“Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv” – Andrey Kurkov (translated from Ukrainian by Reuben Wooley)

Time always "chatters away" more quickly and stealthily at night. It doesn't follow the clock. It sits down next to you at the table, an invisible third party protecting your conversation, letting you relax and sink into reminiscing. It's in no rush.

My thanks to @quercusbooks and @netgalley for sending me a copy of this… quite a few months ago…

A love letter to the city of Lviv, this book is a magical-realist tale which doesn’t really feature Jimi Hendrix, but does have a lot of hyper-aggressive seagulls. The book opens with a group of old hippies meeting at the Lviv cemetery to pay their yearly tribute to the aforementioned rock god. Just an aside: if it’s the same cemetery I visited in Lviv, then it’s an incredible place for a tribute. The meeting is joined by a former KGB agent, there’s a weird talk about Hendrix’s hand being exhumed, then the group then goes its separate ways.

One of the hippies, Alik, becomes a focus of the book, along with Taras, a driver who nearly runs Alik over whilst trying to remove the kidney stone of a passenger, a regular source of income for the young man. Of the two parts of the story, Taras has by far the more engaging, and I really enjoyed his sweet and blossoming love with Darja, a girl at a currency exchange who is allergic to money. All the while, the people in Lviv are reporting angry sea-birds, sightings of starfish and the strong smell of the sea. For a landlocked city, this is strange indeed.

I read this book quite a while ago as part of the #internationalbooker longlist, and don’t honestly remember much about it. I enjoyed parts, was bemused by others, felt I needed to know more about Ukraine and Lviv, and ultimately came away thinking it was just fine. Not one I’ll return to, and not one I can recommend fully, but far from a bad read.

Despite the title, Hendrix doesn’t feature as heavily as you might imagine! Though I personally would have liked more from the plot, it didn’t take away from the fact that I found it to be a poignant read about what was to come for Lviv and Ukraine more generally. Looking forward to reading more from the author. My sincere thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the complimentary copy.

I read this after enjoying Death and the Penguin many years ago but sadly this novel wasn't nearly as enjoyable. I was also intrigued by the Jimi Hendrix reference in the title but found there was only a trivial connection in the plot. Kurkov has an entertaining way of portraying his characters with all of their foibles and flaws and there are some great passages here but the plot meandered bizarrely and almost aimlessly. It was very poignant reading about an unexpecting Lviv knowing what the near future holds for the city and Ukraine generally.
My thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for an advance review copy.

I thought I would enjoy this more than I did. I have been quite intrigued by Andrey Kurkov's writing for quite some time and have been meaning to delve into his work. I think for me the plot of this felt a little thin. I would love to still explore his other stuff particularly Death and the Penguin as I think that one may be more something that I would enjoy.

Despite the fact this is eleven years old, and should by the rules of translated books be as naff, irrelevant and non-urgent as that suggests, this is still a fun read. A lengthy, as usual, gently critical, as usual, fun-ish, as usual, read. We're in Lviv, a full decade before Putin read the word Nazi and decided to go to war. In this nocturnal, mildly bleak slice of life, we see several people try and connect. An aged hippie – forever determined not to be an ex-hippie – creates a shrine to what he says is the embalmed hand of Jimi Hendrix. Later he will be mistaken for a homeless person. The main character will be seen on his entrepreneurial sojourns – in other words he drives a naff car over bad roads, potholes and all, until his passengers get forced to express their kidney stones. When he gets money, it's generally in foreign currency, so he takes it to the girl he finds cute at the neighbourhood round the clock bureau de change – who just so happens to be allergic to money. But this person, that person, that ex-KGB spy, they're all slowly, eventually, subsumed into a bizarre circumstance where the very much inland city starts to smell of the sea, gets to include starfish among its residents, and be the victim of copious seagull attacks...

Kurkov is very much a Marmite author, and I can see copious people trying this out and just asking 'what does this all mean?!' at the top of their lungs, at any stage of proceedings. You may well get to the end unsure of the answer. Or, perhaps, it just won't matter. You see vaguely bizarre people connect through bizarre happenings, done with a typical flippancy for reality and how stories are supposed to work. Again, negative points for many. What is the message from the pet seagull? Will a certain relationship here thaw before the book runs out of pages? And will the fifth step ever get mended? Finally you get to debate the author's endnote about it being vaguely based on real people and real life and a real city until the cows come home. City, yes – I'm not fully convinced about the rest, but it was genial enough – just – to earn four stars, for whatever it ultimately was.

