Ekaterina - Hardcover

Harington, Donald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 015128122X ISBN 13: 9780151281220

Publisher: Harcourt, 1993

Synopsis

The newest resident of a faculty mansion inhabited by ghosts and filled with drunks, writer Ekaterina soon takes over the top floor of the Halfmoon Hotel in Arcata Springs, where she takes on pubescent lovers.

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Reviews

Harington ( The Cockroaches of Stay More ) is a down-to-earth fantasist who has considerably expanded his range this time out. Ekaterina is an acknowledged homage to Nabokov, particularly to Lolita , and if it misses some of the Russian master's visionary playfulness, it has many charms of its own to offer--particularly, for book people, its note-perfect sense of how publishing works. The heroine is a beautiful exile from an obscure corner of formerly Soviet Georgia who comes to the U.S. to teach mycology (the study of mushrooms)--a clear echo of Nabokov's butterfly passion--and, like Nabokov, becomes a bestselling novelist. As Humbert Humbert hankered after nymphets, Ekaterina's yen is for small boys--not more than 12 years old, and virginal. It is an obsession that eventually proves to be her apparent undoing when an interviewer from Paris Review turns out to be the mother of one of the boys she has seduced. That, in bald outline, is the story, but Harington has layered it with narrative gimmicks: the narrator at first tells Ekaterina's tale in an awkward second person; another character, a heavy-drinking, unsuccessful novelist who takes her to his native Bodarks, is represented by the initial I .; and eventually she tells her story herself, aided by a psychic cat. The whole of the New York Review of Books review that changed her life is reproduced (in fictional facsimile), and so is her fatal interview. All this makes for a fair amount of clutter, but Harington's magical-realist view of the U.S., and his deep attachment to his "Bodarks," is so beguiling that the reader suspends impatience.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Harington's eighth novel (The Choiring of the Trees, 1991, etc.) a literary tour de force that purports to be the story of a Russian ‚migr‚e who writes bestselling and critically acclaimed novels and who also has a taste for preadolescent boys. Ekatarina (aka V. Kelian) arrives in the US with her cardboard suitcase, then moves into a big faculty house filled with ghosts, drunks, and ``a polished buffet truly covered with bottles of all sizes and shapes.'' For the rest of the novel, Harington takes us on a magical mystery tour, and what begins as an odd story about eccentrics becomes a sendup of literary culture. In the beginning, Ekatarina teaches at the Cathedral of Learning (she's an expert on mushrooms), trades stories with the house's inhabitants, and seduces 12-year-old Kenny, the son of Big Kenny or Pa, who, at 71, is the retired professor and house-owner. There are word games, parodies, and even a discussion about narrative technique, as well as an epistle dated 2021 recorded from beyond the grave. Then Ekaterina moves to Stick Around, where she lives in the Halfmoon Hotel. Once her first novel, Georgia Boy (she's from the Georgian republic), hits the bestseller lists--thanks to a long New York Review of Books piece (included in its entirety)--she finds fame, fortune, and more prepubescents, not to mention glorious sex with a hillbilly actor. Meanwhile, Morris, her cat, speaks; her editor is attacked by a former Russian (shades of Rushdie here); and finally she's killed by a Paris Review ``Art of Fiction'' interviewer--the mother of one of Ekaterina's prepubescents. (The interview and an afterword by the book's supposed editor complete the novel.) Grand entertainment from an author who's been too little known for too long: perhaps this zany homage to Nabokov (especially Lolita) will bring deserved attention to Harington's impressive body of work. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

If, as a main character in this playfully intelligent novel about writing novels professes, "The art of fiction lies in wandering beyond the conventional into the original and outrageous." Harington's novel succeeds admirably. This despite the fact the book could aptly be subtitled "variation on a theme (and the life) of Nabokov." Both allusionary and illusionary, it centers around a Georgian (as in the former USSR) princess/mycologist/dissident who arrives in the United States with a rudimentary knowledge of English, a passion for pubescent boys, and a deep-seated fear that her Russian psychiatrist tormentor, Bolshakov, is still on her trail. With the help of a ghost and an alcoholic art historian cum novelist, she discovers her own talent for fiction and makes enough money to take over a suite of rooms in an old mountain resort hotel (a la Nabokov). Eventually, however, both Bolshakov and her taste for 12-year-olds catch up with her and her world comes crashing down. Or does it? For, after all, "Ekaterina you were, and you were not at all." There will be some outraged objectors to the book's sexual scenes, but most will find this novel enjoyable and worthwhile reading. Like its precursor, Lolita , it belongs in most academic and public libraries.
- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harcourt
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 015128122X
• ISBN 13: 9780151281220
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 373