Tatiana: An Arkady Renko Novel

Written by Martin Cruz Smith

Narrated by Henry Strozier

Martin Cruz Smith's “masterful” (USA TODAY) and “irresistible” (People) New York Times bestseller and Washington Post notable book of the year: Arkady Renko must connect the dots among a Russian journalist’s mysterious death, corrupt politicians, murderous gangsters, and brazen bureaucrats.

Arkady Renko, one of the iconic investigators of contemporary fiction, has survived the cultural journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find the nation as obsessed with secrecy and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship. In Tatiana, the melancholy hero unravels a mystery as complex and dangerous as modern Russia itself.

The reporter Tatiana Petrovna falls to her death from a sixth-floor window in Moscow the same week that a mob billionaire is shot and buried with the trappings due a lord. The trail leads to Kaliningrad, a Cold War “secret city” that is separated by hundreds of miles from the rest of Russia. The more Arkady delves into Tatiana’s past, the more she leads him into a surreal world of wandering sand dunes, abandoned children, and a notebook written in the personal code of a dead translator. Finally, in a lethal race to uncover what the translator knew, Renko makes a startling discovery that draws him still deeper into Tatiana’s past—and, paradoxically, into Russia’s future, where bulletproof cars, poets, corruption of the Baltic Fleet, and a butcher for hire combine to give Kaliningrad the “distinction” of having the highest crime rate in Russia.

More than a mystery, Tatiana is Martin Cruz Smith’s most ambitious and politically daring novel since Gorky Park. It is a story rich in character, black humor, and romance, with an insight that is the hallmark of a writer The New York Times has called “endlessly entertaining and deeply serious…[not merely] our best writer of suspense, but of one of our best writers, period.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Nov 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781442364370

Martin Cruz Smith

Martin Cruz Smith’s novels include Gorky Park, Stallion Gate, Nightwing, Polar Star, Stalin’s Ghost, Rose, December 6, Tatiana, The Girl from Venice, and The Siberian Dilemma. He is a two-time winner of the Hammett Prize, a recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award and Britain’s Golden Dagger Award, and a winner of the Premio Piemonte Giallo Internazionale. He lives in California.

Reviews for Tatiana

[dbsovereign · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fun if frustrating because in a way it represents so much that is repressed [in all of us]. Also about sublimation. Venice.

[maxernst11 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fijne, mooi uitgebalanceerde roman over de late carri?re van de Amerikaanse schrijver Henri James. James wordt geportretteerd als een getormenteerd man die in toenemende moeite heeft met de omgang met anderen, maar pas in zijn kunst tot een echte dialoog met het leven komt. Vakmanschap, al vermoed ik dat het vooral de liefhebbers van James zal aanspreken.

[donna828 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This well-researched but still speculative contemplation of the life and writings of Henry James was fascinating to me. Toibin meticulously painted a portrait of a reflective man who relished his undisturbed life. The author integrated the influences of life on art showing how James incorporated his astute observations in his creative process. The Master was an excellent character study utilizing flashbacks and bittersweet vignettes to reveal the inner life of a conflicted author.This is a book to be real slowly and savored. Highly recommended to lovers of literature.

[sblock_16 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this after finishing The Portrait of A Lady, and in addition to being a great read, it helped me understand that novel.

[michael_lilly-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Tedious and speculative fiction supposedly about Henry James. Some obvious inaccuracies.. For example reading this book, one would conclude that James was a commercial failure as a play-write. But in fact a number of his plays were commercially successful. The author apparently needed something to humiliate James and his work as a play-write was handy because his plays are not popular now, and they are not up to the standard of his novels, stories, and essays.

[drfuriosa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting and engaging glimpse into Henry James's highly interior personal life and writing process. If you like historical fiction about authors or Jamesian style, you'll lke this.

[amerynth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really expected to love Colm Toibin's "The Master" -- I've liked other books by Toibin and I like Henry James. But I was somewhat disappointed because this really never came together for me. I found the James' style in Toibin's hands didn't work for me -- it became too slow and uninteresting and meditative for me to enjoy reading it.I admire what Toibin was going for here, but ultimately it didn't make good reading for me.

[crazymamie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this one! My favorite read of January. This is one of those novels featuring a blend of truth and supposition that can bring a moment in time to life, letting the reader feel as if he or she is invading personal space. Here, Tóibín explores the life of Henry James, and it is brilliantly done. It has made me want to go back and reread James' masterpiece [Portrait of a Lady] - I was really unhappy with the ending of that one, and there is a conversation presented here between James and his niece (a precocious reader) about why he ended the novel the way that he did, and it elevated that novel for me. James drew so much of his writing from personal life, and here we get insights into what and who inspired some of his most famous characters and stories. Now I am wanting to read more about James and also [All a Novelist Needs: Colm Tóibín on Henry James], which is a collection of all of Tóibín's essays on James.

[eoin-311239 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Precise, polished, and perfectly understated. It is probably stunningly researched and full of clever inside jokes, too, but the prose is clean and pure. Not everyone's cup of tea.

[donnamariemerritt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful imagining of the inner life and social life of Henry James

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fijne, mooi uitgebalanceerde roman over de late carrière van de Amerikaanse schrijver Henri James. James wordt geportretteerd als een getormenteerd man die in toenemende moeite heeft met de omgang met anderen, maar pas in zijn kunst tot een echte dialoog met het leven komt. Vakmanschap, al vermoed ik dat het vooral de liefhebbers van James zal aanspreken.

