Fiction: A young man, already wounded by love, picks up a political pamphlet and reads: "The nature of the true revolutionary has no place for any romanticism, any sentimentality, rapture or enthusiasm."
He reads on, and as he considers the rhetoric, he is also testing the interest of the girl he thinks he is in love with. It is no ordinary exchange. James Meek's wordy, theatrical third novel, heavy with portent from the opening pages, is a study of the fear and madness that creates terrorism.
It is a topical book. Its subject matter, the presence of the Czechoslovak Legion in Siberia and the existence of a Russian sect of castrates, confers an historical relevance. This is a novel endorsed by three novelists and, more importantly, by one historian, Antony Beevor. Set largely in Siberia in 1919, Meek looks to the weight of history, the sheer vastness of Russia and of its story, a tragedy of idealism laced with insanity. If the opening chapter serves as a prelude, introducing the central character, Samarin, orphaned at two and raised by his uncle, the second marks the formal beginning of the narrative.
"In the middle of October nine years later, in that part of Siberia lying between Omsk and Krasnoyarsk, a tall, slender man wearing two coats and two pairs of trousers came walking from the north towards the railway." The vast emptiness suddenly fills with the sound of a train whistle. It is routine cinema, space explored on a wide screen. "The whistle sounded down the gorge and the weight of the train bore down on rotting sleepers with the groan of wood and the scream of unlubricated iron and steel. It crawled on as if there were many ways to choose instead of one and flakes of soot and pieces of straw drifted through the air towards the river." Before it happens, you know that a carriage will burst open and a man will battle a rearing horse. "There were more horses behind, their heads lunging madly towards the light."
The drama of the scene - terrified horses falling through the air - slowly bleeds away because, as he does throughout this worthy but heavy-handed narrative, Meek overplays the moment. His prose is descriptive and dense and the gravitas of history is on his side. Unlike Andreï Makine's subtle, graceful narratives, Meek aspires towards the panoramic. Initially, it seems as if he is looking towards Pasternak, but he is far closer to Sholokhov in tone.
Ultimately, it is tone that dominates the book. Although Meek, one of Britain's finest journalists, certainly takes the opportunity to write with a freedom denied the professional reporter, this is a novel concerned more with the abstract aspects of human behaviour than with story itself.
Samarin emerges from years in prison and asks "What year is it?" On hearing it is 1919, he replies: "There's still a war, I suppose." From this moment onwards throughout what is a dense, lengthy narrative the reader becomes alert to Meek's intention of writing a book that is consistently pitched beyond its immediate setting. The man Samarin has met up with is Balashov, a character shaped by Meek's reading of 19th-century Russian novels, and familiar to all who have read those same books.
Dreamer or misfit, Balashov articulates not only the central dilemma of the narrative but of society itself: "It's a different kind of war. One where you can't understand who is on which side. In the old war, the one against the Germans and the Austrians, it was ours against theirs. Now it's more ours against ours. There are Whites and there are Reds. The Whites are for the Tsar - he's dead now, the Reds killed him - and the Reds are for everybody being equal."
The exchange is staged and uneasy, as are most of the conversations in the book, because Meek has a great deal to say and is also battling his linear instincts. The People's Act of Love - which has been widely praised and is an unusual book, not at all what might be expected from a British novelist - never convinces as fiction. Recently longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize, Meek's novel is regarded as a major achievement. Why? I must have missed something.
Meek leads his narrative through block-like chapters, many of which are self- contained and usually revolve around one character. For all the intended mystery about Samarin, there is surprisingly little doubt as to his true identity, which is obvious from the beginning. The action moves between the various internal tensions experienced by the unhappy Czech soldiers, the ongoing metaphysical debates engaged in by the religious sect and the relentless dissatisfaction of the widow, Anna Petrovna. She is not a widow at all, as her husband, Balashov, is not dead but is merely dead to her, as he has willingly submitted to being castrated in the pursuit of spirituality.
In Anna, Meek has chosen to rest far too much of his novel on a female caricature whose entire personality is contained within her desperate need for sex with anybody. This not only compromises her, it puts her son (a child who has to listen to his mother having sex) in danger. Meanwhile, there is Lieutenant Mutz, of the Czechoslovak Legion, in love with Anna and now dismissed from her bed. "He felt hopelessly, remotely tender towards her, like someone at a conjuring show who sees another member of the audience, who has been enjoying herself, made fearful when the conjuror calls her up on stage."
None of the characters convinces as an individual; their function appears to be limited to the delivery of dialogue that never rises above its rhetoric.
Late in the book, Samarin informs Balashov: "Of all the religions, yours is the funniest, Gleb Alexeyevich. When the lights go out for the last time and the world ends, somebody in their final sleep will wake up and chuckle over the men and women who mutilated their genitals because they thought it would make them into angels."
Cannibalism, mutilation, cowardice, betrayal and all levels of insanity shape this book. Meek has reduced his cardboard cast to mouthpieces. If his prose often aspires towards lyricism, much of it seems far too modern for the period during which the narrative takes place. There are also, of course, the many instances of sub-standard Dostoevskian angst. Meek relies on the grotesque. The effect is one of pastiche and of reading a very bad Russian novel. Most of the rage is reserved for the various acts of sexual betrayal.
Not even my lifelong interest in Russia, her history and her literature, could help me engage with this lumpy melodrama, which could have been superb but falters into worthy naivety. Yet this book takes itself very seriously. Ironically, though drawing on history at its darkest and most exciting, it is quite impossible to believe in the all-too-modern The People's Act of Love.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
The People's Act of Love By James Meek Canongate, 391pp. £12.99
