3 - The house on the embankment (Dom na naberezhnoi)

Summary

Dom na naberezhnoi is in many ways Trifonov's best and most satisfying work. It is a return to the territory of Studenty, with the denunciation and dismissal of a respected professor in a higher educational institute the pivotal event of the narrative. But there the resemblance ends. Geoffrey Hosking remarks on the two novels:

The gentle, plush world of the Stalin Prize novel has become bitter, harsh and violent. There are yawning differences in status, power and privilege between the different characters; and the main plot now hangs on intrigues and denunciations. The only feature that the two novels have in common is the meticulous and detailed description of everyday life, of byt, as the Russians call it. Even here, there is a great difference: in the first novel, byt is the red carpet that leads into the future, its smoothness and attractiveness a proof that it is indeed the highway to ‘magnificent prospects’; whereas in the second, byt is a viscous fluid, a sticky, invincibly present here-and-now that over-whelms and drowns nearly all the characters.'

But the two novels are not merely different in their approach to rather similar subject-matter; the later novel is not only darker, but considerably more complex in terms of its narrative technique.