*Many thanks to Ludmila Ulitskaya, Ferrar, Straus and Giroux for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
A terrific read covering several characters related to each other over the span of approximately one hundred years. Ms Ulitskaya portrays Russia, the Soviet Union and Russia again through the complicated interpersonal relations of family members who belong to so-called Russian intelligentsia and who try to find their paths. Personal stories are fascinating, set against the historic events even if they had indirect impact on decisions taken. Superbly narrated, the novel will stay with me for a long time.

The Ossetsky family drama over the course of a century spanning the late Russian Empire to (nearly) contemporary Russia. This near-epic covers time-tested Russian material from the Chekhovian gentility enjoyed by this artisan/artist clan through the meat-grinder of Soviet horror to the social indeterminacy of the present day. Ulitskaya's best work provides worthy examination of the spirit that undergirds the dilemma of Russian existence with discrete, fine-grained treatments of the place and its people. Jacob's Ladder, unfortunately, is not among her best work. This is Russian history by firehose: a torrent of information, location, social, political and artistic reference. The result felt like 3x5 character cards pinned to a cork board, each stuffed with requisite character quirks and plotlines but no real life to them, no organic connection. Ulitskaya is a fine writer, but this one got away from her, and from me.

I feel terrible about giving a bad review but this book drags on and on. I love Russian literature but this was not the book for me. It was so dense and it didn’t help the story at all. I love the fact that history is what makes us.... each choice and each love has created a unique human. Me you. Also, the history aspect was wonderful but nope.

First published in in Russian in 2015, this family saga set in the Soviet and post-Soviet period in Russia follows the lives of six generations of the Ossetsky family, from 1911 to 2011, over a hundred years of tumultuous Russian history. It’s all here – politics, economics, music, literature, culture, oppression – and the action take place in homes, theatres, factories, concert halls, laboratories and gulags. A panoramic and ambitious exploration of the various characters, with all the many threads expertly woven together. A non-linear narrative, it starts with Nora making the funeral arrangements for her grandmother in 1975 and then jumps about in time and place to give the reader an atmospheric and evocative picture of the everyday life of everyday people. It’s a partly autobiographical account, with many parallels with the author’s own family, and includes letters from her own family archive, including some of her grandfather's personal letters and extracts from his KGB file. I found it a compelling and totally absorbing novel and thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps it helps to have at least some knowledge of Russian history and culture to fully appreciate the book, but as a Russophile I loved every minute of it. Highly recommended.

I thought I’d like it more. A recognized Russian author, a description that seemed like one I’d enjoy, a family saga, but I’m giving up at 37%. Just too DETAILED. So detailed, that there were passages that I have to admit I skimmed and when I found myself continuing to do that, I decided to give up . We get the stories of these characters in pieces so I had a hard time connecting emotionally with any of them. Maybe I’m just not in the mood for the philosophical and intellectual tone of the book. It’s summer - on to something lighter . No rating because I didn’t finish it.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux through NetGalley.

I love Russian literature and this is no exception. Jacob's Ladder is organized as a series of stories about Nora Ossetsky, her son Yurik, and her lover, Tengiz, a theater director. These stories are interweaved with family history dating back to when Nora's grandfather Jacob (hence, "Jacob's ladder) emigrated to Kiev in the 1870s from Switzerland taken from letters and diaries in a family chest that Nora has found. The two storylines are interwoven masterfully and make for an enjoyable experience.

Eventually, several things happen. Nora, a set designer, and Tengiz mount a production of Checkov's Three Sisters, which is shut down the first night. Tengiz flees and Nora is left with her son, who she sends to the child's father living in the US to avoid military conscription. Nora is left caring for her parents. Of course, there is much more to the story, with Nora and Tengiz eventually making their way to the US and acclaim for their work. Yurik is drawn to music and the surrounding lifestyle, but at what cost? Each plot twist keeps the reader engaged, from beginning to end and you are left having read the story of three generations of a family finding it's way under the constraints of revolution and political regime.

This short review does not do the book justice. It's an excellent lens on the effect of the communist revolution on one family with it's own struggles and thereby tells the struggles on every family. The description of the book suggests that this may be Ulitskaya's final novel. This would be a loss for us all, as in Jacob's ladder, she has given us a gift.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for the review copy. I have voluntarily provided this review.

This beautifully-written historical novel (kudos to both Ulitskaya and the translator Polly Gannon) covers more than a century in Russia and interweaves two timelines.  Ulitskaya alternates the story of Nora, a theater set designer in the late 20th century who is  the mother of a son with Aspergers; and the letters and diaries of her Jewish grandfather Jacob and her grandmother  Marusya, a dancer who studied  with one of Isadora Duncan’s acolytes.

Censorship is endemic in the Rusisian theater in the late twentieth century.  Nora and her lover, Tengiz, a famous director, are too creative for their political time.  They stage a radical production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters which is shut down after one performance.  Tengiz is in and out of Nora’s life, but he has a huge influence on her decidedly odd son Yurik, who becomes obsessed with the Beatles after Tengiz gives him old records.
As the years go by, Nora works in the theater but also must care for her parents on their deathbeds.  And she is very anxious about her son Yurik, whom she sends him to America to live with his father to save him from military service.

I find Nora’s story more interesting than that of her grandparents–let’s hear it for traditional narratives!  Jacob’s letters and diary entries sometimes drag, but they capture the history of the first half of the twentieth century  This is more than a family story, of course:  it is also an ambitious story of Russia. And I am  impressed with the graceful style.  Translator Polly Gannon served Ulitskaya well!

