Reviews

Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov

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spaghettireads's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

spenkevich's review against another edition

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4.0

**Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award**
‘This too is holy work, after all – to brighten man’s life in dark times.’

In 2014, armed Russian-backed separatists began seizing government buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk and fighting Ukrainian forces, turning the Donbas into a grey zone. This is the setting for Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov, a novel of the conflict that takes place aside from it to capture the everyday life of those trying to get by while forces greater than them vie for their land and existence. Born in Russia but raised in Kyiv, Kurkov writes in Russian (gracefully translated here by [a:Boris Dralyuk|4541201|Boris Dralyuk|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]) and maintains a pro-Ukrainian stance, a theme that permeates every aspect of this novel while examining concepts of borders and national identity as something forced upon you while attempting to merely go about your life. Following beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich, a divorced man living alone save for one neighbor—his old childhood bully with whom he now maintains a tepid camaraderie—in the Donbas grey zone, Kurkov’s story moves from winter warzones to summer in Crimea in a deceptively simple story that hums with the qualities of a hero's journey fairy tale ripe with strong symbolism, imagery and an ambiguous hope.

This is an oddly charming novel despite the subject matter, and Kukov’s humor and the up-close, introspective narrative make this a rather comforting read. It is a quiet novel that slowly progresses, but it never feels slow and instead just breaths to the rhythm of life. He has been compared to [a:Mikhail Bulgakov|3873|Mikhail Bulgakov|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651627966p2/3873.jpg] and [a:Franz Kafka|5223|Franz Kafka|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615573688p2/5223.jpg], with government paperwork and the absurdity of systems playing out in the background being a large theme that does invoke them, though I find the former a more apt comparison particularly with how frequently near-presceint dream sequences that dip into surrealism which inform the narrator’s logic and do a lot of the heavy lifting for the novel’s symbolism. This is a war novel where the war is only in the peripheries, a tale of an Everyman figure that ventures out into the world and returns wiser though with a heavier weight of the world on his shoulders. He begins as someone with no interest in interpersonal relationships but grows as a person throughout his journey. This is the tale of a beekeeper who brings his bees, who know nothing of borders and live collectively, across borders to find that, perhaps, the bees have it right.

‘He also thought that people might learn a thing or two about maintaining order from bees. After all, bees alone had managed to establish communism in their hives, thanks to their orderliness and labour. Ants…had only reached the stage of real, natural socialism; this was because they had nothing to produce, and so merely mastered order and equality. But people? People had neither order nor equality.’

The novel begins in the village of Little Starhorodivka, a place in the grey zone between Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces from which everyone has fled except for Sergeyich and his neighbor, Pashka. Between shellings, the two former childhood enemies more or less look out for each other, though Sergeyich knows Pashka is receiving aid from the Russian forces he supports. The town has mostly been destroyed and consists of only two roads, one named Lenin and the other after Taras Shevchenko, a Ukrainian poet and symbol for Ukrainian nationalism. In an act of whimsy, Sergeyich swaps the road signs, pleasing Pashka who now gets to live on Lenin St., but the act serves as an early look at how fragile and fairly meaningless official government concepts are in the grey zone. Later in the novel when stopped at the border, an official notes his car still has Russian plates and asks him ‘What, are you still living in the U.S.S.R. ?’ With official borders being subjective depending on which side you ask, he might as well be and he is amused by the meaninglessness of it all.

‘Putin’s calculation is simple: a Ukraine with a permanent war in its eastern region will never be fully welcomed by Europe or the rest of the world.’

These absurdities are the undertone of much of the novel, often humorously so, and the first half of the book exists almost entirely in a sense of greyness and waiting. The landscape is devoid of color, consisting mostly of bombed out buildings and a dead body in the snow. He is someone that has ‘taken no part’ in the war but has come to embrace its emptiness as his life. In the forward, Kurkov writes:

‘[I] witnessed the population's fear of war and possible death gradually transform into apathy. I saw war becoming the norm, saw people trying to ignore it, learning to live with it as if it were a rowdy, drunken neighbor. ’

This is an apt depiction of the novel, a war that occasionally rattles windows but not much else despite knowing that it is a horrible thing. The invasion and occupation of Crimea in 2014 left 1.5 million people internally displaced (the current invasion has now caused 14 million to flee their homes, with 6.9 million having left the country), but Sergey and Pasha decide someone needs to stay in order for their to be a town for others to return to. They are the ordinary people, those with only a vague stake in the conflict but mostly hoping it’ll be over so they can get back to regular life.

‘It wasn’t his fault that his home was now in the middle of the war. In the middle, yes, but taking no part in it. No one shot at the enemy from his yard, his windows, his fence, which meant his home had no enemies.’

