Flawed, but oh so readable!The novel describes an improbable romp through north-east Siberia, by way of rarefied Oxford University, remote British Columbia, and Tokyo. Our hero is super-linguist and multiculturalist Johnny Porter (aka Raven aka Jean-Baptiste Porteur), a native of the Canadian Gitxsan tribe. He is also a dab hand at impersonations and can fabricate a jeep (fabulously called a Bobik - I SO want one!) out of spare parts in a freezing Siberian ice cave. On his own in three days.A mysterious coded message requests he ‘break into’ the toppest secret research facility in Siberia - so secret that no one who enters is allowed to leave. Why does he have to do this? I can’t even remember, and I reckon it doesn’t really matter. The joy is in the ingenuity and style with which he accomplishes it. And then leaves. Spectacularly.Plot - ridiculous, but there is a dread and a horror alluded to early on which I was disappointed was not pursued as a significant plot reveal through the middle part of the book. However, the final phase of the book - Porter’s escape (successful or unsuccessful, I’m not saying) - is some of the most thrilling action I’ve read in a long time!Characters - none of them really believable. Or even likeable, I felt. They mostly play third or fourth fiddle to Johnny P in any case. But they are not poorly-drawn enough, and he is not unlikeable enough, to crash the novel. It’s not really that he’s unlikeable exactly; it’s more that I felt I never knew him. He was too busy being other diverse characters for the reader to get to know the real him.The love interest (Russian Medical Officer Komarova) is a bit yawn and contrived. Character-wise, a 15 year-old called Ludmilla provides, for me, the most poignant moment in the tale. I’ve never come across a character quite like her in anything else I’ve ever read.Davidson’s prose is very readable (the many typos notwithstanding!), although maybe a little over-involved with some of the many technicalities involved in the caper.But for me it was the setting of Siberia itself which left a palpable chill in the room after I put the book down. The snow is Serious Snow. The ice is deadly. The nights go on forever and people need lots of clothes. It’s bleak. It’s barren. I want to go there.
There has been terrific hype about this novel recently, which is unusual for a book published more than twenty years ago. Various authors whose own works I have read and enjoyed, such as Philip Pullman and Charles Cumming, have been quoted as citing it as one of the finest thrillers they have ever read. Having just tried to read it myself I am left wondering whether they were talking about some other book, because it is difficult to reconcile their views with mine.To be fair, it did start rather well (at least, if one sets aside the rather laboured, scene-setting prologue). A series of coded messages are sent to Professor Lazenby, an ageing Oxford academic specialising in some of the more esoteric aspects of biology. In fact, the first message is sent in such a convoluted manner that Professor Lazenby never receives it. The second is identified as such, and eventually decoded, though Lazenby is initially mystified as to the sender. Gradually, however, he calls to mind an encounter at an academic conference some years previously with a Soviet counterpart and a young Native American who turned out to be a dynamic prodigy in both linguistics and anthropology. It transpires that the messages are indeed seeking to engage the Native American, inviting, or even exhorting him, to make his way to an ultra-secret Soviet base in the depths of Siberia where strange things, including the development of a quasi-Neanderthal race, are happening.It does, however, soon sink into farce. The young man, known as Johnny Porter, is certainly out of the ordinary, though as the novel progresses he evolves into something virtually superhuman. Not only does he seem to have mastered English, a plethora of Native American languages and dialects, Russian, Japanese, Korea and every dialectic variance of all of those languages, he is a master of disguise and also manages to build a jeep by hand on his own in a cave by the Kolyma River. It was at that stage that I gave up. I know that one should be able to suspend disbelief now and again, and to grant a degree of licence to the novelist, but there are limits. My disbelief would have had to have been utterly moribund in order to persist with this book.
What do You think about Kolymsky Heights (1994)?
I became aware of author Lionel Davidson Oct. 31, 2009, after reading his obituary in the New York Times. Often compared to contemporary Graham Greene, and his books also encompassed history, mystery, espionage, and adventure, which was certainly the case in Kolymsky Heights, the last of his eight novels for adults. He also wrote under the pen name David Line. I was absorbed from the book's prologoue: "How long, dear friend-how long? I await you with eagerness! So much has happened, so much I must not forget, that I use this time to make an account. And to offer a warning. Everything that follows you will find very strange. For now - just follow the sequence." The book details the story of Johnny Porter, a Gitxsan Indian and linguist who sails around the world as a teenager, marries a blind woman who dies while they are still young, becomes an eccentric and sought-after professor, and finally, an unconvential spy into Siberia who falls in love again.
—Jimmi
No book can live up to the hype Kolymsky Heights has suffered ("the best thriller ever") but this comes close. It's not particularly thrilling, until the final quarter--although then it makes up for it--but it's fascinating and absorbing throughout. In the detachment of its authorial viewpoint and the meticulous focus on practical problem-solving, it's reminiscent of Jack Vance and Patricia Highsmith. A very fine novel and congratulations to Faber to thinking to disinter it after over 20 years of neglect.
—Tim Stretton
From looking at various websites, most readers rate this as five stars. A minority rate it as one star and I am one of those. Admittedly I gave up at about page 200, but I simply was not gripped. Likewise, I found I could not relate to the hero, Porter, and I really couldn't care less what happened to him. There's huge tracts of detail in the book but for me it didn't add to the pace, it merely seemed to waste time. The plot in isolation is very good and I couldn't help thinking what Frederick Forsyth would have done with it.
—Andy
