ONE HOT SUMMER IN ST. PETERSBU

by Duncan Fallowell

Genres: Travel, Memoir, Russia

310 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across a mysterious reference to this book by accident and was lucky enough to locate a copy online. Fallowell is one of those rare writers who virtually invents a genre by which to tell his tale (Bruce Chatwin, W G Sebald, Claudio Magris also come to mind). In this case, the narrative is part memoir, part travelogue, part sociology, and finally, an aching meditation on love barely won then irretrievably lost.

The setting is St Petersburg, summer 1992. Think Dostoevksy's "White Nights" set at the crumbling end of the 20th century. The writing has an almost hallucinogenic quality; the most trivial events acquire an aura of beauty, danger, sorrow and loss.

For anyone who treasures this kind of sui generis literature, it's worth searching for a copy. I finished it feeling as if waking from a complicated dream, exhausted, exultant and very sad.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Duncan Fallowell thought he’d spend a quiet time in St Petersburg working on a novel. Instead he was swept off his feet by a city at an astonishing crisis of transition. It was the summer of 1992. "Communism had melted away but capitalism had yet to arrive. Yeltsin said to the Russians and to the Soviet republics ‘Take as much freedom as you can,’ a statement unprecedented in Russian history. Anything was possible and St Petersburg was a world in vertigo. Daring, vivid, written in close-up detail, this is the only book to have emerged from that incredible, brief moment of opportunity. ‘It had to be written by an outsider because the Russians were too stunned,’ says Fallowell whose personal experience becomes increasingly destabilised by love, beauty and anxiety. The result is a unique masterpiece of literary reportage.

‘An absolute knockout, brilliant, passionate and very alarming . . . as exhilarating on St Petersburg as Isherwood’s writings on Berlin . . . candour of every kind.’ Michael Ratcliffe, Book of the Year, Observer.

‘ . . . it presents a picture of contemporary Russian life and love that is at once so idiosyncratic and so physically present on the page that you know it must be true. A rare and memorable achievement’ William Boyd, Evening Standard.

‘A unique glimpse of the nature of love and an unparalleled vision of a foreign city.’ Carolyn Hart, Marie Claire.

‘A classic, even a definitive account of sudden and overpowering obsession’ Simon Callow, Book of the Year, Evening Standard

‘High energy and disarming courage. If you’re tired of life, read this and be revived.’ The Big Issue

‘His prose glitters with ice-sharp observations and glacial venom; gutsy, in that he shies away from absolutely nothing. It is ultimately love which informs this wonderful book. So intense, so real, it’s like reading through 3-D glasses’ Arminta Wallace, The Irish Times

‘Staggeringly innovative’ Professor Gregory Woods, A History of Gay Literature

‘The most heart-warming and brilliantly written picture of life in Russia that I have ever read’ Richard Freeborn, Emeritus Professor of Russian Literature, University of London

‘Glitzy, louche and funny, with a wild, vivid energy tapping the zeitgeist and hitting the heart where it hurts most’ Cathy Porter, Independent on Sunday

‘Knowledgeable, romantic, extrovert. Altogether unique’ Daily Telegraph

‘Quite unlike any other book about St Petersburg by a European writer’ Professor Anthony Cross, Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge" (The opening paragraph is from the jacket of the hardback version of this book while all the quotes are from the paperback edition.)

I read this book and it blew my mind long before I reached the end and even though I knew what was bound to happen I still couldn't help crying. What more can I add to the plaudits this book has already received? It is a great and wonderful book. I think Duncan Fallowell is a superb and much undervalued writer (I loved his much neglected novel The Underbelly) and I can only conclude by saying do everything you can to lay hands on 'One Hot Afternoon' - read it - buy it - if in doubt read the other Goodread's reviews praising it the heavens and then go and read and/or buy it - if you can't make up your mind then there is something wrong with you - this is a great and beautiful book and I can't imagine what else is left to say - oh yes, it is also a love story to a time and place but also a person - is that enough to make you read it? It should be and if you don't I would remind you that you are missing a really great reading experience.

