"The Family"

First, the disclaimer: I haven't yet finished this book.

I know, I know, I've had a month. I'm out of practice when it comes to reading... Exercise and housework have taken up most of my spare time for the past year. I did read as far as Part II, Chapter 19, so I'm going to base tonight's post on what I've read thus far. Guess I can't spoil the ending for anybody! I don't want to postpone this discussion any longer in case there are any of you who've already finished the book, so I'll just add any thoughts on the rest of the book in the comments.

Nina Fedorova's The Family (1940) was the #10 bestselling novel in the U.S. during the year 1940. A hot commodity --- and I can see why. Though I haven't found anything myself that's particularly special in the author's style of writing, the premise for the book is fabulous. It's set in the British Concession in Tientsin (today spelled Tianjin), China beginning in May 1937 through the Japanese invasion and occupation of the city in July - and I've read as far as March 1938, when the American regiment stationed in Tientsin was moved to another location. The background for the story is truly dramatic. Where else in the world would every one of the peoples who would be major players in the Second World War find themselves nose to nose during these pivotal years before war had "officially" broken out in most of the world? Japan, China, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France, the United States, the Soviet Union: all these powers had a presence in Tientsin, whether they leased one of the city's "concessions" from China or whether their people were refugees or natives. The British Concession, where the story takes place, is a sanctuary of sorts for its residents and an attractive focal point for a community of refugees from Soviet Russia. The Japanese aren't able to either bomb or invade the British Concession without damaging themselves politically, but they do begin censoring all the mail which reaches its residents and maintain an active network of spies within the concession.

Fedorova always capitalizes the phrase "The Family." And in the beginning, it refers to a small family of Russians who operate a boarding house in the British Concession. Granny, Mother, Lida (Mother's daughter), Peter, and Dima (Granny's grandsons by now deceased sons). You quickly begin to see, however, that The Family extends to include many of the residents who come and go at the boarding house. They're all refugees in their own ways - people without a country - yet they bond and celebrate each other's joys and mourn each other's sorrows. Khan, the manservant, is a refugee from the poverty of the Chinese countryside. Madame Militza, the Bessarabian fortuneteller, was born in a land which has changed hands so many times she can't obtain the visa needed to leave China. Mrs. Parrish is an alcoholic, recently widowed and waiting for her brother to come from Great Britain so he can liquidate her late husband's estate and she can leave. Until Granny's death prompts her to become sober, you might say Mrs. Parrish was a refugee from reality. The elderly and opinionated Professor Chernov and his wife Anna Petrovna are Russian refugees, imprisoned for dissidence before fleeing for sanctuary in China. Irina Gordova, orphaned and alone in the world, is also a Russian refugee. She's in love with an American soldier who cannot legally marry while deployed overseas, so they live together from time to time and he supports her financially. Mr. Sung is a Chinese university professor who narrowly escapes the Japanese when he's forced to flee Tientsin with underground knowledge of some sort. Then, of course, there are two memorable appearances by the dressed-from-head-to-toe-in-brown Miss Pink, a "reformer" determined to convince Irina that she's living in sin:

Like all great reformers, she was quite alone in this huge overpopulated world.

Life in Occupied Tientsin is grim. Poverty and hardship and suspicion are everywhere. Neither Peter nor Lida is able to find paying work as the only available jobs are all but closed to Russians. Lida has an out - she's engaged to an American boy who's gone back to the States for college. Dima has an out - Mrs. Parrish wants to take him to Great Britain and raise him as her own. Peter is screwed - he can't find work and, without a visa, he can't leave the concession. At least as far as I've gotten in the story, he's contemplating traveling overland with a band of gypsies and criminals, sneaking across the border into the Soviet Union, turning himself over to the authorities, and hoping that they'll grant him citizenship of some sort after he does several years in prison or a labor camp.

"Aunty," - and a deep bitterness sounded in Peter's voice, - "it seems that whatever way I go I am doomed to be killed... If such is my fate, let me be killed on my native soil - be killed for something."

Mother manages to scrape together enough to keep the boarding house afloat, but she eats very little herself and is always very tired. Yet Fedorova seems to be trying to tell us that we can find the strength to carry through the hardest of times if we make the most of the people around us. And that even a big collection of strangers can be a Family to each other if they need one badly enough. There may be some big finish to this story which drives the point home, but I haven't gotten there yet... I can only guess where she's taking us!

Nina Fedorova was a Russian refugee herself, eventually settling in Eugene, Oregon, then in San Francisco. America is viewed as nothing less than the promised land in this book. A place Dima dreams about, where "children eat ice cream and candies daily," where both the young Russian women in the book plan to escape and build new lives in democracy and freedom. According to a 1947 newspaper article, Fedorova wrote a sequel to this book, titled The Children - you know a book's got to have been popular if a sequel was written! - and there was interest from Hollywood in making a film of the first book. I gotta tell you --- the entire time I was reading this book all I could picture was the action taking place on the silver screen. It was so easy to picture one of those melodramatic black and white films of the era with the bad foreign accents, the rainy Chinese setting, sweeping overhead battle scenes, and the fade-to-soft finishes on teary heroines. (Greer Garson would've made a perfect Mother!) They would have had to shrink the cast of characters though. Maybe combine a few of the characters. There are just too many to keep track of... Can you see this book as a classic Hollywood film? Who would you have cast in the roles?

Next month's Book of the Month Club selection will be the #8 bestselling novel in the U.S. during 1940: The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck. I'm going to get an early start on this one, dear readers! Please join me on Friday, February 12 for the next meeting of our club.