Publisher's Synopsis
This work is more than a novel but an exploration of the Nietzschean will to power. As Oswald Spengler has noted, it is not the ideal, goodness, or morality that prevails-their kingdom is not of this world-but rather decisiveness, energy, presence of mind, practical talent. This fact cannot be gotten rid of with laments and moral condemnations. Man is thus, life is thus, history is thus. Mr. Deane's often hilarious new novel, Redemption of a house and farm, is largely an exploration of objectivism. While his characters are immersed in environments where belief systems are dominant, where expectations are instilled in the population that paths are largely preordained, the Strannik family, as outcasts find they must make their own ways without assuming that anything is given. Of course, all of humanity will find that fanciful assumptions are misleading, no matter how harsh or attractive they may be. As outcasts, indeterminate reality is nakedly incontrovertible, no matter how hard the family members try to wrap themselves in protective customs and conventions.
Narush Strannik is habitually guided by reason rather than expectation. His wife Plodovity is guided by sensibility shaped by experience rather than logic. She proves herself to be aware of circumstances and responds as an individual. When Katya Tuzemets dresses Plodovity's son, Pavel, for his funeral, his mother wants to strip away the flowers and ornate garments that she thinks make her son look like a dead dwarf clown rather than a child who suffered in contradiction of the principles of charity and mercy her hypocritical neighbours claim to espouse as Orthodox Christians. It is as if Plodovity believes Katya is mocking her dead child while dissimulating atonement for the collective guilt of the serf population of the Baki estate. Katya is guilty as an individual for the mockery which she initiates while Plodovity asserts her individualism when she attempts to tear the funereal decoration from her child. She is stopped by the collective strength of the women around the coffin. While the individual may struggle against the group, against its collective strength, it cannot resist it. However, the collective cannot act without the direction of another individual who interprets or shapes the dominant circumstances of the transient moment.
The collectivist mindset of the populace of the Baki estate results in them being consumed by stultifying envy and resentment. The Stranniks work to improve their lot each member of the family understanding his or her reasons for personal sacrifice, to work towards a modest earthly paradise where personal industry provides security and asylum from an encroaching world. Each of them contributes to a wall of manure and rubble and to the sturdy wooden walls of their redeemed izba. Georgiy and his cronies condemn Narush for taking over the farm that Azik Kostyrka abandoned when he was overwhelmed by greedy ambition. By his fixity in a belief that proved to be no more than a fancy, Kostyrka works both himself and his animals to the point of exhaustion. He takes on debt without reasoning for the interest he must pay, against his own self-interest. The reality of debt abnegates his hold on property. He is consumed by hatred towards his creditor and landlord. In his fury he acts against reason, becomes a murderer, and dies under the knout in prison. Kostyrka's land is left vacant through his own hamartia. He behaved as an individual but not as a reasoning human being. He raised his daughters according to his wishes, not according to the conditions in which they lived.
