Review of “Four Soldiers” by Hubert Mingarelli

 

★★★

The New Press

Pub Date: 9 October 2018

“A small miracle of a book, perfectly imagined and perfectly achieved.”
—Hilary Mantel, author of Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies

A novel of war, revolution, youth, and friendship by the “remarkable” (Ian McEwan) French author of A Meal in Winter

Hubert Mingarelli’s simple, powerful, and moving stories of men in combat have established him as one of the most exciting new voices in international fiction.

In Four Soldiers he tells the story of four young soldiers in 1919, members of the Red Army during the Russian civil war. It is set in the harsh dead of winter, just as the soldiers set up camp in a forest in Galicia near the Romanian front line. Due to a lull in fighting, their days are taken up with the mundane tasks of trying to scratch together what food and comforts they can find, all the time while talking, smoking, and waiting. Waiting specifically for spring to come. Waiting for their battalion to move on. Waiting for the inevitable resumption of violence.

Recalling great works like Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, Four Soldiers is a timeless and tender story of young male friendships and the small, idyllic moments of happiness that can illuminate the darkness of war.

From NetGalley

This is a copy provided by the publisher and the author in exchange of an honest review. Thank you to them! 

A book that is easy and quick to read and tends in its simplicity.

I was charmed by the way the characters interacted revealing the importance of friendship and, above all, companionship. They were completely different characters from each other, that way they compensate for each other. So, I enjoyed the reading through their bond narrated in just a simple way, with short dialogues that brings reliability. I also loved Kyabine so much, because he was the only one who aroused a stronger connection during the reading. He had a well-defined personality, his vices, his way of interpreting life as a child, and the last but not least he is the one that created a most empathy within the group of soldiers and myself. On the other hand, I felt that the characters needed deeper layers so I could feel and understand why some attitudes and personalities of them, like a description of a more consistent background!

The introduction of another character in this narrative, the boy named Kouzma Evdokim, in this group of friendly soldiers was the highest point of this book for me, because it came to retake the whole thread with doses of mystery and a deep meaning that became transcendent for all the history. To me, this was a brilliant choice that the writer take to present his character who rarely speaks, but who contributes to the whole outcome and meaning of this book. Kouzma decided to spend this journey with this group writing in his notebook what the they were contacting and for me this gesture became as a way to immortalize the small and good moments that the four soldiers had.

I would love to give more qualification to this book and I know it has enormous potential to be a successful novel, but as I mentioned earlier I need more context and more density of characters to harmonize everything.

Happy readings,

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