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    A Partial History of Lost Causes: A Novel
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    A Partial History of Lost Causes: A Novel
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    A Partial History of Lost Causes: A Novel
    Audiobook16 hours

    A Partial History of Lost Causes: A Novel

    Written by Jennifer duBois

    Narrated by Kathe Mazur and Stephen Hoye

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY PRIZE FOR DEBUT FICTION

    In Jennifer duBois's mesmerizing and exquisitely rendered debut novel, a long-lost letter links two disparate characters, each searching for meaning against seemingly insurmountable odds. With uncommon perception and wit, duBois explores the power of memory, the depths of human courage, and the endurance of love.

    NAMED BY THE NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION AS A 5 UNDER 35 AUTHOR ¢ WINNER OF THE CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD GOLD MEDAL FOR FIRST FICTION ¢ WINNER OF THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION ¢ NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE

    Astonishingly beautiful and brainy . . . [a] stunning novel.O: The Oprah Magazine

    I can't remember reading another novelat least not recentlythat's both incredibly intelligent and also emotionally engaging.Nancy Pearl, NPR

    In St. Petersburg, Russia, world chess champion Aleksandr Bezetov begins a quixotic quest: He launches a dissident presidential campaign against Vladimir Putin. He knows he will not winand that he is risking his life in the processbut a deeper conviction propels him forward.

    In Cambridge, Massachusetts, thirty-year-old English lecturer Irina Ellison struggles for a sense of purpose. Irina is certain she has inherited Huntington's diseasethe same cruel illness that ended her father's life. When Irina finds an old, photocopied letter her father wrote to the young Aleksandr Bezetov, she makes a fateful decision. Her father asked the chess prodigy a profound questionHow does one proceed in a lost causebut never received an adequate reply. Leaving everything behind, Irina travels to Russia to find Bezetov and get an answer for her father, and for herself.

    NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
    Salon ¢ BookPage

    Praise for A Partial History of Lost Causes

    A thrilling debut . . . [Jennifer] DuBois writes with haunting richness and fierce intelligence. . . . Full of bravado, insight, and clarity.Elle

    DuBois is precise and unsentimental. . . . She moves with a magician's control between points of view, continents, histories, and sympathies.The New Yorker

    A real page-turner . . . a psychological thriller of great nuance and complexity.The Dallas Morning News

    Terrific . . . In urgent fashion, duBois deftly evokes Russia's political and social metamorphosis over the past thirty years through the prism of this particular and moving relationship.Publishers Weekly (starred review)

    Hilarious and heartbreaking and a triumph of the imagination.Gary Shteyngart


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 20, 2012
    ISBN9780307969293
    Unavailable
    A Partial History of Lost Causes: A Novel
    Author

    Jennifer duBois

    Jennifer duBois is the author of The Last Language. Her first novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and winner of the California Book Award for First Work of Fiction. Soon after its publication, duBois received a Whiting Award and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award. Her second novel, Cartwheel, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and the winner of the Housatonic Book Award. And her third novel, The Spectators, was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Stanford University Stegner Fellowship, duBois teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University. She lives in Austin.

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    Reviews for A Partial History of Lost Causes

