SOURCE: Tahourdin, Adrian. “Sun on the Tundra.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5051 (21 January 2000): 22.

In the following review, Tahourdin delineates similarities and differences between Once upon the River Love and Le testament français.

Once upon the River Love was originally published before Le testament français (1995), the prizewinning novel which made Andreï Makine's reputation in his adopted country, France. There are similarities between the two: both books are set in the Brezhnev era, against a backdrop of grim Soviet industrialism; both express a yearning for the West, in particular for France; and both evince a love of French culture, absorbed from afar. Once upon the River Love, which takes place mostly in a snowbound village in eastern Siberia (“our doomed territories”), feels autobiographical in much the same way as the later novel, an affecting depiction of rites of passage. There is the same lyrical intensity that characterized Le testament...