If you like Janet Fitch’s wonderful historical novel set in Russia, "The Revolution of Marina M.,"you will probably enjoy "Jacob’s Ladder."

Ulitskaya  has won numerous awards and was a Booker International Prize  nominee in 2009.

'I feel that if I don’t write this down it will all evaporate, disappear into oblivion. '

Man Booker International Prize nominee, Ludmila Ulitskaya’s novel Jacob’s Ladder tells us the story of Nora Ossetsky and her family, as far back as her grandfather (a third generation Swiss watchmaker) Pinchas Kerns, who moved to Kiev in 1873 to open a branch of watchworks and instead opened a watchmaking-and-repair shop. Despite his lack of interest in communism, and capitalism “he placed a high value on his craft, and viewed commerce almost with contempt” and “the watchmaker never read the Bible of communism” his children assimilated the ‘progressive ideas of humanity’. The family is one of close knit siblings, educated, happy until October of 1905 and a pogrom against Kiev’s Jews alters the course of their lives.

Fast forward to 1974: Nora is with her married lover, renowned theater director Tengiz where she is working as an artist in theater set design. Their days are filled with creative work, love and undying passion for each other. Seldom does Nora take an interest in her mother Amalia, whose own life seems to orbit around Andrei Ivanovich. The two seem nothing alike at times, and this exchange really moved me, as it seems Nora is irritated by her mother Amalia’s joy and it’s telling of Nora’s more cynical nature.

‘Amalia had positively bloomed from country life, and she laughed constantly”…

“What are you smiling about?” Nora asked.

“About everything,”Amalia answered, suddenly very serious, her smile gone. “Learn now, Nora, before it’s too late.”

Abruptly, the Chekhov play Nora and Tengiz are working on is shut down on the eve of its premiere, he flees back to the arms of his wife and child in Tbilisi, “the love cloud had vanished.” This is their sixth parting, and Nora can’t moon over losing him for long, after all going away ‘forever going away’ is what he is best at. He always finds his way back to her. For now, she has a new project and she turns to Vitya Chebotarev and here a fork, the story reaches back to their meeting and the link between them, one that fires up his mother Varvara’s hatred for Nora.

The characters are complex, Yurik ( Nora’s child) and his wonder often tickled my heart as I pondered ‘where do these beings we birth come from, similar to us in some ways carrying their ancestors in their DNA with similar features of those long departed and yet the things their strange little hearts think and say, their longings so different from our own?’ We try so hard to understand each other while sometimes not even fully aware of ourselves. Of Nora: “Nora was pitiless to everyone, not least to herself.” Of Vitya: Despite his unusual memory and his innate abilities in logical thought, he was emotionally rather backward , and had not an iota of a sense of humor.

The family saga includes Nora’s grandfather Jacob Ossetsky’s diary entries, a man of musical passions, and desire for a beautiful girl named Maria (Marusya). The pair will join together, and spend their love in a life of letters, separated for so very long. Later those same letters collecting time in a willow chest, ignored, nearly forgotten. Simply another link in a tangled family chain that goes back and forth between the past and present. A heavy sorrowful tale of separation, isolation.

Nora becomes a single mother to her son Yurik, a strange child whom sometimes seems more her equal than her little boy. Of course Tengiz is always on the periphery of Nora’s life and Yurik’s. There was theater, now there is film! He always has something on the horizon. Vitya too is an important player, but half in and half out. He seems led about by Nora, resigned to whatever plans befall him, for a time anyway. Like an echo from past, Jacob’s love of music is birthed anew in Yurik’s very cells, a lifelong passion. Where will it take our strange little fellow?

With Vitya’s ‘trained mind’ and interest in the computer revolution, it is through his mathematical brain and the whims of fate (or his mother Varvara’s fervent hopes) that he is invited to a conference in the United States of America, where life finally blooms, maybe even love is in the stars? So too Nora and Tengiz find themselves in America when Western audiences become ‘ecstatic’ over their work, but only for a visit. How changed Vitya is! Back home, Nora worries about her son and how he needs something to occupy his heart and soul fully. Time flows, death has come to her door as it must for us all, teaching her things she didn’t understand about her mother and father. Yurik finally makes it to America, is ingesting more than music, and changes his life, but is it for better or worse?

Boats to other shores, love letters, loneliness, diary entries, Russian theater, progressive single mothers, here we feel the ravages of time and place upon one family. It may not engage everyone, as we spend time with each generation the history is rich, the letters feel genuine with details some may find mundane, but what are days of life spent absented from all you desire if not mundane? The shackles of politics don’t often give us the freedom for fun and thrills. The characters are all wildly different from one another, as people are. The “storms of love” between Nora and Tengiz are imperfect and yet fitting somehow for this creative pair. The love story of her mother Amalia and Andrei is beautiful, yes even old folks can have sweet stories, even if it comes late. Where you live alters the course of your life, how can it not? But the promise of a new place, say America, isn’t always fruitful for everyone either. There are traps we can all fall into, even if the true obstacle is ourselves. We carry on, that is our only true job. The past has its tragedies through revolutions, upheavals, politics, and with the demands of the fatherland breathing down your neck how can any one person fulfill their future hopes? How can love and family ever be together, in their right and proper places, nice and safe and free? Must we look to the future, instead, our children and their children after them, even if we never meet them? Can our descendants carry on our desires? For one family, yes and no.

Old age comes for Nora “youth ended, never to return”, for those of us lucky enough to live full lives into our ‘dotage’ so to speak, that is a given. Will she finally find happiness in ways her ancestors could only hope for in the Russia they knew? You must read.

Publication Date: July 9, 2019

Farrar, Straus and Giroux