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Perhaps I've been desensitised to horror and suffering because there is so much of each on TV. Perhaps I've simply read a few too many accounts of life in concentration camps, early Australian penal colonies and Chinese laogai for my own good. Whatever the reason, I have to admit that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's largely autobiographical account of life in the Soviet gulag, didn't impress me much initially. About a quarter into the book, I was experiencing a powerful sense of, 'Is that all? Is this the worst thing that ever happened in the gulag?' You see, the classic status of the book (the fact that it is considered the must-read account of life in the gulag) had led me to believe that One Day in the Life would be a hair-raising story of terror and cruelty, an indictment of human brutality and dehumanisation if ever there was one. Instead, it turned out to be a fairly cheerful and occasionally dull story about a man who optimistically works his way through what turns out be, on the whole, a pretty good day by labour camp standards -- a day on which the guards treat him relatively well, he gets a little more soup than usual, and so on. So I was a little underwhelmed. I'm not proud to admit it, because I know it sounds callous, but there it is.

And then a strange thing happened. I started thinking about the book, wondering why Solzhenitsyn had chosen this particular format -- why he had chosen to focus on a good day in the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, rather than a more dramatic bad one. And I came to the conclusion that he had done so precisely to make his readers ask that question, to make them think of what a bad day in a Soviet labour camp would have been like, and then to turn that image over in their minds, realising that that really would have been horrible. Because that kind of involved thought -- the kind where you use your imagination and write a scenario of your own -- is bound to stay with you longer than a catalogue of horrors all spelled out for you. At least, that's how it works for me. By turning the possibility of a worse day than the one described in the book over in my mind, filling in all the gaps and supplying all the details myself (Solzhenitsyn helpfully provided some clues to send my mind in the right direction), I created a more indelible picture of life in the gulag than any gore-riddled account of Solzhenitsyn's could have provided me with, a picture that has stayed with me ever since. I suspect that was Solzhenitsyn's intention, but perhaps he was just being honest and describing things how they really were, because exaggerating them would only have resulted in claims of 'it wasn't really like that', thus invalidating the effect of his story.

Anyhow, whatever Solzhenitsyn's motives, I ended up admiring his restraint. I liked that he resisted the urge to write a spectacular and sensationalised account of life in the gulag, cramming ten years' worth of misery into one day in an inmate's life for greater dramatic effect. I also ended up appreciating his hero, Shukhov, who refuses to give in to despair and plods along in the knowledge that his only chance of survival lies in adapting to his circumstances. Shukhov works hard at his survival, scheming and planning and providing for himself in all the right ways. Such is his will to survive that I came away from the book with a powerful sense of admiration for this hardy character, who may or may not be Solzhenitsyn himself. I also found myself wondering on several occasions what I would do in Shukhov's position -- whether I would succumb to the harshness of my situation, like certain fellow prisoners of Shukhov's, whether I'd fight those in power at the risk of being broken by them, or whether I'd 'growl and submit', like Shukhov, licking arse and abandoning some of my principles while hanging on to others, purely with an eye to survival. As far as I'm concerned, any book which makes me assess my own values, principles and attitude towards life is a good one, so yes, from that point of view (as well as a few others) I would consider One Day in the Life a success.

That is not to say, however, that I think it's a brilliant book. I don't. While I admire Solzhenitsyn's ability to share a situation with his readers and convey willpower and resourcefulness in the person of his eminently practical protagonist, I'm not overly fond of his writing style, mostly because he has an annoying trick of inserting his protagonist's thoughts -- unidentified as such -- into an otherwise impersonal and objective third-person narrative. Take this paragraph, for instance:

In a corner near the door an orderly sat lazing on a stool. Beyond him, like a bent pole, stooped Shkuropatenko -- B219. That fathead -- staring out of the window, trying to see, even now, whether anyone was pinching some of his precious prefabs! You didn't spot us that time, you snoop!

Clearly, the 'You didn't spot us that time, you snoop!' is a Shukhov thought, as is the preceding sentence. I have no trouble recognising them as such, but I do find the way they are inserted into the mostly third-person narrative jarring. Solzhenitsyn does this a lot. He constantly switches from the first person to the third person, occasionally going from 'he' to 'we' to 'they' to 'I' in the space of mere paragraphs. Towards the end of the book, his use of alternating points of view became so muddled that it actually made me groan. So you can imagine I was a little surprised when I read in the introduction to the book that Solzhenitsyn was regarded a great stylist by his Russian peers. Personally, I beg to differ on that score, but not without admitting that, yes, One Day in the Life is an impressive book, as well as an important one. It may not be as spectacular as I expected it to be, but its remarkable optimism and life-affirming quality make it worthy of its reputation.