Book Review: Michael Strogoff

© 1876 by Jules Verne

A few weeks ago at our summer rental down in Hilton Head, I came across a cash of gnarled yellow paperbacks on a shelf, along with a card: IF YOU TAKE A BOOK, LEAVE A BOOK.

I took this as an invitation. In exchange for James Michener’s 112-page The Bridges of Toko-ri, I plucked the 253-page Michael Strogoff, by Jules Verne, off the shelf and stashed it into my travel bag. Last night I finally finished it, after a ten-day read.

What did I think? It’s my second Verne book put away this year (I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea back in January). As a kid I loved all the movies made from the man’s oeuvre, and cracked a few of his novels via the Bookmobile back in the 70s.

I was very excited going in. I do enjoy losing myself in long voyages in fantastical lands. After all, The Lord of the Rings is my favorite book. Michael Strogoff promised a five-week, 3,600-mile journey through 19th-centurary Tsarist Russia. That seemed long and fantastical enough for me. I jumped into it with mucho gusto. Er, priyatno poznakomit’sya, I mean.

The plot is simple enough. There’s an uprising in Siberia, and city after city are falling to the invading Tartar armies, aided by a Russian traitor, Colonel Ivan Ogareff. The Internet of the time, telegraph wires, have been cut and communication between the Tsar in Moscow and his brother, the Grand Duke in Irkutsk, capital of Siberia, is nonexistent. Ogareff’s nefarious plot to betray the Duke is uncovered, and the only way a warning can be sent is by courier – a man tough and gritty enough to survive war-torn Siberia.

Michael Strogoff volunteers, and we travel with this rugged stoic woodsman over the next thirty chapters.

And it’s a journey for no mere mortal: “Michael Strogoff was a man certain of his road and devoid of doubt or hesitation, and in spite of the melancholy thoughts which possessed him he had preserved his clearness of mind, and made for his destined point as though it were visible on the horizon.” Were we all but a fraction of the man Michael Strogoff embodies.

My paperback Michael Strogoff, with my dog

But the poor courier undergoes one brutal ordeal after another. Warding off polar bear attacks, avoiding exploding shells in the middle of an artillery attack, fighting off wolves on ice floes adrift on a sea coated with petrol, enduring capture and torture at the hands of the evil Tartars, and all while eluding gypsy (“Tisgane”) spies working for Ogareff. And those Tartars are truly despicable. They snipe away at fleeing villagers trapped on floating sheets of ice. They bury a poor soul up to his neck in the frozen Siberan tundra for the crime of protecting a young girl’s purity. And, worse of all, something cringingly terrible happens to Michael Strogoff in their hands – he’s blinded!

How can he complete the mission and save the country he loves and the woman he’s fallen in love with?

Critics consider it one of Verne’s greatest works. I think it’s up there. It’s as close to the Platonic Form of adventure travelogue the author popularized in the late 19th century as any other of his works. This would have been great as a 1950s Cinemascope production, something like a DeMille-ian version of Around the World in Eighty Days.

I give it a strong B. Mainly because it was a tad too lengthy, weighted too much on the side of verbose exposition as opposed to classic witty Vernesian repartee. I wanted more of this, an early interchange between the French Alcide Jolivet and the English Harry Blount, foreign correspondents (and possibly spies) stationed in Mother Russia:

“What,” said the first, “are you on board this boat too, my dear fellow, you whom I met at the imperial fete in Moscow, and just caught a glimpse of at Nijni-Novgorod?”

“Yes, it’s me,” answered the second dryly.

“Well, really, I didn’t expect to be so closely followed by you.”

“Indeed! I am not following you, sir. I am preceding you.”

“Precede! Precede! Let us march abreast, keeping step, like two soldiers on parade, and for the time, at least, let us agree, if you will, that one shall not pass the other.”

“On the contrary, I shall pass you.”

“We shall see that, when we are on the theatre of war, but till then, why, let us be traveling companions. Later, we shall have both time and occasion to be rivals.”

“Enemies.”

“Enemies, if you like. There is a precision in your words, my dear fellow, which is particularly agreeable to me. One may always know what one has to look for, with you.”

“What is the harm?”

“No harm at all. So, in my turn, I will ask your permission to state our respective situations.”

“State away.”

Et cetera, et glorious cetera.

The main beef I had with the book, though, was that this book, more than just about any other I’ve read, desperately needed a map! Every page was so chocked full of the names of cities, villages, districts, mountains and mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, that my eyes began to glaze over. A map would have helped translate everything for me into a nice meaningful spatial relationship.

And then there was the issue of the protagonist. Michael Strogoff – and, oddly, Verne refers to this character by both his first and last names 99 percent of the time he’s mentioned – is almost a male Mary Sue. Perfect perfection perpetually. Even his love interest is a (true) Mary Sue, at least in a Victorian sense. (She does not kick the butt of any Tartar soldiers three times her weight and muscle mass.)

However, it was redeemed by a good twist in the final pages that truly surprised me – I did not see it coming (those who’ve read the book, see what I did there?). Overall, a fun read, though it could use a little more Blount and Jolivet and their entertaining back-and-forth, a little less grim consequences of pre-modern warfare, and about a hundred-page trim-down.

P.S. A verst, the ubiquitous unit of length found on every page in Michael Strogoff, is the approximate equivalent of two-thirds of a mile. Throughout the book Michael travels 5,280 versts.