Travels in Siberia--A Review

There's nothing I love more than a nice, fat nonfiction book. In the right hands, nonfiction can be as engaging, enlightening, and beautifully written as a novel or even a book of poetry. After purchasing Travels in Siberia by Ian Frasier at my local Boarders's going out of business extravaganza, I sat down with the hefty tome, eager to dive into the literary feast that awaited me. I've always loved Ian Frasier's mastery of language and I just knew that if anyone could turn a book about Siberia into something interesting, it would be him.

Well, I was almost right.

Travels in Siberia is a book about, you guessed it, Ian Frasier's travels back and forth across Siberia. The book is engaging, informative and even has drawings by Frasier himself, illustrating the various landscapes and city scenes he encounters on his journeys. He crafts a narrative of Russia from its inception to the present day that is vastly more interesting than anything you'd read in a history book. He weaves this history lesson in with the story of his own travels, which, sadly, are not that interesting.

The book begins with his first encounter with Russia, through some friends of his and his wife's who are Russian expats living in New York. He goes with them on a visit to Moscow just after the fall of the Soviet Union, and is forever after infected with what he terms "Russia love." This first trip to Russia is fun to read because it is, in fact, his first trip. Everything is new and so very different from anything you'd find in America (as they're leaving the airport in Moscow, his female friend tells him there was a woman doing her dishes in the airport restroom) that you can't help but keep reading.

And then there's his longer trip driving across Siberia in August in a van with two guys he barely knows who speak less English than he does Russian; also an interesting read despite some stories that you must've had to have been there to understand the import of.

And then there's his trip across Siberia in winter, because if you're going to travel across Siberia, it only makes sense you'd do it, at least once, in winter.

And then, you'd think, that'd be enough. By then we've had several hundred pages of bleak landscapes and bleaker cities, piles of trash, ice highways that would make the Ice Road Truckers of reality TV fame crap their pants, abandoned gulags, a whole bunch of stuff about the Decemberists (not the band) and, despite all of that, beauty enough to make your heart ache.

But no. He goes back. And I don't even remember what happens, because it was that unimportant.

I wasn't disappointed with Travels in Siberia--the writing is superb, the subject is interesting, and I learned much about Siberia's history and its people--but the book could have been cut a great deal. There were a lot of self-indulgent moments on the part of the author, during which nothing much happened. Despite these moments, however, I would recommend this book to the avid nonfiction reader or to someone who is, like Frasier, suffering from a serious case of "Russia love."