Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner - Reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino

It’s the easiest thing in the world to write in clichés and stereotypes and there are certain types of books – love stories, novels about immigrants  – where it seems so much has already been written that there’s nothing fresh left to say anyway. Which is why Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner (Heinemann, $37.99) is such an achievement. This is New Yorker Tanner’s debut and it’s an original and quietly wonderful story about two Russian immigrants who are destined to be together.

Vaclav and Lena meet as children in an English language class at their Brooklyn school. Vaclav is the son of hardworking immigrants while the orphaned Lena is being raised haphazardly by her aunt Ekaterina, a prostitute. The two children spend all their time together practising the magic tricks they dream of performing on the Coney Island boardwalk. In their fantasies they are Vaclav the Magnificent and Lena his lovely assistant. And they are inseparable, even promising to marry when they’re grown up. So far, so sweetly humorous… but before too long the story darkens considerably.

Vaclav’s mother Rasia loves and pities neglected, skinny Lena in equal measure. She feeds her borscht, takes her on day trips and walks her home to her filthy hovel of an apartment. When Rasia realises Lena’s home situation is far worse than she’d thought she calls the police and the child is spirited away, leaving her son confused and heartbroken.

For the next seven years Vaclav thinks of the disappeared Lena every single day – even when he grows up and gets a girlfriend still he can’t forget his childhood love. Then out of the blue she telephones him, asking for help. But Lena’s needs far exceed what even she realises.

There are some improbabilities buried in the plot of this novel...Would a child really slip through the net so easily…How likely is it she’d turn into a straight A student…or that years later she’d remember Vaclav’s phone number accurately? Otherwise the story is powerful, particularly the description of Lena’s fractured mental state and the section where her repressed memories flood back.

The best fiction is shaded in dark and light and Tanner has done a deft job with that. She’s also captured her characters’ voices and their accents without overdoing it – there’s nothing more irritating than an excess of broken English. Best of all her characters are real people with rich inner lives and many layered personalities. And there are some brilliant vignettes: like the old Russian ladies shopping for groceries, and terrible Mrs Yablokov who finds her pleasure in other people’s sadness

Tanner is only 28 and already has been widowed, losing her husband Gavin to melanoma. Perhaps the maturity and sensitivity of her writing owes something to what she’s been through personally or maybe she always had the depth to write like this. Whatever the case this tender, quirky novel about the magic of love is well worth discovering and I’ll be keeping an eye out for whatever the clearly very gifted Tanner comes up with next.
Footnote:

Nicky Pellegrino, (right NZH photo), a succcesful Auckland-based author of popular fiction is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above piece was first published on 6 November, 2011