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fallowell in Russia of the early 90s reminds me automatically of Herr Isheyvoo in Weimar Berlin –

Am I the first foreign writer to come for such a purpose? To hang out? Cheap room, cheap living, maybe some sexual opportunity. Not many distractions. I mean, I know that Russia is in utter turmoil. But I hope to avoid it.

– and his landladies belonged to a Soviet version of the class Isherwood lodged with: recently secure, suddenly impoverished professionals (the “technical intelligentsia” Nadezhda Mandelstam called them) who had doctorates and spacious flats but little cash and even less hope for the future. But beyond that Isherwood and Fallowell are very different narrators. The protagonist narrator of Goodbye to Berlin (I haven’t read the other one) is composed and cautious next to Fallowell’s moody, romantic, knockabout persona, and Fallowell’s prose is more humorous and lexically lush. One might think of Fallowell less as Isherwood’s heir, than the kind of person to provide material for one of his characters.

Rodion says, “I have to meet 2 prostitutes and make sexy photographs in a falling down building. Do you want to come?”

He did. And he brought a bunch of bananas that he handed round to Rodion, Rodion’s assistant, and “a gypsy girl of about 20 years old” in a black and red tube dress (“a slightly bruised appearance, long loose curly black hair, a very fine sulky face periodically emblazoned by a wholesome smile”), to snack while they waited for Girl #2. Their patience exhausted, the four proceeded on foot to “a flosculous art nouveau block of flats previously squatted by painters then drug addicts, now empty and half demolished inside.” While the girl, tottering in high heels, slowly undressed atop “a pile of split planks and broken bricks,” Rodion hopping around clicking his camera, Fallowell peeled wallpaper,

stripping it back in one particular corner, back through the harsh tangerine geometry of the 60s, back through the sombre geometry of the grey and blue 50s, back through the overlay of wartime newspapers in the Siege 40s, back through the thick red, green and brown paint of the savage dictatorial 30s and the manic revolutionary 20s, and back to the original purple and gold pre-revolutionary wallpaper – and, still peeling, to the primal insulating underlay of Tsarist newspapers. Apart from ourselves the whole site is silent, abandoned by workmen for the weekend – or maybe forever.

One Hot Summer in St Petersburg is full of such funky scenes, as well as hilarious dialogue and a few very tender individual portraits. It should be better known.

[Insidebooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A writer heads to St Petersburg in the early 1990s to find a refuge to write about the English countryside but finds a city and a country changing rapidly and so completely absorbing that he spends weeks finding out about Russia and Russians rather than working on his writing.

The world that Fallowell is describing is one that operates to a different beat from the West, a feature that is both exhausting and captivating for a Westener. There is a brutality, frankness and openness that the Russians display that at moments is frightening and at other times rather attractive.

This is a city in transition but still weighed down by its past. That past stretches back over the 300 years of its existence and the Russians seems to be deeply aware of their history.

But they are also keen to move away from the years of dictatorship and embrace the freedoms they were denied for so long to speak their minds, party and make decisions about the lives for themselves.

Fallowell moves through this world brilliantly describing the different characters and the City and how the past casts such a long shadow over the present.

From slightly mad professors, party goers and artists he takes the reader on a journey through the City meeting numerous people working out what change means for them and their world.

But central to the story is the relationship between the author and the Russian sailor Dima. I'm not going to spoil the ending of the book for others but this is a powerful story that leaves you both shocked and deeply moved.

The fate of the young in Russia, as seen through the erratic life of Dima seems to sum up the dangers of a country that has replaced the authority of the state with a mixture of mafia muscle and old KGB bosses sitting in the Kremlin.

This book is a record of a period in Russian history that was exciting, dangerous and highly unpredictable and Fallowell has the ability to have you laughing at the antics of his landlady one minute and holding back the tears as you struggle to come to terms with the brutality of the country in the next.

