Stuff I've Read: Troika by Adam Pelzman

A young stripper’s life is forever changed when a wealthy man walks into her bar. A Russian orphan with a dark past achieves the American Dream but causes irreparable harm to the people he loves. And a woman finds herself distanced from the love of her life after a tragic accident. Three stories form one enthralling, beautiful narrative in Adam Pelzman’s 2015 debut, Troika.

SPOILERS. There, I warned you.

Julian Pravdin walks into a strip club and, after a beer, buys some time in the Champagne Room with Perla, a principled, 23-year old stripper. After a few visits, they embark on a sexual relationship. Perla treasures this time with Julian; he’s decent looking, not a creep, and doesn’t treat her like a hooker. He calls her whenever he’s in town and leaves her alone when he’s not. Since she doesn’t believe much in love, it’s a perfect scenario. However, her opinion of the arrangement changes when she discovers that Julian is married.

As for Julian, he grew up in a Siberian orphanage. His father, a hunter and hometown legend, was mauled by a tiger. His mother’s heart broke, and to support herself and cope with her husband’s death, she turns to prostitution and gives Julian up for adoption. After several years at the orphanage, his mother comes to see him for one day. At the end of the day, Julian discovers that she promised sexual favors to the head of the orphanage for that privilege. Julian rectifies the situation with a blunt object and leaves with his mother. After his mother dies, 11-year old Julian makes his way to America. He marries his high-school sweetheart and has built a successful life in real estate, investments, and other money-making ventures. At the height of his life, a moment of poor judgment causes his marriage to lose its sexual spark, leaving Julian with crippling guilt.

Sophie’s life took a dramatic upward swing when she got to know the mysterious boy in high school. He helped her deal with a longstanding family grievance, and she helped him deal with the tragedy in his past. Twenty years later, she’s married to Julian, that mysterious boy from her class, and is now a wealthy socialite with an admirable lust for life. After a summer party where she and Julian drank far too much champagne, she insists that they drive home instead of walk. Julian takes the wheel, and the resulting accident severs her spinal cord and paralyzes her from the waist down. Her relationship with Julian is tragically, permanently altered, and she struggles with her ability to make him happy.

Adam Pelzman’s debut is, for the most part, a riveting character study of a man as viewed by the people around him. He doesn’t so much chronicle Julian’s life so much as show the impact Julian has on the world around him, and on the people caught in his wake. Julian himself is barely present as a character; of the three principal characters, Julian’s story is the only one told in past tense, third person. Sophie and Perla carry much of the present-day narration in a first-person, stream of consciousness style that I found quite compelling. We don’t hear Julian’s thoughts or his voice until the first epilogue. That unique style of storytelling turns the character into a modern-day Jay Gatsby. The story is phenomenally well told and has some sublime moments that place the reader squarely into the events as they play out. The best example I can give is a sex scene between Julian and his paraplegic wife. That scene detailed Sophie’s situation so intricately, my legs went numb out of sympathy.

The downside to this story is that its strength—the larger-than-the-story presence of Julian Pravdin—is also its weakness. Because Julian is the subject of the novel as well as the most influential character, he has the most potent effect on the world around him. Whenever he’s absent from the narrative, the story lags. The POV characters are simply more exciting when Julian is around, with a few exceptions late in the novel. That’s a shame; what seeks to be three interwoven narratives becomes strictly about the impact one man has on the lives of these two women. That’s not to say that Troika is a bad book, just one with lots of unrealized potential. Still, Pelzman’s competence as a storyteller is evident in the fact that the narrative never comes undone. I’m open to reading more of his work.

Troika is a unique and tragic love story, a solid read about the women in one wealthy man’s orbit, and the relationships they share. On the surface, that’s fine, but it could have been so much more.

Pros: Likable characters; solid storytelling; sexy without being vulgar; immersive description of waist-down paralysis

Cons: POV characters are not as appealing when they aren’t interacting with the main character.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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