All That Is Solid Melts into Air by Darragh McKeon Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“The past demands fidelity... I often think it’s the only thing that truly belongs to us.” - All That Is Solid Melts into Air, Darragh McKeon

All That Is Solid Melts into Air is a gripping end-of-empire novel, charting the collapse of the Soviet Union through the focal point of the Chernobyl disaster. Part historical epic, part love story, it recalls The English Patient in its mix of emotional intimacy and sweeping landscape.

In a run-down apartment block in Moscow, a nine-year-old piano prodigy practices silently for fear of disturbing the neighbors.

In a factory on the outskirts of the city, his aunt makes car parts, trying to hide her dissident past.

In the hospital, a leading surgeon buries himself deep in his work to avoid facing his failed marriage.

And in a rural village in the Ukraine, a teenage boy wakes up to a sky of the deepest crimson. In the fields, the ears of the cattle are dripping blood. Ten miles away, at the Chernobyl Power Plant, something unimaginable has happened.

Now their lives will change forever.

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is an astonishing end-of-empire novel by a major new talent.

What a beautiful book. How is it that the author doesn't have another novel out? His talent is absolutely insane, to the point where I was shocked it was a debut novel. The last time I felt that way towards a debut was Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (highly recommended, by the way). In some ways, this book is reminiscent of that, with a highly precocious child and a surgeon with a dark past- if the setting was moved from Chechnya to Belarus (despite what the summary says, the boy is from Belarus and Minsk is a prominent setting, which is also in Belarus). 

Despite its utter beauty, I still read this book like I was a bad car engine (Cassandra Clare call me), stopping and starting. Sometimes, I would just fly through the book, unable to put it down, and sometimes I would have to reread the same page five times. I found the parts of Chernobyl grotesque and tragic yet gripping and then the story would slow down dramatically as we would go back to Moscow with the piano prodigy. I think Grigory was  my favorite character, along with Artyom (who got jipped out of an ending, in my opinion). I wasn't crazy about Yevgeni, but I liked Maria enough that reading her parts interested me. 

Again, the shining star of this book is the parts about Chernobyl. It was amazing how the Soviets treated the accident, smothering it under propaganda whereas the people were dying of cancer caused by radiation. I didn't like the idea of nuclear power before this (ever since I read Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands)and now I definitely don't. I also did like the parts in Moscow that showed the people's growing resentment of the Soviet Union, evidenced by riots and vandalism, and the older generation who grew up during Stalin, Malenkov, and Khrushchev trying to make sense of this. The fall of empires has always fascinated me, and this book definitely delivers on that.

The ending wasn't my favorite, and it didn't really answer any questions I had about any of the characters. In my opinion, the book should have stopped before that final part, or McKeon should have found some other way to end the book, but it didn't lower my opinion of the book too much. The ending was mediocre, yes, but the book was still beautiful. I also thought that it was somewhat confusing, since there was little introduction to any of the flashbacks. The book really just dove headfirst into them with little warning. But those are really minor problems.

Overall, I agree with everything that people are saying about this book. Of course, because I'm me, I also need to point out the gorgeousness of the cover (seriously, the picture doesn't do this cover justice), and I love the title. It matches the book perfectly. Highly recommended for any bookworm as fascinated by Russia as I am.

8.5 out of 10