[Greg Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is not a believer in the importance of a first sentence (or even a first page) in grabbing the reader’s attention. I found his ‘dream arrival in St Petersburg’ to be clever but soporific, and I very nearly gave up on the book. But, to be fair, I was about to turn out the lights before sleep. I’m glad I didn’t give up.
This is about one person’s meeting with Russian culture as it was in St Petersburg in the troubled 1990s. The high culture of palaces, opera, ballet and classical music, the low culture of porn and massage parlours, mafia and street violence, but mainly the basic culture represented simply by language and human behaviour. This basic culture is very different from that of the West – but by no means ‘inferior’ (whatever that may suggest) – which is largely because Russia has always been an autocracy, has never been a free and open society. Which explains why many Russians have layers of identities, hard to penetrate, a bit like the traditional Russian doll.
Many of the author’s more specific insights on Russian culture are fascinating. English ‘gentle’ folk have always migrated seasonally, from city to country, and the Russians do the same while also turning the English attitude on its head. Rather than ‘the romance of the country gentleman, the Russians enjoy the romance of the peasant’. The Tsars used to dress in peasant garb as casual wear (p.96). Can you imagine Sir Horace Claptrap Bart. doing that? Interesting.
Some aspects of Russian attitudes are also very disturbing, which is also interesting (and probably linked to its history of repression) e.g. his description of a brutal assault in broad daylight which everyone studiously ignores. ‘In this way - by doing nothing – the brutality of Russia contaminates you’ (p.141). But I’m not sure I agree with some of his more Anglophile assessments e.g. ‘England has had the world’s … least brutal empire’ (p.142). He needs to read William Dalrymple’s histories of India, or Anita Anand’s ‘The Patient Assassin’, or accounts of the British occupation of Australia. Of course, it’s all relative – maybe he’s right.
Thankfully, there is a constant aura of sex. Will he or won’t he, especially as regards Dimitri, the delectable 17-year-old? Or blond Yuri the Banana-seller with the spectacular pecs? There are hundreds of mentions of the ‘male member’ in various ways and contexts (including ‘hooey’, the Russian slang), and one begins to wonder: Could Dooncan (as Dima calls Duncan, delightfully) be AC/DC? It’s possible!!
There is much in the line of real social and personal wisdom. He doesn’t much approve of institutional religion. ‘A priesthood with power is bent on persecution, and perverts human zests and charms’. And ‘It is not my business to take any man’s religion away from him. Unless, of course, he threatens me with it. In which case it is as reasonable as hoping to take a loaded gun away from a child’ (p.220). The only really nasty interchange is between Duncan and a trainee orthodox priest who espouses noxious anti-semitism in the tradition of many Russians (and Europeans generally!).
As regards personal wisdom, I like his comment that ‘Sex without love has a purity which can lighten the heart. So long as you have love somewhere else. Sex in a loveless life can be a reminder of inner bleakness – though it is much better than nothing at all’ (p.85). Wise words, but honestly, the author is also capable of delivering a lot of old BS. Speaking of Dimitri he says: ‘Behind Dima’s wide-apart eyes are spaces limitless and unfocussed. Across these tracts moves his soul in its various conditions: wholly apparent - wholly transparent - wholly invisible. I hear a voice calling to me from inside him but he does not hear it’ (p.202}. Dear me!
This is a fun read partly because of the myriad fascinating people - malign, kind, spunky, dirty, dignified, ridiculous: Yuri the banana-seller, Dimi the naval cadet, Dr Zoia the landlady, VV the Russian Cockney, etc. Fallowell specialises in people, and he describes in funny detail his interchanges with them. But its also fun because he can find the humour in the grotesque and tasteless (there’s a lot of that to be had in Russia, which is part of its charm). I even found myself chortling over a description of the display of stuffed human babies and baby parts in the Museum of Anthropology (p.119). All the same, having been to Russia in the late 1880s, I agree that ‘… it is the relentless seediness which gets to you in the end’ (p.167).
Not a book for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drama queen. Ends well. Would have benefited from the tragedy of an elliptical narrative.