Us Conductors by Sean Michaels: 5 of 5

First a caveat - I am a sucker for a book like this.  I love books that create characters out of historic figures and hang a story on the framework of a real life.  An early favourite in this 'genre' is  Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks.  The novel explores the life of Owen Brown, the brother of abolitionist John Brown.  [I liked the book so much, in fact, that I hiked to the top of the mountain where Owen Brown spent his last years herding sheep and left the book behind for another hiker.]  With that full disclosure out of the way, let my praise for Us Conductors begin.

In Us Conductors, Sean Michaels takes the life of Lev Sergeyvich Termen, the inventor of the theremin (and many other wondrous items), and spins a tale of the Soviet Union, of invention, of New York, and (most poignantly) of love.

The Giller Prize winning book hangs a story of near lifelong love on the frame of a brilliant scientist's life.  As backdrop we have Termen's likely work for the Soviet intelligence agency, his fame during some of the craziest times in American history, and then his disgraceful return to the U.S.S.R. and prison.  Linking all these things together in Michael's elegant arc of a story is Termen's love for Clara Rockmore, violinist and later theremin virtuoso.

In the author's note Michaels makes clear that this work is one of fiction, "full of distortions, elisions, omissions, and lies."  It is testament to his writing that the Termen he brings to life seems not just believable (except maybe the killing) but someone we wish were real.  His beauty is not in his heroism but in the romance of someone consumed by creation and by love.

A reviewer at the Montreal Review of Books complained that Michaels describes some characters "in a flat, uninteresting way," but I see the other characters' comparative 'flatness' as a result of the author's choice.  As a man consumed by his two passions, everything else seems to lack substance.  They reside in the shadows cast by the glow of invention and love.

I loved this novel; reading it, I fell in love with the idea of electrical current and the beauty of its ebb and flow.

To hear Michaels talk about the novel and the Giller prize, check out the CBC interview here.