BUILDING A PRISON by Vladimir Kornilov (Merrimack:...

BUILDING A PRISON by Vladimir Kornilov (Merrimack: $14.95). The prison builders here include the Soviet bureaucracy, but also the family around which this book centers. This is a work horribly long on political posturing, and even longer on interior monologues; on the other hand, there is little plot, less action and no focus. The men drink, suffer and argue; the women argue, suffer and take lovers--and husbands--by the sackful. And everybody has at least three or four names (Cholyshev is either Pavel Radionovich, Pashka, Pasha or Pashet; Grigory Yakovlevich Tokarev is also Grishka, Grisha or Tokar). These are Jews trying to make sense out of Soviet Russia before, during and after World War II. Through flashbacks, the action jumps back and forth. Confusing, but perhaps that’s intentional, to create the feeling of Soviet life these days. Vladimir Kornilov was expelled from the official Writers’ Union a few years ago. So is Grigory Tokarev, who in the book is trying to eke out a living writing his autobiography. The jacket copy says that this is Kornilov’s first book to be translated into English. That is English, as in England, and the proofreading leaves much to be desired. One can feel the rage and hopelessness of Kornilov in these pages. Yet the characters all lead such empty lives, making so little effort to break out of their self-created prisons, none of them evoke much sympathy.