My Russian Love

by Dan Franck, Jon Rothschild (Translator)

My Russian Love opens in the present as Luca, a successful 40-year-old screenwriter, is returning to Paris from newly renamed St. Petersburg, where he intends to shoot a film based on a short story by Pushkin. In the dining car of the train, five tables in front of him and across the aisle, he sees a woman make an unusual gesture, tossing her hair back and putting her palm to the back of her neck in pain. The gesture shocks him, awakening a twenty-year-old memory he had thought buried forever. Before he can react, the girl rises from the table and disappears.



The memory is of a girl named Anna, the great love of Luca's youth, and the rest of the novel is a braid woven of two how Luca and Anna met, fell in love, and were separated; and Luca's increasingly desperate effort to find the girl he glimpsed on the train.



What follows, in flashback, is a recounting, in passionately intimate detail, of Luca and Anna's affair. Despite its simplicity of style, My Russian Love is a complex, seamless love story spanning a generation, and effortlessly switching locales between St. Petersburg, Paris, and New York. The ending is an explosive secret few readers will guess in advance, and it is shattering.



Soaked in art, poetry, music, and film, My Russian Love packs an emotional wallop."

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Russia, France

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Dan Franck a publié une trentaine d’ouvrages et écrit une vingtaine de scénarios de films. On lui doit notamment La Séparation (1991, Prix Renaudot), les huit volumes des Aventures de Boro, reporter-photographe, en collaboration avec Jean Vautrin, Le temps des bohèmes (2015) et Scénario (2018). Scénario de Dan Franck fait partie de la sélection du prix Monte-Cristo, sélection littéraire de Fleury-Mérogis. (Novembre, 2018)

Reviews

[Elektra Alexaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Γινόμαστε η πόλη στην οποία ζούμε", γράφει σε κάποιο σημείο ο συγγραφέας.
Στο μυθιστόρημα αυτό οι πόλεις διαδραματίζουν σημαντικό ρόλο, μαζί με τον έρωτα και τα νιάτα, την τέχνη, την αναζήτηση εαυτού και την ωρίμανση των συναισθημάτων και των σκέψεων. Λένινγκραντ, Παρίσι, Λονδίνο. Τρένα και χώροι τουρνουά σκακιού. Αβίαστοι διάλογοι και γραφή ρέουσα που μαγνητίζει. Δυνατό το τέλος!

[litsioydaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Local Man Finds A Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Is Disappointed When He Realizes Her Trauma Is More Than A Cute Story To Fetishize Her Over!

[David Rullo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. My only complaint I'd that it wasn't long enough.

[Christiana Hadji · Rating 3 out of 5]

On a train from Russia to France, filmmaker Luca is immersed into bittersweet memories set off by a female passenger's familiar gesture, whom he thinks might be Anna, a Russian girl with whom he had a brief but intense relationship in Paris when they were both young students. They separated when Anna had to return to St Petersburg to be with her family who were being persecuted by the communist regime. Luca recalls their last encounter in St Petersburg, after which they had lost touch for ten years. A short but very poignant romance story about a long-lost love affair that was nipped in the bud but never forgotten.

[Melanie H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written story that would have been a 5-star top rated book if the ending hadn't been so gimicky. Great representation of the convergence of literature, poetry, film and travel. Oh how I wish I were a European intellectual.

[Arlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lied...this could also be my favorite book

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing was nice, on the intriguing side, but the only redeeming quality of the story itself. Predictable ending, unpredictable lack of a reason behind that ending, unsatisfying all around.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of the best love stories i've ever read, heartbreaking