Futility

About Futility

Futility by William Gerhardi is a novel written in the early 20th century. It blends comedy and melancholy in a Chekhov-like portrait of pre-revolutionary Russian society, seen through an Anglo-Russian narrator who becomes entangled with the turbulent Bursanov family. The likely focus is the clash of love, vanity, money, and obligation across a sprawling circle of relatives, dependents, and suitors, where every solution breeds new complications and a pervasive sense of futility. The opening of the book frames the narrator in Vladivostok, awaiting a ship home and deciding to set down his tale, then flashing back to a seaside dacha near Petersburg where he meets the three sisters—Sonia, Nina, and Vera—and glimpses the family’s fractures while watching Chekhov’s Three Sisters. At their city flat he learns that the commanding Fanny Ivanovna is not legally married to their father, Nikolai Vasilievich; constant quarrels, money troubles, and divorce tangles dominate. Nina and Vera depart for Moscow to their mother, and at the station the narrator impulsively proposes to Nina. Fanny then pours out her history: a proud German past, eleven years as Nikolai’s partner without divorce, his wife Magda’s disruptions, the illusion of Siberian gold mines, a mortgaged house, and a trail of dependents (including the silent “Kniaz”).

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