Whatever meaning exists is sensory and associative, like the flickering stuff of memory. The book follows a kind of dream-logic that holds together only when you stop trying to work out what’s going on. The writing is often so tightly packed with literary allusion and verbal trickery that it makes googling every second sentence a constant temptation. Events in the lives of two characters-a Russian interpreter who works with Peter, and a singer from the early twentieth century-serve as jumping-off points for page after page of the author’s lyric, stream-of-consciousness prose. It is an ambitious novel that defies easy summary. Mikhail Shishkin’s third novel, Maidenhair, attempts to answer this and a host of other questions on the nature of life and death, love, war, and God. What if the “reason for asylum,” the story you tell the ever-skeptical Peter, is all that remains? How can you convince anyone of the truth when the only evidence you have is your word? Any other corroborating materials-documents, the testimony of loved ones-you’ve had to leave behind. For the petitioners, it’s a harrowing experience. His formal, matter-of-fact interview style (Name? Age? Reason for requesting asylum?) obscures Peter’s true aim: he’s really just trying to uncover lies. “Have you understood your rights and responsibilities and that no one gets into paradise anyway?” Peter, a government official, is the man who decides the fate of the men and women seeking refugee status in Switzerland.
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