Je n’arrive pas à comprendre pourquoi j’ai lu ce livre… j’avais vu des notes de lecture élogieuse, certes, mais en les relisant j’ai l’impression qu’il n’y avait rien dedans qui aurait dû m’attirer… Et effectivement, cela a été une lecture laborieuse et qui ne m’a rien apportée. De ce quasi monologue d’un homme se vantant d’avoir tout compris à la vie et aux femmes, qu’il traite comme moins que rien et qu’il n’hésite pas à violenter de temps à autre, sûr qu’il est d’être dans son bon droit, face à une jeune femme que l’on sent fragile et qui ne dit presque pas un mot de tout le trajet, mais qui a l’air de développer au bout d’un moment une sorte de syndrome de Stockholm face à cet homme qui l’importune et l’insulte mais dont elle semble par moments rechercher la présence, je ne sais pas ce qu’il faut retenir, à part un immense malaise et un désir de refermer ce livre au plus vite.

This is the classic set-up of two fundamentally incompatible people trapped together for an extended period and forced to learn to get along, but it's far from being a silly romantic comedy. We're in the dying Soviet Union in the uncertain weather of a mid-1980s spring, where the Finnish postgrad archaeology student Anna finds herself sharing a compartment on the seemingly endless train journey from Moscow to Ulan Bator with the rough-hewn construction worker Vadim Nikolaevich.

Vadim — whom the narrator only ever calls "the man" — soon reveals himself as unpleasant company in all sorts of ways. He's a violent misogynist who is proud of beating his wife only in private, frequents prostitutes, drinks far too much, seems to have killed a few people with his flick-knife, and is forever telling stories that are clearly designed to shock Anna, even if they aren't always strictly true. But he does have a very sure sense of how to survive in the complicated world of Soviet semi-legality through which they are travelling, and he seems to feel an obligation of hospitality towards Anna. She's travelling to get a breathing-space from a complicated situation in Moscow, and she seems to be almost grateful for his unwanted attentions as a distraction from all that she's left behind.

A wonderfully convincing portrait of Soviet Russia at a very specific moment in history, obviously observed in detail at first-hand, and performing the difficult trick of mixing a travel book with a novel without the joins ever becoming too obvious. ( )

Poetiskt språk men alltför ojämn berättelse för att hålla intresset på topp, Vissa anekdoter är riktigt bra medans andra faller platt. ( )

A young Finnish woman sets out on a long train journey across the Soviet Union, from Moscow to Ulan Baator, Mongolia. The person assigned to share her compartment is an older Russian man, often drunk, usually loud, sometimes unsafe. But also expansive and somewhat friendly. As the journey progresses, he talks, the Russian landscape scrolls past the windows and the trains stops in towns further and further from Moscow.

I'm not sure how to describe this book, except that it is about a place and a style of life that doesn't exist in the same way anymore, written about vividly and without judgement. The protagonist's words are omitted from the story, leaving only the place and the people, especially her travel companion, to speak for her. This is an extraordinary novel and one I'm so pleased to have read. ( )

I was not crazy about this book, but I did appreciate how often it had me turning to the internet to look up the name of a city or food I had never heard of. It was a struggle to stay engaged with the story.

ALSO! Either I'm stupid and didn't understand the continuity, or the actual path of their train journey makes no sense. Why did they go all the way to Khabarovsk if the end destination was Ulan Bator? I don't know much about Russian cities, and was curious about the ones mentioned, so I mapped them out. Unless there are two cities with the same name, it seems like they would have had to do some pointless backtracking to get from Khabarovsk to Naushki, going back through some of the same cities they'd already passed through before. If I'm totally misunderstanding this, hopefully somebody will enlighten me.
Link to my map: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pSCyz-Jy8BsPuHGCeFaVCeD0XeU&usp=sharing
Link to Trans-Siberian Railway routes: http://www.baikalcomplex.com/images/common/map1.jpg