Today I went to the branch of Waterstones on Notting Hill Gate where the official public launch of Tangled Roots will be held on Thursday, 22 May 7.00 pm (come one, come all!). I looked around the room, got a sense of how we might use the space, what the event might feel like. I’ve been meaning to do this for weeks. Once I got there, the whole thing took less than five minutes. But today is an absolutely beautiful, sunny Spring day here in London so I decided to take a walk — a very long walk.
I turned off Notting Hill and strolled through the rather majestic, wrought-iron gates that open onto the row of Embassies backing onto Kensington Gardens. Each one is more magnificent than the next: huge buildings, tall windows with heavy brocade curtains peeking through, circular drives for the patiently parked Daimlers and Rolls Royces and, inevitably, the discreet, uniformed guards. Each mansion had its own brass plaque whispering the name of the country represented therein. I hadn’t been on that street for maybe 15 years. Of course, nothing had changed, at least nothing that could be seen from the outside. It felt like a giant step back in time. But then one specific plaque grabbed my attention. It simply said “The Russian Federation.” The weight and seriousness of those words sent a chill down my spine. Of course, that is now the proper name of the country that we all call “Russia,” that we have all, really, always called “Russia” regardless of what some plaque might say. But “Russian Federation” sounds much more severe to me than “Russia,” more like Mussorgsky than Prokofiev. And it made me think, yes once again, about time.
Perhaps I haven’t mentioned yet that a large portion of Tangled Roots takes place in Moscow. I went there to research the book in 2004, and I set much of it in the Moscow of that specific year. At that time, Moscow was pulling itself out of a post-Communist spiral of poverty. There was a new sense of individual entrepreneurship. Everyone was open to the next new deal, the next new venture. Restaurants and coffee shops were opening up at a rate of speed that rivalled London. And people were talking — about politics, about mistakes of the past and possibilities of the future. Democracy, capitalism, Putin were all new. There was energy and, for Russians, a feeling of optimism. That was the Moscow I found and fell in love with in 2004, and all of that worked its way into my book.
But even as I was writing the novel, Russia was changing. Now, four years later as the book is due to come out, I realize that the Moscow of Tangled Roots is already gone. Vladimir Putin does not seem to be marching away from his KGB past with quite the same fervor as we in the West had originally thought. The Moscow portrayed in Tangled Roots is in effect a snapshot of a very precise and short-lived time in the history of this extraordinarily complicated “Federation.” As I walked past that embassy on this beautiful Spring day in 2008, I found myself feeling nostalgic for a time which, perhaps, never really existed at all, for a “Russia” of my and my characters’ imaginations. It was a very long walk.
It sounds like you have captured a very special and small slice of history in Tangled Roots – a flash, a moment, something evolving and then stifled. Perhaps your words might serve as hope and encouragement one day- because you’re right, it does sound like Moscow, the Russian Federation, is once again marching where we hoped it wouldn’t go.
I think it’s amazing that you have managed to capture Russia at a very special moment in time. Things change so fast that it’s nice to go back and remember what it was like at that particular time and place.
Like absolute vanilla said your words might bring hope one day.
C x
It’s fascinating how places trigger off associations. Can’t wait to read the book.
A gripping post, Sue, and an enticing peak at your subject. I’m hooked. I love stories rooted in a specific place (and time).