****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
The novel is simultaneously large scaled and intimate, and for the most part well both well researched and constructed. Some small defects that ought to have been caught somewhat impede its believability. George Orwell makes an appearance in Spain where he fought with the POUM, an anti-Stalinist faction. But he signed up with them as 'Eric Blair, grocer." It's likely that would have been the way he would have wanted to known on the ground rather than by his pen-name. Second, the assassin, posing as a Belgian businessman and man-about-town, takes his girlfriend on a tour of 1939 Paris and reveals the Cafe Flore as the den of the Existentialist writers, Sartre, Camus et al. He would not have known that, nor their names back then. Those two didn't even meet each other until 1943. The Flore was known as a habitué for others in the 1930's.It is astonishing that a handsome worldly un-political Jacson romancing the startlingly unattractive Jewish Trotskyist Sylvia would not raise big-time alarm bells in the Trotsky compound. Also the radioactive watch that Mercador wears and possibly kills him is more than problematic. If the Soviets wanted him dead for fear he'd get in touch with a westerner or journalist they wouldn't have let him walk around for any length of time. It was an open secret that Mercador was the assassin and had been rewarded with the Order of Lenin when he emigrated to the Soviet Union. I knew that as a NYC college student in 1970.As to the book taken as a whole, it is remarkable in many ways. Often beautifully written, chock with detail, and penetrating psychologically. Padura approaches the murder from three perspectives; the victim, the killer, and the Cuban writer who accidentally runs across the tale. The climax of the book, about 500 pages in, is riveting. The preparations, the lead ins, are handled masterfully. The biggest reservation I have is the last 90 pages or so, wherein Leonid Eitingon looks up Mercador in 1968. There is too much explanation and re-hashing between the two, and one gets the feeling that the author is using the characters to get directly at the 'meaning' of what has transpired. They finally act as stand-ins for the author and It strikes me as a little too transparent. It also goes on far too long. There's ninety pages of ethical post-mortem after the murder. Thirty would have sufficed. If it were about a subject that didn't interest me anyway, I would give it four stars, but it is a huge effort and often astonishingly good. For people who are into this subject, I highly recommend "The Eitingons," by Mary Kay Wilmers. That book is superb, and non-fiction.