Longlisted for Booker Prize International 2023

2.5*
International Booker Prize is usually the highlight of the year for me. Through the years I discovered many gems and a few new favorite writers. Unfortunately, this year has proved underwhelming. This is the last novel I’ll managed to read until the shortlist is published on Tuesday. So far, from the 7 titles I read (or tried), there are only two that I believe are worth the graduatiom to the next phase, one of which I read before the longlist was announced. I don’t even know what to wish for, that the books I’ve already read are shortlisted so I do not have many left to go through? Or that others are on that list so there will be a chance for me to read better literature?

Saying that, let’s return to the matter at hand, Kurkov’s novel. I’ll say from the start that I believe this book was nominated for political reasins and as a homage to other, better novels writen by the author. The novel was written following the invitation from the Mayor of Lviv and it also includes characters that are inspired by real life people known by the author. These aspects limited the author’s creative process and what resulted was a slow paced quirky adventure story with humour which felt staled and unninspired.

The subject matter was interesting, the characters had the potential to shine in their quirkiness but…

I think that Aki Kaurismäki would be right director for a movie based on this book: there's a a sense of surreal humour, crazy characters that made me think of Leningrad Cowboys Go America.
It's also a love letter to Lviv and a well written book.
Not for everybody but the righ book if you love weird stories and characters.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Lots of build up, very little pay off! It feels like our author was trying to fill a word count by stringing together a motley crew of characters who are vaguely connected to the strange occurrences happening in the city. If I’m to be honest with you, half of these characters (and scenes!) could have been cut from the narrative. A book that will leave you feeling unsatisfied 😦

'The city stood firmly on the foundations of its homes old and new, the city clung vicelike to the earth beneath it with the roots of the thousands of trees that grew in the parks and squares, and along the roads within little stone borders.'

As is indicated in an afterword, this is very much a love song to Lviv, a city that now is a household name for all the wrong reasons. This quirky little number from Kurkov was originally published in 2012, and this English translation from Reuben Wooley has made it on to the longlist for the 2023 International Booker Prize. Dual stories involve a blossoming romance between Taras and Darka (he drives patients with kidney stones over cobbles to help shift them, she works in a money bureau yet is allergic to banknotes) and a group of ageing hippies and an ex-KGB agent trying to make amends.

This is classic Andrey Kurkov territory, the man who gave us the wonderful 'Death and the Penguin'. This time the odd verging on surreal element is the smell of sea in a city so far from the coast. Sea creatures start to crop up, and an angry mob of seagulls start to attack humans. When our characters discover what they think is the cause of this disruption, they fashion a way to save their beloved city.

Involving and a joy to read, this isn't perhaps as engaging as his 'Penguin' book, but nonetheless this is an enjoyable read. 4 stars.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

An enjoyable, if a bit insubstantial, reading experience. The characters are fun and memorable, and the writing is witty and very readable. Other reviewers have called this ‘a love letter to Lviv’, which I think serves as an accurate and nice description. The plot never aims too high or builds to anything particularly grand, but if Kurkov is aiming solely to create a good, fun story this massively delivers. A worthy addition to the International Booker longlist, and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see it go further.

This book was wholly disappointing. The plot was extremely slow and did not go anywhere, it was always very low stakes. The characters were extremely two dimensional and often interchangeable. There was not a strong sense of place either. The book was overwritten to the point that it did not make sense sometimes. There were a couple of passages with sexism that went unquestioned. Definitely not Kurkov's best work.

The only redeeming thing in this book was that when the book started to pick up a little bit (around page 250), the atmosphere that was created and the tone was quite interesting, but the ending was so bland that kind of ruin that for me a little bit.

3.5 stars

I read this book piecemeal, partly because I'd a lot of other books on the go and partly because it didn't really grab me.

I struggle with the International Bookers. I've only read one or two that have blown me away but I am beginning to think its my fault, not theirs.

I lived the title, which is what prompted the Netgalley request, however I was disappointed that so little reference was made to the supposed grave where Hendrix's hand was alleged to have been placed.

The only parts I really enjoyed was the love story between Taras and Darka, which was funny and sweet.

I am assuming that the main section about the strange atmosphere and the seagull attacks etc was a metaphor for something but I'm afraid I'm too stupid to have understood what. Don't bother explaining it to me. It was interesting but not entertaining.