For Sergeyich, he tends to side with the Ukrainians though mostly he has no interest in the conflict and only cares about his bees. As Pashka tells him in a dream about the war ending, it ‘doesn’t matter’ which side wins ‘main thing is victory – the war’s over!’ and both men await that day.

While the grey zone highlights the absurdities of borders and being merely defined by government paperwork on who you are and where you are supposed to be, Sergeyich also witnesses how oppressive they can be and how much everyone is at the mercy of a ruling government that can suddenly impose itself upon you. To this effect, Kurkov frequently denotes characters by their status in a situation, such as the ‘visitor’ or the ‘host’ instead of their proper names, a nudge towards the idea that, as a Ukrainian, the shift of the border would bring Sergeyich into being a foreigner despite him never having moved from his land. This idea comes to a head when he is in Crimea and witnesses the racism against the Tatars who live there. When Sergeyich tells a woman in Crimea that the Tatars have long been in the region she spouts propaganda yelling ‘This land's been Russian Orthodox since time immemorial…When Putin was here, he told the whole story -- this is sacred Russian land,’ as if forgetting that mere months ago it was Ukrainian territory.

Kurkov plays with juxtapositions throughout the book, most notably between the Ukrainian territory where he first releases his bees and then Crimea under Russian occupation. He skips the funeral of a fallen Ukrainian combatant but attends the funeral of a civilian murdered by Russian police in two seperate scenes of politically charged funerals. In the latter he is a stranger and observing a religion not his own like ‘a bee in an unknown hive,’—which is all viewed through the white gaze and the moments of him not understanding Muslim traditions are rather awkward despite best intentions—creating a common thread of humanity at odds with the overall conflict while also recognizing that marginalized groups are facing greater threats. In his first location he leaves quickly after a veteran with war disabilities smashes up his car, finding him a threat due to being from Donbas despite Sergeyich being, politically, on his side. Everyone needs a scapegoat for their fears, it seems.

The Tatar family that takes him in becomes the real heart of the story, with their extreme hospitality contrasting with the Russian officials who find any excuse to drive them out, finding flimsy excuses to jail a member of the family. While this is a story that perhaps would be better told by a Muslim living under Russian occupation, Kurkov frames this as Sergeyich acknowledging his privilege and attempting to use it to aid them, though finding his association with them only bringing a target onto his, and his bees, backs. And even bees, he learns, can be made into weapons of war, such as ‘the Colorado potato beetle, which the Americans had sent to undermine the Soviet Union’ (which is a fascinating story of the Cold War worth reading about). It is important to note that Sergeyich can return to his 'normal' and wait for the end of the war, but for the Tatar families he encounters there is no normal awaiting them as they are being displaced, arrested and attacked for simply existing. In 1944, 180,000 Crimean Tatars were taken from their home at gunpoint and deported to Uzbekistan, with around 8,000 dying along the way. The families in the novel live in fear of this happening again.

‘Blended into the silence, becoming its property, an integral part of it, a note in its endless music.’

While passports and borders and war all come across as absurd through Kurkov’s lens, the threat of them is very real and Sergeyich realizes how easily he can be disappeared by the Russian authorities. ‘His passport and license had been taken away. Who was he now? No-one. No documents, no rights.’ If this could happen to him, the Everyman of the story, it can happen to anyone, and is certainly happening to the marginalized groups. But there is hope in this novel and a championing of the natural world and shared humanity. ‘The stars did not care above whom they shone,’ he writes, and it becomes a plea for collective good because nature doesn’t care or even recognize our laws, borders, passports and governments. In this Sergeyich sees true freedom:

‘He found himself in a fairy tale, where nature not only serves people but dotes upon them; where the sun waits to depart until people have finished their daily tasks; where the air rings with countless unseen bells; where one can be free and invisible; where every living thing - every tree, every vine - has its own voice.’

Now this never gets into [a:Ursula K. Le Guin|874602|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1244291425p2/874602.jpg] territory on how to realize this dream, but it does ask us to look for better ways and look to the freedom of nature. Or, at least, to stop and recognize that humans create systems that are impossible to navigate for the average person and these human-made constructs are used for purposes of power and subjugation to an absurd degree.

I really enjoyed reading this book and despite the heavy material it put me in a great mood while reading it. It is just a pleasant headspace to occupy. While the characterizations of women in the novel could be better and the white gaze aspects are likely to raise some eyebrows, the overall message of shared humanity is quite lovely, particularly in the face of military occupation. This is a very timely novel, and one that taught me a lot about the background to the current conflict as well as some cultural history, but also it is just a really engaging read. It also follows the classic quest narrative with some intricate character growth from being an isolationist to inserting himself as a helper. Heavy on symbolism without being heavy-handed, occasionally surreal, and filled with plenty of heart, Grey Bees is an excellent book.

3.75/5

‘Life flowed on. Like a river. What else could it do but flow and flow, until it flowed into death?’