[stef7sa-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful novel written in a magnificent style, highly recommended even if you haven't read anything of Henry James (neither have I).

[hansel714_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm a fan of Toibin but I fear this is not his best work. It seems an idiosyncratic of specialization that only the author and few people are interested in. There is nothing new or inventive about the novel, just a suturing of parts.

[edwinrelf_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is such an enjoyable read. Toibin inhabits Henry James, the novelist, during a period towards the latter part of his life when he moves to Rye on the south coast of England. Toibin borrows from the style of Henry James and, if I may say so, is better at writing in Henry James's style that James, The Master himself.The novel reflectsback on aspects of James's life and coyness on his sexuality and weaves through the ispiration of some of his writing and the possible real relations he had with people who inhabit James's novels.It's a curious thing that the house James moved to in Rye, Lamb House, was also the home much later of E F Benson, another gay man whose novels of Mapp and Lucia are such a gay romp

[porch_reader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A complex man is portrayed in a complex narrative. Toibin takes us inside the mind of Henry James. Through flashbacks, we grow to understand how Henry James's childhood in America, his experiences during the Civil War, and his family relationships shaped his life and led him to live in England and write some of the most influential novels of the era. Some of my favorite passages were the ones that shed light on James's writing process and helped us understand the multiple influences on a novelist. This is incredibly well-written. I wish I had read it at a calmer time. I felt like it deserved even more attention.

[snash_44 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A meticulous exploration of a sensitive but very guarded person, only able to deal with his feeling (and then not all of them) by writing fictional accounts. The fact that the subject, Henry James, and his family are well known real people added to the enjoyment.

[chrisconway_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am not a Henry James fan and little happens in this novel. And yet I found it wonderful and hard to put down. Toibin creates a distinctive voice, and a powerful and very relatable sense of melancholy. This novel made me think a lot about loneliness, and family bonds, and selfishness, and fear, and how all of this seeming contradictory stuff, actually blends together. You don't need to have read James or admire him to appreciate this distinctive piece of fiction.

[lizchris_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As a fan of Colm Toibin but not of Henry James, I found this quite hard work. The novel imagines Henry James as the central character in one of his own novels. Neither a biography nor fiction, I found his mostly-repressed yearning for intimacy and love the strongest part of the novel.

[siri51 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was my ‘between bookclub books ‘read, borrowed from the GVRL. I don’t usually like novels about real characters as it is hard to know where fact and fiction meet. Perhaps because I didn’t know anything about the life of the author Henry James, I thoroughly enjoyed this. I have only ever read one ghost story of Henry James but the book seemed to capture the tone of the late 1890’s in Europe. On the last page of acknowledgments, Toibin says he ‘peppered the text with phrases and sentences from the writings of Henry James and his family” – he has done a fine job.

[laurierking · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you're going to write a fictionalized biography, why not make the subject Henry James rather than that Frey fellow?

[michalsuz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A superb book.

[matsar_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful book, especially for people who are as fascinated with Henry James the man as much as they are his stories. A touching novel about this complex, lonely and brilliant man.

[schmerguls · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I admit that I found this book easy to read, and that it held my interest. It is I take it biographically correct, and adds much to the 'record' by telling Henry James' thoughts and feelings. It starts in Januaary 1895, as James effort to be a playwright is failing, and concludes in October 1899, but there are many flashbacks and one gets a pretty full account of much of James' life from birth up to 1899--though of course disjointed, and flashbacky. But after reading the book I felt it really did not tell much and I was disappoinrted that the book did not proceed to tell of James' life after 1899..Stylistically, one is reminded of James' own writing, . But it is all rather 'precious' and makes a big deal of James' latent (usually, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., excepted) homosexuality. On balance, I found the book disappointing, considering how much it was hyped when it came out.

[ftownsend_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mr. Toibin brings Henry James to life!

[hvhay_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I just read all my Henry James books this year so this was a natural follow-up. Many, many scenes from the novels and stories are echoed in this book and it was fun to try to identify them. However, while I found the book well-written as far as style goes, in my opinion it suffers from the fact that the lives of real people don’t typically follow a narrative arc that translates well to a novel. But overall, a nice alternative to a traditional biography.

[wandering_star_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a beautifully written book - the sentences roll over you as you are reading them. And it's a sensitive examination of the way that James' life was echoed in his work, and the way his desire to observe, and write, led to a certain disengagement from the world - and made him let down the people who loved him. However, it seemed a little repetitive - the same events recur, with different protagonists. Perhaps this is meant to be cyclical - but James' approach doesn't really change, despite his guilt or shame about the events that have gone before. I agree with the comments of one of the reviewers below, that it ended up reading like an exercise in style rather than anything with real feeling.

[shihtzu_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully written fictional account of the life of Henry James. One of the best books I've read in the past few years.

[wisecat_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This fictionalized biography of Henry James was disappointing & dull. It dealt too much with really depressing facets of his internal life.

[bobbieharv · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fictionalized biography of Henry James, written I think in the HJ style. It's like James' life made into one of his novels. Lovely calm ruminative soothing writing; made me want to reread Portrait of a Lady.

[stephenmurphy_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Deliciously detailed and slow this is almost more biography than novel. As baroque and subtle as James but perhaps more honest.