Altogether an okay book for me. I'd like to read Death and the Penguin though. The writer interests me enough to want to read more of his work.

Something strange is happening in Lviv - magical realism, seagulls, a car ride to get rid of kidney stones, a strange allergy.
Plenty of weird characters, based on real people, meeting and drinking. Overall, a happy novel set in the Ukraine before the war.

I enjoyed the characters and the story on the whole. I did have a problem with the pacing. I accepted the slow start, wanted it to move more quickly in the middle and enjoyed the end.

Kurkov delves in light magical realism but for the life of me I cannot connect the dots if he was referring to politics or internal Ukranian affairs as I only know a little bit from the outside.

An ARC kindly provided by author/publisher via Netgalley.

Description:
Taras runs a business curing patrons of their kidney stones by driving them around Lviv's bounciest cobbled streets in his old car. The aging hippy Alik and retired KGB officer Ryabtsev have noticed strange, salty goings on in the city, and begin to investigate together. Don’t worry - this book has very little to do with Jimi Hendrix.

Liked:
Same chirpy, off-beat humour as Death and the Penguin. Most characters are lightly charming or at least sympathetic, and their bumbling around tends to be amusing. There are lots of interesting, if disjointed, ideas here.

Disliked:
Everything DOES feel quite disjointed. This is one of those novels that follows a few quite distinct threads; I was expecting them to come together at some point but they never quite did. I would have liked a slightly more robust/complex internal logic.

Would recommend a read, but don’t bump it to the top of your list.

This book came to my attention due to longlisting of the 2023 International Booker prize, the synopsis intrigued me and Lviv is a city I really hope to visit in the future so I was delighted to get the opportunity to read this , thank you.

At times entertaining, at other times repetitive , I felt this was a bit of a chaotic read and I did find myself skimming some sections in the final third. Reading the authors notes at the end of the book brought clarity to some of feelings on this one and to be honest brought my rating down from a 3 to a 2 star read.

Flashes of greatness but lost among the chaos. A promising beginning but this book lost me along its circuitous route.

"Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv" by Andrey Kurkov is a delightful and quirky novel that invites readers into a world of eccentric characters and bizarre occurrences. The book's premise, centred around a group of people coming together to celebrate the anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death, is both odd and intriguing. The inclusion of a buried hand, ex-KGB officers, killer seagulls and a runaway starfish adds to the book's whimsical and imaginative nature.

Kurkov's writing style is engaging and skilful, allowing him to create memorable characters and vivid scenarios that captured my attention. The novel has been long-listed for the 2023 International Booker Prize.

The book's strength lies in its diverse cast of characters, each with their quirks and idiosyncrasies. The author weaves their stories together, creating a tapestry of human experiences that readers can relate to and appreciate.

Despite some occasional hiccups in the translation, the novel's charm and originality shine through. Readers who are able to overlook the occasional awkward phrasing or cultural references that may not translate well will find a rewarding and enjoyable reading experience in the pages of this book. Having said that, the publishers explained that the ACR/"proof edition" I was given to read "may not be final", so these hiccups may have improved by the time it reaches the bookshops.

Overall, "Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv" is a captivating and entertaining read that offers a fresh perspective on life and the human condition. Readers who enjoy unconventional and offbeat tales with a touch of humour and whimsy will find this book a joy to read.

3-3.5 stars

This book is a quirky and fun romp through a somewhat ragtag bunch of characters all on various adventures to find something dear to them, often with absurd and farcical diversions.

On the surface, that feels like something I would normally greatly enjoy, but occasionally I found that the absurdity became quite circular, with characters having repetitive conversations about what they would do next, or what had just happened.

I still enjoyed the book and the reading experience, I just found it difficult to fully connect with the book, or to believe the stakes of it, whereas the author's Grey Bees I found more successful in delivering the absurdity of the humour with a more concrete journey to hold the story together.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately this one didn't work for me.

Kurkov's afterword explains that the novel was written at the invitation of the mayor of Lviv, where it is set, and features several of his friends from the city, and it all feels as if written more as a tribute. Indeed it reminded me of Patrick Nice from the Fast Show with his absurd and fortunate stories.

I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2023 International Booker Prize as it was one of the titles that most intrigued me in a prize where I tend to only dip into the longlist.