    4/5

    134 ratings21 reviews

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    • 3/5
      What becomes of a life when the ending has been predetermined? Not some abstract ending to a life well or poorly lived but a grisly knowledge of how and the unthinkable conditions of your demise. Irina's story is about her ending. There is so much more to this book but I just couldn't' or didn't want to get past Irina. The words and the thoughts were haunting. The timelines were interesting but I thought the approach to the ending just a little too neat.
    • 3/5
      A PARTIAL HISTORY OF LOST CAUSES by Jennifer duBois had been an unread book in my bookcase for long enough; I finally read it. But I must have expected too much. I remember all the reviews gushing over this book, but I was underwhelmed.So much has already been written about A PARTIAL HISTORY OF LOST CAUSES, I won't summarize it here. But I will say that duBois' writing is beautiful, really beautiful. It should make you want to continue even when the story is dragging.And that is the problem: the story is slow. In my mind, I was urging duBois to get to the point the whole time I was reading the book. Also, there isn’t much depth to either of the main characters. Therefore, points that should be sad or nerve racking aren’t.
    • 5/5
      When I received this book and I read the synopsis I could not for the life of me remember why I decided to review it. It was so very different from what I usually read. As I started to read I was almost immediately enthralled and suddenly very happy I had chosen to read the book. Not that it is a happy book, not by any means, but Ms. duBois has a writing style that just pulls you in and almost refuses to let you out.Irina Ellison grows up in the shadow of a father dying by inches from Huntingdon's disease. She learns at a very early age that she has inherited the gene for the disease and lives her life with the foreknowledge of her death. She foregoes attachments both with friends and lovers knowing how her life with play out. After her father dies she finds a letter he wrote to Chess World Champion Aleksandr Bezetov asking a question that was never answered. On a whim Irina travels to Russia to get the answer her father never received. Aleksandr is running a hopeless campaign for president against Putin at the time of her arrival and living under a cloud of death himself.Will she find her answer? Read the book. You won't be disappointed. It's like no other book I have ever read. Not easy, not simple, and nothing is clear cut, but the writing - the writing is just plain magical. Even when dealing with the worst that life has to offer. Irina is cranky, miserable and very hard to like and to be honest I didn't like her at all. It's rare for me to enjoy a book when I can't like the main character but I truly found it hard to put this one down. Aleksandr was no peach either. An arrogant, unpleasant teenager who didn't improve with age. And yet, the prose sings. It is one of those books that I know will be even better on a second read.
    • 4/5
      Originally published on Read Handed.A Partial History of Lost Causes is the debut novel of Jennifer DuBois, due to be published in March. DuBois is in her twenties; in the photo on the back of my advance reader's edition, her face looks young and eager. Yet between the covers, she weaves a story of death, politics, and human nature that seems far beyond her years. She must have researched the heck out of this novel.To me, the most complex element of A Partial History of Lost Causes is the Russian culture, political scene, and society depicted within its pages. One of the main characters, Aleksandr Bezetov, is a chess prodigy, eventual world champion, and for a time, the darling of Russian public relations. He plays by the rules of the Communist Party and his life is privileged and safe because of it. But bookending that experience are the years of Bezetov's life when he is truly himself - anti-communism, pro-democracy, out of naivety in his early life and on principle later. Now, in 2006, he is running for president of Russia against Vladimir Putin, knowing he will not win (and could, in all likelihood, die), but believing that the effort might make a difference someday in Russian politics.Interestingly, when I got online today to write this review, I saw an article with this headline: "Big Moscow Protest Rally Against Vote Fraud Begins". It seems that Putin will soon be running for this third term, and tens of thousands of Russians are demonstrating against "alleged electoral fraud" and are urging "an end to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's rule." Electoral fraud, and worse, are rampant in DuBois's portrayal of Russian politics, stretching back to the 1970s. Today's news indicates that the image she creates of post-Soviet Russia may be all-too accurate. Is real democracy in Russia a lost cause? Certainly the fictional Bezetov's campaign in the novel is. The second main character in A Partial History of Lost Causes is Irina Ellison, an American woman whose life itself is a lost cause. As a child and young adult, she watched her father's mind and body deteriorate from his Huntington's disease. In her early twenties she learns that she, too, has the genetic makeup for the debilitating illness. The doctors tell her that"Inheriting from the paternal line makes for a younger onset. In the office, they'd told me that my CAG number - my number of clotted chromosomal nucleotides - was 50, corresponding to an average onset of thirty-two years of age" (pg. 22).She essentially has about ten years left to live a normal life. And, for the most part, she squanders it. She "fell into the dark depression [she'd] promised everyone [she] would avoid" (pg. 23):"I started bringing home different men every weekend... It's a wonder that I escaped college without an unwanted pregnancy at the very least - full-blown AIDS at the worst. Somebody asked me about it once - a frat boy, strangely enough - as I was shrugging off the condom he dangled before me. 'Don't you worry about AIDS?' he said. And out loud I said no, not really, but in my head I thought, Please, please, please let me get AIDS so I can die of pneumonia, so my brain is the last thing out the door, so that when I die, it is actually me dying and not somebody else" (pg. 23-4). She eventually earns a PhD and starts teaching freshman composition courses at a local technical college. She doesn't form relationships or hobbies or much of anything. She "lived a life with an eye to leaving it" (pg. 80):"I could have had any or all - or most - of those things, I suppose, but my major characteristic flaw is an inability to invest in lost causes. When you are the lost cause, this makes for a lonely life" (pg. 31).At thirty, Irina finds an old box of her father's containing newspaper clippings about the Russian chess champion Aleksandr Bezetov. The box also contains a copy of a letter her father had written Bezetov years earlier. In it, he asks the chess prodigy about matches he knows he will lose - "When you find yourself playing such a game or match or tournament, what is the proper way to proceed?" In other words, how does one deal with life in the face of a lost cause? This question is posed throughout the novel, especially once Irina decides to track Bezetov down herself to get a belated answer to her father's query.A Partial History of Lost Causes is obviously a heavy novel - the terminal illness itself would make it such. Add a harsh, bleak Russian backdrop, oppression, and assassination attempts and you can't really expect to find much happiness. But the novel is introspective, philosophical, and multi-layered. Somehow amidst all the gloom, I emerged from the story with these lessons in mind: live your life to the fullest each day and, trying is often more important than winning.I highly recommend Jennifer DuBois's A Partial History of Lost Causes to lovers of literary fiction, those interested in Russian politics, and anyone who desires to read a complex and philosophical first novel.*The quotations in this post are from an advance reader's edition of the novel and may be different in the final version.
    • 3/5
      I find a huge slice of irony in the fact that this book was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award since I can only assume that the author, editor and every reviewer praising the book must hate ol' Ernie with a passion. After all, Hemingway would prune a sentence down to a noun and a verb and then try to prune it even more. And he would take the same less-is-more approach with paragraphs and chapters. This book, on the other hand, never met a sentence or a paragraph or chapter that it didn't think needed more ten-dollar words or clauses or asides or all three. And way too much of the extraneous stuff was pretentiousness on steroids. I could go on and on, but then I'd be guilty of the same offense that the writer and editor were guilty of here. Let's just say that it would be easy to assume that the author was being paid by the word.

