.

The structure felt a little like the show, Lost, where flashbacks inform the individuals’ “now.” This worked well for me, coming together as a whole. But the whole was bleak. The characters all longed for something, and my engagement with them vacillated, depending on how much hope I shared. Thank goodness for Marra’s humor!

I found his characters sympathetic and often likable, his structure artful, the coming together of it satisfying. But every time I imagined the place, it appeared in the dullest grays and browns. I wondered if Marra did this on purpose - if so, bravo. Because any colors, few and far between, surrounded the 8-year-old girl, Havaa, and this served the story. Marra applied touches of visual art to his rural village in honor of memory, an homage to a happier time, so it’s possible he’s visually astute. But the colorless portrait made reading this a bit of a chore, and I felt the place often overshadowed the people. Maybe just like the people living there, I too grasped at any color and squirreled it away, only to lose it again in the need to keep going.

I felt like the author gave me a little hug at the beginning, before releasing me into a vast, disturbing void with nothing to anchor me. If it weren’t for the insights and enthusiasm of my buddy, Bonnie, and how touched I was by what moved her, I probably would’ve put this aside. I’m glad I didn’t - the end was a full embrace, the kind to surrender to. And by the end, I don’t just mean the last 10 pages, but the last quarter or third of the book, that made it all worthwhile. That, and the supportive company of my buddy, Bonnie. Here is her review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...