“The Vanishing Futurist” by Charlotte Hobson

This novel offers an unusual look at a period of history which in this centenary year seems very apposite. There are not many stories to read set in Moscow during the 1917 Revolution let alone one where the principal female character is English.

In May 1914 Gerly Freely moves to Moscow as a governess, she chooses to stay on with the Kobelev family after the outbreak of WW1, and endures the uprising and is both a witness and a victim of their volatile experiences.

The narration, by Gerly, is very much about her relationships with the family and the children. Whilst the parents escape south, the two older children Pasha and Sonja return to Moscow and endure, alongside older family members, the aftermath of the fall of the Tsar, and the eventual October revolution.

There is one other principal character, Nikita Slavkin, an inventor and scientist and a bit of an odd ball. He is the “vanisher” and it is the events that lead up to his disappearance that form the non domestic structure of this novel.

The household evolves into a commune, which becomes more mixed and interwoven as the months pass. The relationships within the household, and those of Nikita with Gerty and Sonja are complex. Gerty survives by working as a tutor and translator and becomes involved with a party official, Pelyagin. This strand of the story extracts the reader from the vagaries of the family home.

The author has previously written only a well received travel book, so this is her first venture into fiction, this is in part evident as Gerly recounts her experiences. So the reader knows she survives, but how their lives evolve should be read and not revealed by this review.

If you want to read something a bit different this autumn, this might be the novel for you. It has already been enjoyed by many of our customers, who have made the point of reporting back to the shop about it. Praise indeed!