      That's not to say that there aren't some really good observations here because that wouldn't be a fair statement. I would have just saved 80% of them for future books. Nonetheless, here are a few examples that impressed me enough to highlight as I went along:

      * There’s an intimacy in listening to somebody’s lies, I’ve always thought--you learn more about someone from the things they wish were true than from the things that actually are.
      * She sounded like she thought I was selling something, which was a reasonable conclusion. I’ve found that most people are selling something, even if they don’t always know what.
      * I was relieved by the extent of her English; the ability to communicate scorn should be the true test of fluency in any language.
      * “I think the only way to properly face doom is to be on time.”

      As for the story itself, it's the tale of two protagonists: chess master and eventual Russian presidential wannabe Aleksandr (told in the third-person omniscient) and Irina, a dying academic whose first-person story revolves around her decision to spend the remainder of her own life pursuing an unanswered question from her late father's life: what do you do when faced with a no-win scenario? Well, if you're Captain James T. Kirk, then you cheat, win and move on. But if you're Aleksandr or Irina, you flail about a lot. As characters, Aleksandr may be less tedious than Irina, but both are relentlessly self-absorbed navel-gazers. Irina just doubles down by being far more annoying on the pretentious bloat side of things, usually in the form of internal monologue. And boy, does she enjoy the internal monologues. And in the end, I don't know who was trying harder to show the reader how intelligent he or she was: Aleksandr, Irina or the author.

