#BookReview Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt #20BooksOfSummer23

About the Book

Zoya Andropova, a young Russian refugee, finds herself in an elite New Jersey boarding school. Having lost her family, her home and her sense of purpose, Zoya struggles to belong, a task made more difficult by her new country’s paranoia about Soviet spies.

When she meets charismatic fellow Russian émigré Leo Orlov – whose books Zoya has obsessed over for years – everything seems to change. But she soon discovers that Leo is bound by the sinister orchestrations of his brilliant wife, Vera, and that their relationship is far more complex than Zoya could ever have imagined.

Format: Paperback (256 pages) Publisher: Raven Books
Publication date: 27th June 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

I received this as part of a Reading Heels book subscription back in 2019. (Reading in Heels is no longer in business.) For me it was a ‘curate’s egg’, i.e. good in parts.

It’s apparently loosely inspired by the marriage of Vladimir and Vera Nabokov and supposedly set in the 1920s and 1930s, although it didn’t feel much like that to me, of which more later. The story is told by way of letters between Leo Orlov (for whom read Nabokov) and his wife Vera, occasional other official documents such as police witness statements but mainly through the journal of Zoya, a young Russian orphan sent to the United States as part of a refugee programme. Yes, that well-worn narrative structure, the journal; written by someone with an amazing memory, who can reproduce conversations verbatim and recall scenes from when they were in the crib.

The author achieves a good variation of styles between the different narrative structures, especially in the letters between Lev and Vera. Other reviewers have commented on how cleverly Celt mimcs Nabokov’s style but since I’ve never read anything by Nabokov this rather passed me by. I think this was one of my problems with the book in that I was missing allusions to Nabokov’s life and work.

For me, the first section of the book was rather slow and, frankly, lacked credibility. I found it difficult to believe that a Russian refugee would be placed in ‘an elite New Jersey boarding school’. If the intention was to contrast Zoya’s situation with that of the girls from privileged families who attend the school then that at least succeeded as Donne School comes across as a sort of toxic Mallory Towers. Zoya is ostracised and bullied mercilessly with the staff seemingly having no duty of care. This section, which accounts for about half the book, feels distinctly anachronistic with references to ‘bobby socks’ and the like which I don’t think were prevalent in the 1920s! Eventually Zoya is put to work in the greenhouse of the school, on the strength of having grown some lilacs from seed brought from her homeland. She’s obviously a horticultural genius because lilac is a shrub which takes at least three years to bloom and doesn’t seem the sort of thing you’d grow on your windowsill.

Over the years Zoya has become obsessed with the books of Leo Orlov so depending on your point of view it’s either convenient, fate or incredible coincidence when he arrives at Donne School. To borrow from the film Casablanca, it’s not so much “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine” as “Of all the schools, in all the towns, in all the world, he becomes a teacher at mine”. They embark on a passionate affair, their sexual encounters being intensely sensual, erotic but at the same time slightly disturbing.

I can’t say I was a fan of Leo, but then again perhaps I wasn’t intended to be. He’s completely untrustworthy, manipulative and self-centered. I couldn’t buy into the whole ‘I’m a literary genius so I must be allowed to get away with anything’. Zoya is the perfect victim; she’s needy and, apart from John her workmate, friendless. Lev attempts to convince Zoya that Vera is the villain of the piece, a controlling woman who has suppressed an early work of genius. At the same time, he’s professing his undying love to Vera in passionate letters whilst simultaneously plotting to get rid of her. ‘He was a writer. He could come up with the right set of circumstances to forestall any serious suspicion.’ Too right.

The publisher describes the book as ‘a gripping psychological thriller’ and there is a definite change of tone in the final quarter of the book as the Lev-Vera-Zoya triangle plays out in a quite unexpected way. This was the part of the book I enjoyed the most.

Invitation to a Bonfire is the second book from my 20 Books of Summer 2023 reading list.

In three words: Intimate, sensual, slow-moving

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About the Author

Adrienne Celt’s debut novel, The Daughters, won the PEN Southwest Book Award for Fiction and was an NPR Best Book of the Year. Her story ‘Temples’ was included in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016 after originally appearing in Epoch. Celt’s short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Zyzzyva, Ecotone, the Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Esquire, Electric Literature, and Carve Magazine, among others; her nonfiction has appeared in the Rumpus, Tin House‘s ‘OpenBar’, Lit Hub, the Toast, Catapult, the Millions, and elsewhere.

Adrienne has an MFA in fiction from Arizona State University, draws weekly web comics at loveamongthelampreys.com, and lives in Tucson, Arizona. (Photo: Author website)

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