Christa (Kit) Malone, college student and aspiring poet, studies with and helps to translate the work of Innokenti Isayevitch Falin, a distinguished Russian poet in exile. It's 1962, and the Cold War is at its height. As teacher and student learn from each other, the political tensions grow toward the Cuban missile crisis.
OK, there is no way to summarize this novel. It is as tough and delicate as porcelain, shapely as a peach. Kit is both flawed and talented, and she matures as she copes with loss, grief, guilt, learning, betrayal, and love. Falin is equally believable, and he speaks with the unmistakable accents of the Slav living in translation, and from a wholly believable history.
The author writes with a feather-light, effective touch of the issues that were about to blow the country apart. He explores the problems of language -- context, translation, even finding the way to speak -- while subtly revealing tragedies and great joy. The story accumulates feeling as it goes along, and its narrative tensions grow more and more taut.
Occasionally one encounters a perfect poem. Much less often does one find a perfect work of fiction, whose form, phrasing, and content could not be improved.* This, to my mind, is one of the few.
Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land, John Crowley
Lord Byron never wrote a novel. If he had, he would have written the story at the center of this one: a tale of passion, hereditary curses, courageous women, star-crossed men.
Around his manuscript are other stories: about the modern researchers seeking to decode it; about Ada Lovelace, Byron's daughter; about a Byronic film director.
Crowley never makes the common mistake of confusing Byron the man with the characters in his poetry. His Lordship's manners were urbane, Augustan, generous, idealistic, and warm, and all that is shown in the Byron manuscript. Having extensively researched Byron, I was able to spot dozens of charming allusions to his life and work. And the voice is Byron's own, the same voice in his letters, journals, and collected conversations. It's an extraordinary performance.
Byron himself is so vivid none of the other characters can quite live up to him, but the book is well worth reading anyway. I came away from it feeling glad that someone could speak in Byron's human, humane voice. Those qualities matter.