Invitation to a Bonfire

At fifteen, Zoya Andropov was sent to an orphanage where she cross-stitched portraits of Party members, her stomach growling from hunger. Her parents, who were on "the right side" of the Russian revolution, had died soon after "the new and glorious union of our country," like everyone else she knew.

Then in 1928, she was one of 200 USSR orphans chosen to be sent to America, ending up at the small, elite, Donne School.

Impoverished and alien, she is bullied and manipulated by the rich American girls. After graduation, now Zoe, she stayed on to work in the greenhouse, victimized still by the schoolgirls.

When her favorite writer, Lev Orlov, is hired by the school, Zoe is thrilled. With him is his imperious wife, Vera, who Zoe saw once at a Young Pioneers meeting when they were girls. The wealthy Vera was then "whisked off to Paris" where she met Lev Orlov. After reading the manuscript of his first novel she claimed to have burned it as unworthy of his potential genius. Their relationship is parasitic.

Lev is a philanderer and Zoe becomes one of his conquests. Lev relies on Vera's judgment to organize his entire life and work but he resents her as much as he needs her. He hatches a plan for Zoe to murder Vera.

Invitation to a Bonfire is mesmerizing and it is disturbing. We are taken to Moscow and the bonfires of typewriters using Old Slavonic, a time when a child's belief in the Soviet State was stronger than familial love. Coming from the ashes of the Revolution are Zoya, Vera, and Lev, struggling with alliances and the nature of love, manipulating and testing each other.

The bulk of the novel is Zoe's diary from 1931 in which she shares her childhood back story and her love affair with Lev. Interspersed are Lev's letters to Vera and documents from the Donne school and an Oral History of Vera with interviews with people who had interacted with her.

There are plot twists that surprise with a quick wrap up ending. Perhaps too quick after such a long set up.

The characters Vera and Lev are inspired by Nabokov and his wife Vera, and I read the style is inspired by Nabokov's novels. Which made me wish I had read Nabokov in the last century; I read his books in the 1970s.

The book recalled to mind other addictive and disturbing reads, like The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith or Nabokov's Lolita. Unhealthy characters are always interesting and compelling.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Invitation to a Bonfire: A Novel
by Adrienne Celt
Bloomsbury USA
Pub Date 05 Jun 2018
ISBN 9781635571523
PRICE $26.00 (USD)