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INTRODUCTION

Anatoly Sukhanov, Russia’s leading art critic, has risen to the upper ranks of Soviet society. His contributions to the art world are trumpeted in the official state encyclopedia, he is married to the beautiful daughter of the nation’s most revered painter, and his children are rising stars in their own rights. But the triumphs of Sukhanov’s middle age are built on the rubble of his abandoned youthful aspirations, and as he approaches the pinnacle of his social ascent, long-forgotten memories begin to erode the foundation of his carefully constructed life. Invaded by unwanted recollections, visited by the ghosts of past inspirations, and haunted by dreams that overtake his waking hours, Sukhanov is forced to confront a lifetime of compromises and rediscover the past he has forsaken.

Set in the dawning days of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, The Dream Life of Sukhanov is a poetic and intimate rendering of one man’s struggle with his true nature amidst a nation’s struggle with its own identity. Weaving the story of Sukhanov’s repressed childhood into the history of cultural oppression in Soviet Russia, Olga Grushin opens a window onto a specific era in time and into the soul of an artist who cannot escape his own vision. The Dream Life of Sukhanov offers a glimpse of the world as seen through the eyes of the artist, vivid with colors and textures, awash with beauty and sometimes overwhelming to behold. In Sukhanov’s dream world, art informs life just as surely as life inspires art, as a character from a Salvador Dali painting infiltrates his household and a painting on his office wall reveals the truth about his troubled marriage.

At its core, The Dream Life of Sukhanov is about the choices that shape a life. Presented at first as a self-important, emotionally callous caricature of a man, Sukhanov is gradually revealed as a thoughtful, inspired soul made timid by the traumas of his childhood and the conformist pressures of his society. As the pieces of his fractured and buried past fall into place, we begin to understand the deeply human longings — for love, for security, for acceptance — that drive him to renounce his most passionately held convictions and become the mouthpiece of a cultural establishment he despises. Sukhanov’s path to redemption is frightening and full of loss, and we share his desperation to hold on to the life he has sacrificed so much for. But beyond the pain lies the promise of redemption and rebirth, and as Sukhanov sheds the last vestiges of his comfortable existence, we follow him into a kind of Eden of the mind — a place where, at long last, the search for beauty is the only law of the land.

ABOUT OLGA GRUSHIN

Olga Grushin was born in Moscow in 1971. She studied at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow State University, and Emory University. Her short fiction has appeared in Partisan Review, Confrontation, The Massachusetts Review, and Art Times. This is her first novel. Grushin, who became an American citizen in 2002, lives in Washington, D.C.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. As Sukhanov is overwhelmed by long-suppressed memories from his youth, the narrative shifts from third person to first person, as if Sukhanov himself has wrested the story from its author and is addressing the reader directly. What do you think was the intended effect of these sudden transitions? What effect did they have on you as a reader? Do you think Grushin accomplished her goal?
   

2. Madness — and its connection to inspiration — is a recurring theme in the novel, from the senile old man on the upstairs balcony, to Sukhanov’s father, to the ever-looming presence of Salvador Dali. Is a degree of madness essential to artistic vision? Is there any value to the more conventional and “sane” work of an artist like Malinin, whose paintings are designed to comfort — rather than challenge — the viewer?
   

3. One of Sukhanov’s earliest discoveries is his childhood affinity for birds. Indeed, birds appear throughout the novel, from the “invisible birds” outside the home of Oleg and in the church at Bogoliubovka, to the “surrealist bird” in his mother’s house. What symbolic role, if any, do birds play in The Dream Life of Sukhanov?
   

4. Do you think Sukhanov would have followed a different course in life if his mother had revealed the true nature of his father’s “illness”? Do you agree with Sukhanov’s ultimate conclusion that his “twenty-three years of mute crawling through the mud” (347) was a necessary step to realizing his full potential as an artist?
   

5. Dalevich argues that “imposing limits on creativity may actually stimulate better, or at least more innovative, art.” (122) Do you agree with this statement? Do you think the near-total freedom enjoyed by Western artists of the last century has affected the quality of their art?
   

6. The opening quotation states, “I know your works: you are neither hot nor cold” — a charge repeated by Vasily, who tells his father that “you do everything halfway.” (108) Is Sukhanov’s tepidness an unmitigated flaw in his character? Is there an argument to be made that, in sacrificing his own passions for the sake of his family, Sukhanov’s “halfway” approach to life contains an element of nobility?
   

7. Sukhanov’s repression of memory is mirrored by the physical eradication of the past in Soviet Russia — Voskresensky Passage is renamed Belinsky Street, the statue of Gogol is replaced because it “misrepresent[s] Soviet reality,” and so on. To what degree are the choices Sukhanov makes in his life the product of his country’s political oppression? Do you think his fear of failing as an artist would have overwhelmed him even in a more open society?
   

8. After both of his children have abandoned him, Sukhanov realizes that “…all along, Vasily had been the reflection of what was worst in him, and Ksenya of what was best, and he had not stopped the one, and had not helped the other, and now it was simply too late” (208) Do you agree with Sukhanov’s assessment that he has failed as a father? Do you believe that any parent can truly affect the essential nature of their children?
   

9. At the end of the novel, an “invisible driver” with the face of Dali’s apothecary returns Sukhanov to the decaying church in Bogoliubovka. “It was perfect, absolutely perfect,” Grushin writes, “here he would live, eternally free… ” (353) To what degree do you think this ending is to be taken literally? Do you think Sukhanov will finally realize his ambitions as an artist, or has he succumbed completely to his “dream life”?