THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 10, 1994 TAG: 9407070445
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY GEORGE HEBERT
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
THE RUSSIAN GIRL
KINGSLEY AMIS
Viking. 296 pp. $22.95.
UNDER LAYERS OF chitchat - some of it witty, some too fast to follow easily, some merely froth - Kingsley Amis tells an offbeat but pretty good story in his latest novel, The Russian Girl.
The Russian girl of the title has come to England, in the post-Soviet era, to try to generate outside pressure for the release of her brother, still in prison after serving out his specified sentence on some currency charge.
Anna Danilova's credentials consist of some published poetry, but she has made little impression in international literary circles and admits that what she writes may not have much merit. She has sought out Dr. Richard Vaisey, a respected specialist on Russian literature, fluent in the language, who teaches at a Slavonic-studies institute. Her brash proposal:
She wants him to use his intellectual associates and other contacts to spread the word that her work is superior, with the idea that a building snowball of fame in the West, focused in a petition from eminent cultural figures, will sway her brother's jailers.
Trouble is, the professor finds she wasn't just modest in bad-mouthing her poems. She was right. In fact, they're rubbish, and the most ardent translator couldn't give them a spark.
Further trouble: He falls in love with her, and she with him.
His dilemma is not so much whether he should tell her the stuff is bad (it turns out she has guessed his opinion), but whether he should misuse his hard-earned academic standing by telling a public lie. That is, should he irreparably compromise his own integrity by signing a petition testifying to a nonexistent talent? But if he doesn't sign, he thinks the odds are that he will lose his Russian girl. The thought desolates him.
Moreover, he has gone so far with her already that his infatuation is almost common knowledge at the institute and elsewhere. As one result, he is in the process of losing his rich wife, Cordelia, and the comfortable way of life her money has ensured.
One of the book's pleasures is Amis' clear picture of each character - like Cordelia with her airs and capacity for vengeance. One of its minuses is that readers must suspend disbelief a little too often, say, to accept the Russian-poet/English-professor dramatic contrivance itself.
And, to repeat, there is that hurdle of talkiness, with its often nit-picking analysis of the words being used and what was just said and what somebody actually meant, as well as a lot of unspoken but exhaustively reported introspection on the part of the professor.
However, the basic, tortured struggle at the center of it all - integrity vs. passion - is good fare. This is familiar, very human stuff that gives the novel, despite the distractions, some heat and heft. MEMO: George Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
JERRY BAUER
Kingsley Amis, author of ``The Russian Girl''
by CNB