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Robert N. Reincke

Author of Death of a Past Life

2 Works 34 Members 17 Reviews 1 Favorited

About the Author

Includes the name: Robert N. Reincke

Works by Robert N. Reincke

Death of a Past Life (2008) 17 copies
Falling Off the Catwalk (2008) 17 copies

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Reincke, Robert N.
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Reviews

This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
As a fan of both history and historical fiction I read this book quite eagerly. As opposed to accurately portrayed historical fiction where the reader gets the sense that all that happens is mostly true. This book (I have a hard time calling it a novel) works the other way around where it is clear everything truly happened. It is this aspect that also makes the book fall short of its promise.

We are introduced to a proud Russian family who took up a prominent role in Russia around the last days of the Romanov empire. We follow them through generations and find out how the various family members struggle through the major conflicts of the 20th century. Details of interiors, people, and locales give a decent sense of being there and the dialog feels real because it most likely is (was). Many very intriguing facts about the characters are introduced that would make great side plots but those are never really followed up on. For example, why did Leonid gamble so much regarding all the personal richness he had in his life?

The reader gets the sense that the author is so much focused on writing down everything his family accurately remembered that a lot of corroborative detail is left out that would make the book come alive. For example, the word Tante is frequently used to mean Aunt. It is in fact a Dutch word that does indeed mean Aunt but the text gives the strong sensation that this is a word is just something the family just used for that purpose.

All in all the book reads as a slightly novelized history book of one prominent family as they struggle through major historical events. The type is large and appears to be almost double spaced, the formatting is awkward and the space and style is inappropriately used. For example: a text in the beginning of the novel has many typos but is not set in typewriter font to indicate to the reader this was the actual raw text as written by a family member.
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TheCriticalTimes | 7 other reviews | May 24, 2010 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Robert Reincke's book details his struggle with various addictions and his sexuality.

Although I read the book shortly after it arrived, much of his memoir has remained with me.

I admit it was a difficult read for me, but I did complete the book. I found the work to be disturbing in a way that only an honest portrayal of such a period in ones life can bring.

I would be interested in reading future offerings from this author.
 
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GrrlLovesBooks | 8 other reviews | Nov 12, 2009 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Falling Off the Catwalk has a great premise for a novel: a man struggling with his sexuality while also trying to break into the modeling world, simultaneously trying to overcome drug and alcohol addictions and reconcile everything with Christianity. Credit goes to Robert Reincke for tackling such a variety of themes and trying to wrap them into one cohesive novel, but in the end, he was not able to fully master the challenge.

For the first half of the novel, Reincke does a good bit of whining. The story circles around him not wanting to drink, do drugs, reject his sexuality, and the many friendships he loses while trying to become a model. The plot never advances, instead stalling and becoming nearly unbearable with the constant complaints about wanting more for one's life but never doing anything about it.

However, if the reader perseveres, Reincke's career, along with the plot, starts to move in more positive directions. Conflicts and struggles are never resolved, but there is at least some movement towards addressing the many problems he faces. He also seems to give a few more details and insights into the modeling world, which is the strength of the book.

There are some great ideas to examine in this novel, but the lack of depth in looking at them and overall progress towards coming to any resolutions leaves the book spinning out of control, much like Reincke describes his life, page after page.
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ironicqueery | 8 other reviews | Jul 29, 2009 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Death of a Past Life is an enigmatic book, an epic history that feels much of the time like it doesn't know quite what it wishes to be. Throughout, we get a strong sense of Robert Reincke's passion towards his material--it is, after all, based on his own family history, we are told--but it's hard to figure out what his ultimate plan was. And unfortunately, it's even harder to say whether he executed that plan effectively.

The novel opens with a short, typo-ridden passage "From the Life of Ann K.," which we learn much later was an actual unfinished work, written by Reincke's grandfather. From this, we are transported back to Russia in 1911 and into the daily lives of the bourgeois Katschalin family. As the Bolsheviks, World War I, Stalin, and World War II gradually ravage St. Petersburg and its environs, the family becomes fragmented by circumstance and necessity. While many try merely to stay together, the toll the conflicts take on Nick, Nina, and their daughter Ann become the focal point of the story, as they struggle to merely survive through famine and hardship.

Though the plot sounds riveting, there is a substantial conflict between Reincke's highly-researched historical passages and the details of family life. Domestic scenes are often portrayed as being simple and unassuming--a prime example involves the children at play on the family's dacha--and it's surprisingly hard to get a strong sense of the family's economic status because there is so little detail about their wealth and opulence (or lack thereof). As such, when the political turmoils of twentieth-century Russia begin to take their tolls at the end of Book 1, the depth of the hardship is difficult to fathom. From an historical standpoint, however, Reincke's prose, accurate though not always objective, is clear and precise. It creates an odd disconnect, one even more disconcerting for the fact that the novel is so invested in history's impact on the family and the familiar.

Nevertheless, the novel becomes increasingly more readable and engaging as it goes on. Early scenes of domestic benignity are populated by a very large cast of characters, many of whom play little more than a passing role in the proceedings. It is a very Russian-novel gesture, for certain, and one that I imagine is rooted deeply in Reincke's desire to properly anthologize his own family history, but it doesn't give the reader an opportunity to truly sympathize with many figures. In Books 2 and 3, when the focus shifts far more explicitly onto Nick, Nina, and Ann, the work begins to capture some of that missing emotional impact: we are allowed time with these characters, and as such we feel at last for their plight.

Though Book 3 is the novel's strongest section, it suffers, as does the rest of the novel, from a strange sense of abridgement--as if the book, though almost 500 pages in length, doesn't spend nearly as much time in each year of the life as it should. Particularly in later years, perhaps because of lack of content or particularly focused memories, entire years pass in the span of a few pages, most of the time concentrating on one single conversation between two characters. The result is the sense that the novel wishes to be an epic, but simply does not have the material to sustain it. More focus on particularly powerful (if disparate) moments, rather than on what seems to be the need to cover every year of the family history, would have made the impact of the work stronger.

So too would have been a clearer focus on the novel's intent. I've noted before that the novel seems to want to be historiography, ethnography, family history, and political treatise all in one, but by the time the novel comes to an end, it's hard to decipher what its larger point has been. The epilogue, in which the author lays himself bare as a descendent of the book's characters, reads like an unfortunately cheesy afterthought, with clichéd messages about "learning from the past so that we don't repeat it" obscuring the impact of the family's ultimate triumph. It feels like just another example of Reincke meaning well but trying to do too much, trying to turn it into a "message novel" where a semi-fictional historical novel would have sufficed.

Overall, the book is quite readable and easy enough to digest--even though the copy I received, which appeared to be not a proof but a finished bound copy, featured enough typos that it was rather noticeable. It seems, in summary, to be a microcosm for the work as a whole: a well-meaning, decently executed novel that, despite its best intentions, has more imperfections than I'm sure the author intended. Death of a Past Life tries, admirably, but it doesn't feel destined to enter the pantheon of great Russian family epics any time soon.
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dczapka | 7 other reviews | Jul 16, 2009 |

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Works
2
Members
34
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Rating
3.2
Reviews
17
ISBNs
3
Favorited
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