      The story is told in chapters that alternate between the two protagonists, with Aleksandr both introducing the story and wrapping it up. And it was that final chapter and its character fates that lifted this from being a two-star read for me. Still, this book was a major chore overall even though I could see that the author has talent. Maybe she needed a better editor or maybe she just needed to stop trying so hard. All I know is that I can't remember the last time I was more grateful to be done with a book, and now I need to reread some Hemingway to even things out a bit.
    • 4/5
      This is one of the most beautifully written books I've read in a very long time. It's almost hard to believe that it's a first novel but I suppose that's a silly thing to say because even brilliant writers have to have a first novel, right? I've always had a passing interest in Russian history so I fell right into the story of Aleksandr, former chess great become political activist, and his experience of first the USSR then Russia from the 1980s into the first decade of the 21st century. Equally, I've often wondered how a person with a terminal and debilitating illness might face their fate and Ms DuBois does an admirable job of explicating just such a situation. There are far more page corners dog-eared in this book than I usually allow myself and all done to keep track of beautiful turns of phrase. If for no other reason I look forward to her second novel due in September and, in the meantime, encourage all readers of literary fiction to try this one, first.
    • 4/5
      A very smart and mature book written by a first time author. The plot involves Irina Ellison a young lady whose dad becomes becomes intensely interested in a famous Russian chess champion. He decides to write a letter with questions to him but he doesn't get a response. After he passes away Irina decides to go on a quest to Russia to find the answers that her father hoped for. The book is well written and a good insight into the dysfunctional state of modern Russian politics as when the book takes place the chess star as decided to run for president against Vladmir Putin. It is also a testament to a daughter's love for her father. Ms. Dubois is an up and coming author we will be hearing a lot from in the future.
    • 5/5
      When 12 year old Irina suddenly beats her father in chess, it marks the beginning of his downward slope into the terrible disability that is Huntington Disease. Her father followed the great Russian chess masters and once corresponded with the world champion Alexandr Bezetov. A letter found by Irina after her father's passing becomes the motivation for her journey to Russia, in search of the former chess player now turned political dissident. Irina, who at 30 knows that the genetic markings of her father will begin soon with her, is looking for an answer. It is the same question her father asked of the famous Russian: how do you continue to go on playing when you know the game will end in defeat. Meanwhile in alternating chapters, (much like a chess match), we see Bezetov, starting back in 1980, when being a 20 year old prodigy could help propel a young mind out of poverty. Alexandr is taken to Leningrad's prestigious chess academy where he will eventually be groomed to be Russia's symbol of superiority. Alexandr' s journey from disgruntled star to heading a dissident party of Alternative Russia is the most fascinating part of the novel, a glimpse of Putin's Russia where any complaining voice may soon be silenced. As the 2008 Russian election grows closer, he too knows that he has no chance of winning. This is the set up for A Partial History of Lost Causes, a very well written, character driven story, remarkably rendered by a 35 year old in her first novel. Jennifer duBois was recognized as a National book award 5 under 35 winner and the Bookpage Best Book of 2012. It's amazing how talented a new novelist can be and how successful the Iowa Writers Workshop has been. Here are some lines to remember:"He hugged me. He smelled of ash, with wilder undertones of coffee and sky and liquor before noon."Bezetov about his true love Elizabeta: "to pine for a year for a woman whose moment in his life had been incidental, glancing, as implausible as a meteor shower or a brain aneurysm. She had bobbed to the surface of his life, then disappeared again. She’d hovered for half an hour above his personal lake of loneliness, a sea monster in a smudged photograph, probably not even real. She’d been above water for minutes. She’d barely even waved."Irina's reaction to her first meeting with Nikolai: "He leaned in closer to me. He stank of undercooked meat, of cheap alcohol, of the threat of violence. I thought I might faint from sheer character weakness."And my favorite line: "I think the only way to properly face doom is to be on time.”
    • 4/5
      It is hard to process that this is the debut work of an author. She has taken what is traditionally been a heavy involved subject, life in Russia and created a dirge to the Cold War era, embracing the “interminable stretch of a Russian winter” evoking the cold and dark weather and showing life in Eastern Europe as Dostoyevsky did. Her mind pictures are dramatic, each paragraph as if a postcard into the sole of her characters.
