The Great Fortune by Olivia ManningMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I wanted to like this more and, truth be told, expected I would. A colleague I deeply respect (thanks, Jay) recommended it when he heard I’d been in Romania. And this novel is set in Romania – a dawn of World War II Romania – but it feels like it takes place in a kind of bubble.
Harriet Pringle is bright and gifted, but she lives in an era when her chief role is as wife. She’s married Guy, a good lower-case-g-guy, who’s come to teach literature in Bucharest. As such, the couple is in a privileged position. They have a vague immunity from all that’s taking place around them since they are British as the hostilities are rising in the greater world. They aren’t wealthy, but they have enough which is more than can be said for many others.
We also get a lot from the viewpoint of Yakimov, a Russian émigré who experiences the highs and lows of fortune in a short span, going from a useful tool for disseminating covert information to a freeloader who gets in everyone’s way.
Harriet’s problems are real. She’s under-occupied, and that leaves her time to get jealous as Guy grows close to at least one of his female students. She’s happy when she makes friends on her own, but a lot of her drama feels like it could be taking place in any university town.
There’s a world conflict that’s getting more and more imminent, but it’s always in the background.
I get that that’s part of the point here. Manning writes from the perspective of someone older looking back on her youth, and it makes sense that a bright woman would remember her personal travails more dramatically than the global ones swirling around her.
But, as I say, I read this to keep experiencing Romania, and that feels like a secondary part of the novel itself.
Meanwhile, Yakimov is experiencing more of the vicissitudes of war. But, while his circumstances are more global, he confronts them like a spoiled child. When he’s impoverished, he turns into a full-time sponger, taking deeper and deeper advantage of the few who still support him…until Guy is virtually the only one left.
The plot culminates – and I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say it – in Guy putting on a college production of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Harriet is hurt when he casts his student over her, and Yakimov turns out to have a hidden gift as an actor.
The play is a success…hurray? Meanwhile, Hitler has invaded Czechoslovakia.
As I say, I get the idea of personal romance taking place against the backdrop of history-in-the-making, but, for me at least, I’d prefer a personal drama with more at stake, and I’d prefer a second-banana with a greater awareness of the forces he’s up against.
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