The author – a Russian born Ukrainian - was originally best known for “Death of a Penguin” his absurdist satirical examination of the corruption and organised crime of post-Communist Kiev, where an obituary writer and his pet penguin get dragged into gangsterism. It was a book I enjoyed for its quirkiness. It had a recent revival after the Russian invasion of Ukraine when it appeared in many lists of “novels to read about Ukraine” and Waterstones even launched a special fund-raising edition.

However I felt its sequel “Penguin Lost” read like the novelistic equivalent of an unsuccessful and hastily assembled Hollywood sequel to a surprise hit film.

I have been reluctant to p-p-pick up any of his books since and so did not read the recent “Grey Bees” which has taken on even greater topicality given its setting at the heart of the conflict in the Donbas in 2014, or the author’s non-fictional “Diary of an Invasion”.

This novel was first published in Russian in 2012 and (as an afterword makes clear) was based on an invitation from the then (and still current) mayor of Lviv – a city which has gained greater precedence worldwide given its status as a de facto Western Ukraine capital and something of a safe haven and staging point for those fleeing to Ukraine – and one cannot help think its International Booker longlisting reflects that perhaps more than the intrinsic literary merit of this rather slow and quirky novel.

It is also a partly biographical novel its key protagonists are real life people featured with permission: hippy and human rights activist Alik Olisevych, author and journalist Yurko Vynnchuk, actress Oksana Prokhorets and (slightly more obliquely) the now deceased homelessness campaigner founder (O)Leysa Santotska together with the homeless shelter she founded and ran.

So, let’s try to describe the outline of the plot.

It opens with Alik (like his real-life counterpart a lighting technician at a theatre) and a group of fellow ageing hippies meeting for their annul commemoration of the death of Jimi Hendrix which they celebrate in a cemetery where his hand (smuggled out of the US) is buried. There they are joined by an ex-KGB officer Ryabtsev who reveals he was Alik’s case handler and also claims that he and some of his fellow KGB officers (who grew to love Hendrix as a result of their spying on the hippies) actually colluded to bring the smuggled hand to Ukraine.

We then shift to Taras who runs a business promising to help people (mainly Poles who come to Ukraine specifically for his assistance) expel their kidney stones. His operandi – which he performs in exchange for keeping the stones and some cash – is to drive his ageing car all night over the bumpy cobblestoned streets of Lviv until they expel the stone.

Taras takes his foreign currency to an exchange booth and there forms a developing relationship with Darja – the girl who works night shifts there, although there relationship has two literal barriers: firstly the security glass behind which she is locked for her shift and then the gloves she wears to protect her against her extreme allergies both to people and money.

Taras has an eccentric neighbour Yezhi Astrovsky – a former hairdresser turned drunk – whose interaction with Taras is normally restricted to complaining when Taras wakes him by stepping on a loudly creaking step when returning at night. But when we first encounter the two together (On Taras’s birthday) Yezhi is confronted by Taras’s friend - the imposing actress Oksana who volunteers at Leysa’s homeless shelter. Yezhi is first cowed and then smitten and cleans up his life and apartment plus resumes his hairdressing career (specialising in free haircuts for homeless people) all to win Oksana’s favour – albeit with limited success. Alik inadvertently, given his dishevelled appearance, becomes a client of the shelter and Yezhi.

But all is not well in Lviv – as Ryabtsev points out to Alik and as the other characters gradually notice: the landlocked, for from the sea City, is permeated with the smell of seawater and suddenly home to seagulls – and things get odder as the seagulls commence to attack people. Ryabtsev is convinced this is due to the ancient Carpathian sea rising and also ropes in Oksana and eventually another friend of Alik’s – the author Vynnchuk. A visit to a dreamteller at a Laboratory for Paranormal Occurences which leads to a referral to a specialist in vibrations (note that it was unclear to me if there was a link here to the vibrations Taras seeks in his kidney stone cure) sheds little light on it.

Meanwhile, one of Taras’s clients (of Polish noble blood) produces pearly like kidney stones which appear to cure Darja’s allergies and remove an impediment to the second barrier to their burgeoning relationship (the first being solved by ashtrays).

And the mystery of issues in Lviv (which take a more personal turn for Ryabtsev when his beloved doves are attacked by the manic seagulls) appears to be linked to a deleted character from Vynnchuk’s work in progress novel – a displaced sailor – with vodka (as seems to be the case in almost the entire novel) both the problem and the solution.

The best word I can use to describe the novel is whimsical.