The title of Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov’s novel sounds like a bootleg of dubious provenance and indeed, just as the imagined recording might feature a Lviv-based guitarist able to emulate the creative energy of the greatest ever rock musician, the novel itself pivots on the sui-generis abilities of one individual.
Long before we understand what is happening within the city, we have met an appealing and varied set of characters. Among these is Alik, an old hippie whose love for Hendrix’s music was mediated by a KGB man who, through monitoring Alik’s imported records, developed his own enthusiasm for the music. The now ex-KGB man, Captain Ryabtsev, has held on to much of the material he collected when he had the power to do so.
This proves useful when Alik loses his front door key and Ryabtsev is able to give him the replica key he still possesses.
We also meet Taras, a man who has great success in helping clients to expel their gallstones by driving over cobblestoned streets at speed. Bringing his foreign currency earnings to a woman called Darka at an all-night bureau de change leads to both money and lives being converted.
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Darka is, it transpires, allergic to handling money and the means by which Taras is eventually able to help her is just one of the charms that furthers their growing relationship.
Together with Taras’s long-time friend Oksana and his reformed alcoholic neighbour, Yezi Astrovsky – who will undertake any challenge to win Oksana’s attention – we explore the nocturnal city, wandering through its streets and parks in an attempt to understand the increasingly aberrant behaviour of gulls, the iodine-like odour – so far inland – of a seaweed laden ocean and the scurrying starfish.
Kurkov tells his story in a leisurely, often playful fashion, including several deflating comments about a novelist: “Vynnychuk wiped his lips. ‘I’m writing a novel at the moment’, he stated. Fear filled Alik’s eyes. He thought his comrade was about to tell him the entire contents of his novel and that he’d deliberately filled him with booze to do so.”
In a cogent translation by Reuben Wooley, this is a craftily constructed novel that undermines and transforms itself in a consistently enjoyable manner without the haze of purple prose.