      She takes the well-worn subject of Russia’s mastery of modern-day chess, creates a character steeped in the game, Aleksandr and shows us how someone of meager beginnings can build a protected empire through the country’s one-upmanship with America for personal gain and advance through the corrupt political system to mount a run at the presidency against Putin in a quixotic and valiant attempt.
      Irina, an American student who was brought up playing chess with her father, and is now preparing to her life to Huntington’s disease, just as her father had done takes on her own impossible dream, and meet the chess-player that her father had sent letters to, and in a role of finding purpose in her life leaves everything behind to chase her lost cause.
      Their paths tangle and mesh in the most highly improbable fashion and both help form a lasting impression on each other’s fate as well as Russia itself. An improbable tale of endurance and love that will guide the reader down a path of unrequited expectation.
    • 5/5
      Today chess is often associated with old men in woolen sweaters who lived and loved in the 1940’s. What was once thought of as a prestigious game, is now considered more of a respectable hobby. The computer has replaced the brain as the quickest calculating machine, leaving many games like chess in its quake. This book is about two people and how their relationship with chess has brought them together. The main character is a brilliant man named Aleksandr Bezetov and the book describes the struggles that he endures while living in a chaotic Russia. It is a fascinating story of a brutal time in which people are ruled by the iron hand of the KGB. People are imprisoned and tortured for the tiniest of infractions. Chess is a way to temporary safeguard a position for Aleksandr and his family. It is a way to earn income and bring prestige to his name. However, he soon discovers the horrors that occur in the everyday life of his peers and decides to take action. This book is a journey into the past and a gradual move toward the future. It shares both the career growth of Aleksandr and the second character’s (Irina Ellison) visit to Russia. I found this book to be a very interesting interpretation of both the political and economic events of Russia. I like how the author used the game of chess as a way to introduce the reader to Putin and a communist Russia. I find that most of what the author wrote about could easily be applied to some major current events of today. I found both Aleksandr to be well thought out and his role to be excellent. He demonstrated how an average and a not so average citizen of Russia was watched and arrested. No one person was protected. I really feel that the book did not even need Irina. I understand that the author was using her to make an important statement to the reader. However, I honestly believe that this book could have stood alone without her. There was ample enough story without her and I really found Aleksandr’s story to be more interesting and often found myself skipping a couple of pages to get to his section. I found Irina to be a little pitiful and boring, while I admired Aleksandr for his persistence in pushing forward. Either way I enjoyed this book immensely and highly recommend it. For those that enjoy a more intellectual read, than this book is a must for you. I advise you to read it when you have ample time to spare or are on vacation. I also would like to thank the author and goodreads since this was given to me in a giveaway. It was much appreciated and I had a great time.
    • 3/5
      The Aleksandr chapters are really good. The Irina chapters are not and seem to be there to pad out the story and gain an American audience who wouldn't read a book about Russia unless there is some American hook. This is probably a pragmatic decision and since this novel would probably also win the award for most uses of the word pragmatic and all its derivations (there is one chapter where the word appears at least twice on each page for four or five pages), there's sort of a gleefulness in Irina's inclusion.
    • 5/5
      I got sucked into this book of human drama and the choices people make in life.
    • 3/5
      This novel at its core is about how people choose to live in the world and cope with their difficult circumstances. It follows world chess champion Aleksandr Bezetov as he rises to fame and joins the political fray in Russia and an American, Irina Ellison, who has been diagnosed with a terminal disease. Irena’s father once wrote a fan letter to Aleksandr and she decides to travel to Russia to get the answers her father never received. This novel covers a wide breath of time, political ideas and philosophical questions. While I enjoyed this book, I did find the pacing slow in parts and felt like I was never all that invested in the characters.
    • 4/5
      3 ½ stars out of 5. Knowing full well that authors often don't choose, or even have much say, in the titles of their books, I got this book partially because of the fabulous title. Whether Ms. Dubois chose this title, I can't say, but I love it.A complex chess prodigy in brutal Russia, a woman condemned to a slow and horrible death, and their intertwining fates and that of the Soviet Union, Russia, Communism, were all spun together to make a lovely story. The characters have depth, sometimes insight, and sometimes an amazing lack of insight.Some of the writing was lyrical, beautiful, as were some of the metaphors. Sometimes the writing and the metaphors seemed forced, too studied. The storyline was interesting and engaging, but moved too slowly in places. Irina bemoaning her genetic fate got old even though it was integral to the story.I like that the author was not afraid to write above the lowest common denominator, included a couple of words I didn't know, but the book wasn't written as though the author was trying to show off all the big words she knows.In the end, although I enjoyed much of the story, I came away from it feeling ultimately just a little dissatisfied.
