Pravda
by Edward Docx
(Mariner)
This telescopic tale, sweeping from London to St. Petersburg, has elements of the thriller—the discovery of a dead body in the first chapter; a threatening drug dealer; a disaffected long-lost son with a claim on the family fortune—but it’s primarily a novel of ideas. The overeducated editor of a self-help magazine finds himself paralyzed by the “complete and utter evaporation of all possible belief, or consistency, or any good way for the intelligent man to live”; an aging latter-day Dorian Gray fondly remembers his life of “sexual chaos,” while recognizing that his romanticization of the past is “the true sign of a monster.” Docx has a gift for assessing “the exact shape and weight of other people’s inner selves, the architecture of their spirit,” and although the book teems with characters—the cast reaches nearly Dickensian proportions—even the most ancillary flare into being, vital and insistent.
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