Review: ‘Death and the Penguin’ by Andrey Kurkov
Victor is depressed: his lover has dumped him, his short stories are too short and the light has gone off in his dingy apartment. His only companion is Misha, the penguin he rescued from Kiev’s Zoo, when it couldn’t feed the animals anymore. Misha is the silent witness to Victor’s despair. Misha joins in his celebration – fish and vodka – when Victor’s luck seems to turn: He is commissioned to write obituaries under the pen-name “A Group of Friends”. The weird thing is that the editor wants him to select subjects who are still alive, the movers and the shakers of the new, post-Communist society. Pleased with Victor’s work the editor sends him his friend, also called Misha, and from then onwards known as Misha non-penguin, who commissions Victor to write an obituary about one of his shady associates. After a job-well-done Misha non-penguin and Victor get drunk on vodka and Victor confesses that he is frustrated as an obituary writer: his subjects refuse to die. The next morning his most prominent one, a corrupt politician with Mafia ties and a mistress, is dead. The tide has turned. (Goodreads Summary)
‘Death and the Penguin’ is one of those books which shouldn’t work, but somehow it does. It’s a novel which address serious themes of death, loneliness and the casually oppressive nature of post-Soviet society in Ukraine, and yet it does so with humour. And a penguin.
The story of Viktor, a struggling writer who gets a job writing obituaries for people while they are alive who then strangely start dying off, is enjoyable and written in such a way that it seems perfectly logical rather than as unbelieveable as it should. Andrey Kurkov’s deadpan narrative style works perfectly in this book. It is impossible not to laugh at the very serious way in which Viktor takes his penguin to go swimming in the frozen river, but wraps him up in a towel when he emerges so that he doesn’t get cold. Equally amusing is the thought of someone going into hiding and taking a penguin (not exactly inconspicuous) with him. In a novel in which most relationships are simply based on the characters wanting something out of each other for their own personal benefit, the peculiar bond between Viktor and Misha the penguin stands out and is oddly touching. I expected the penguin to be responsible for a lot of the humour in the book, but not for the emotion as well.
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov. Published by Harville, 2002, pp. 228. Originally published in 1996.
N.B. This is an old review written in 2010 and posted on Goodreads and LibraryThing before I started keeping track of all the books I read here at Old English Rose Reads. I’ve decided to keep copies here so that this remains a complete record of my reading since I started reviewing books for my own pleasure.