    • 4/5
      Much of the writing is lovely, but, overall, the story became fairly tedious and depressing reading with main characters who often elicit more irritation than sympathy or admiration. Irina and Aleksandr's resignation to their respective fates and subsequent self-absorption and sometimes self-destructive actions resulted in the creation of two characters whom few people would want to actually meet. I believe the author demonstrated a more deft hand with prose, than with the development of storyline and character development.
    • 4/5
      A terminal diagnosis, the looming end to a relationship, those moments before the buzzer when a team is too far down to come back, a futile gesture, doggedly continuing a lost cause. How does a person go on in the face of certain defeat? That is the central question swirling throughout the narrative in DuBois' debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes.It is 1979 and young chess prodigy Aleksandr Bezetov moves to Leningrad starting to win his way ever closer to being declared the world chess champion even as he unintentionally joins a small dissident political group devoted to exposing the abuses of the Communist government. He treads a thin line between being worthy of adulation and of being arrested (or worse) as far as the government is concerned.Twenty-five years later, American Irina Ellison, who once watched Bezetov's chess matches on tv with her father, is looking for answers to how she should live her life. She watched her vibrant, intelligent father die a slow and horrifying death due to Huntington's Disease and she knows that she carries the same genetic ticking time bomb. She hasn't allowed herself to develop any close relationships with others, dreading the day she first manifests the jerking characteristic of the disease.And then Irina finds the carbon of a letter from her father addressed to Bezetov at the height of his career asking the improbable question of how to continue to play a game in the face of certain defeat. There is a non-answer from an unknown woman but no acknowledgement of the letter from Bezetov and so Irina decides that she is going to go to Russia and find the answer herself, even if it will be difficult to secure a meeting with Bezetov, who is now running a presidential campaign in opposition to Putin, having lost his chess title to IBM's computer many years prior.As these two troubled and lost souls swirl around each other, with Irina ultimately coming to work for Bezetov's campaign, there is a continual exploration of the necessity and desirability of pursuing lost causes. Irina tells her own story in first person while Aleksandr's tale is told in the third person omniscient. This makes the story slightly more Irina's than Aleksandr's. Both characters though are very introspective and suffer from disappointment. Irina's manifests itself as a sort of aimlessness while Aleksandr's comes out as a dogged need to thrust himself into the political spotlight no matter that he fully expects to lose the election and perhaps be assassinated as well. Both characters, despite their obvious parallels, are very different, almost equal and opposite sides of the coin of life. How they each choose to move forward despite the fact that the endgame will certainly not be theirs is fascinating to watch.The narrative itself is slightly depressing but the writing is gorgeous. DuBois has drawn a cold, unforgiving, and secretive place in Leningrad/St. Petersburg, imbuing it with an appropriate sense of tired menace. Setting here accurately reflects the internal struggles of the trapped characters. And while Aleksandr and Irina may have seperately found the way to persevere in the face of truly insurmountable odds, they are joyless in their discoveries. Perhaps that, ultimately, is the question that Irina should have asked: How to go on in the face of certain defeat but to still find happiness or at least satisfaction in the game. DuBois is a very talented writer and the book is one that will haunt me for some time but it definitely exudes an air of gloom, greyness, and resignation.
    • 5/5
      When I received this book and I read the synopsis I could not for the life of me remember why I decided to review it. It was so very different from what I usually read. As I started to read I was almost immediately enthralled and suddenly very happy I had chosen to read the book. Not that it is a happy book, not by any means, but Ms. duBois has a writing style that just pulls you in and almost refuses to let you out.Irina Ellison grows up in the shadow of a father dying by inches from Huntingdon's disease. She learns at a very early age that she has inherited the gene for the disease and lives her life with the foreknowledge of her death. She foregoes attachments both with friends and lovers knowing how her life with play out. After her father dies she finds a letter he wrote to Chess World Champion Aleksandr Bezetov asking a question that was never answered. On a whim Irina travels to Russia to get the answer her father never received. Aleksandr is running a hopeless campaign for president against Putin at the time of her arrival and living under a cloud of death himself.Will she find her answer? Read the book. You won't be disappointed. It's like no other book I have ever read. Not easy, not simple, and nothing is clear cut, but the writing - the writing is just plain magical. Even when dealing with the worst that life has to offer. Irina is cranky, miserable and very hard to like and to be honest I didn't like her at all. It's rare for me to enjoy a book when I can't like the main character but I truly found it hard to put this one down. Aleksandr was no peach either. An arrogant, unpleasant teenager who didn't improve with age. And yet, the prose sings. It is one of those books that I know will be even better on a second read.
    • 5/5
      A Partial History of Lost Causes is the story of one woman's fight against Huntington's and her efforts to avenge her deceased father's memory by tracking down a Russian chess player who had once failed to respond to a fan letter. Embarking on the adventure of her life, Irina goes to Russia to meet Aleksandr, the famed Russian Chess Champion, to get answers to life's most difficult question: how do you proceed when facing a lost cause? Aleksandr struggles with this question himself, faced with looking back on a life of regrets and missed opportunities as he is campaigning for president of Russia.This book was impossible to put down. Jennifer DuBois's writing is beautiful to the point of possessing an almost magical ability to transport the reader into Russian culture and the streets of Leningrad/Petersberg. Nearly every other sentence made me stop and wonder at her ability to write the absolute truth in just a few words. The characters are impeccably realistic, strong, fierce individuals who are facing tough decisions. And the depiction of Russia from 1979 to 2006 is brilliantly pessimistic. The story of Irina and Aleksandr is full of life and death, hope, optimism, and overcoming the odds not through miracles but through silent acts of goodwill and mysterious political maneuvers. But in the end, this story is not about Huntington's or Russian politics, or even chess, it is about how to keep going when all seems lost and how two people somehow found in each other exactly what they never knew they needed.
    • 5/5
      In 2006, Irina, a young American professor facing the imminent onset of hereditary Huntington’s disease, says goodbye to all she knows and travels to Russia to ask a question of Aleksandr Bezetov, a middle-aged chess champion and dissident challenging Putin in an upcoming election. The question concerns how one proceeds in the face of certain defeat, and years earlier her father, as his own disease was upon him, wrote to ask this of a much younger Bezetov. Bezetov never answered the letter, and Irina sees her quest as a means of giving some focus and meaning to her life. She also needs time to think about how to handle her certain decline: specifically, how to decide when to end its progression so she does not die as her father did, with mind and body long depleted. Irina’s narrative begins in 2006 and Bezetov’s in 1979, and they are told in alternating chapters which come closer in time as the book proceeds.At first it seems Aleksandr’s tale will be the more memorable of the two, with its marvelous description of life in the late Soviet era and the awakening of his political consciousness, and with Irina’s simply a framework for his story. But Irina’s question, and her musings about life and death even as she struggles to make sense of modern Russia, become extremely meaningful for both characters and for the reader. Irina and Alexsandr are delineated fully, and I came away feeling I knew them both very well. Irina’s search and Alexsandr’s answer move them towards their individual destinies, and the story resolves with a wholeness which feels perfect. Very, very highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I received the book through the Early Reviewers program. I thought the language in the first chapter seemed like it was a poor translation of a foreign book, and I dreaded reading the whole thing. I decided I should stick with it for at least 50 pages. To my surprise, the second chapter was a complete contrast; it was beautifully written! I ended up very much enjoying the book. It’s unique, thought-provoking and educational.I thought the author did a great job imagining a young woman anticipating a terminal illness. I also thought her depiction of life in Russia was well-done. I would highly recommend the book and think it would be a good choice for book discussion groups.
    • 4/5
      I absolutely loved this debut from Jennifer Dubois that I received from the Early Reviewer's program at Library Thing. It is my ideal book - a book in which I learn something real about another culture or country, all while I'm being entertained with a great fictional story. In this case, I learned a lot about Russian politics and culture as Irina, the main character, goes in search of the great chess champion Aleksandr Bezetov. The question at the heart of the book: How should one proceed when faced with a lost cause? A question which applies equally to chess, Russian politics and personal lives. I hope to hear a lot more from this young author!