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Random Acts of Heroic Love, by Danny Scheinmann
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With over 200,000 copies sold in the UK, a Richard & Judy pick, rights sold in 19 countries, called “riveting” and “mesmerizing,” this is a cinematic debut from a gifted new writer. Based on real family events, Danny Scheinmann’s novel paints a dramatic portrait of two epic love stories.
1992: Traveling through South America with his girlfriend, Leo wakes up in a hopsital to find his girlfriend is dead. He blames himself for the tragedy and is sucked into a spiral of despair. But a surprising secret leads Leo to discover something that will change his life forever. 1917: Moritz is a POW fugitve, with seven thousand kilometers of the Russian steppes separating him from his first love, whose memory has kept him alive through carnage and captivity. The war may be over, but he now faces a perilous journey and the insecurity of whether his love is still waiting.- Sales Rank: #3764046 in Books
- Published on: 2008
- Format: Import
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.80" h x 1.02" w x 4.96" l, .75 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 448 pages
From Booklist
“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” Tennyson once wrote. The primary characters in Scheinmann’s poignant debut novel are powerful examples of that sentiment. British professor Leo Deakin had been enjoying an exotic trip to Ecuador with his beloved Eleni when she was killed in a bus crash on one of the country’s notoriously perilous roads. Leo survived the accident, and his wounds healed, but his grief never abated. Nearly a century earlier, Polish soldier Moritz Daniecki bravely battled World War I and endured several POW camps, only to find himself thousands of miles from his sweetheart, Lotte. He trekked across the most desolate stretches of Siberia to reach her, ever wondering whether she would remember him at all. The link between Leo’s and Moritz’s lives is revealed in the novel’s late pages, as is Scheinmann’s very personal reason for penning the tale. Some may be frustrated by the novel’s lack of cohesion and flow, but the narrative strategy builds suspense, and the love story itself will hold readers. --Allison Block
Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Random Acts of Heroic Love
1THE MIND AFTER A SHARP BLOW TO THE HEAD IS LIKE A HOUSE after a hurricane: unrecognizable shards, shreds and splinters.Fragments of memory lie scattered in the wreckage. All the pieces are there, somewhere -- but the landscape is so distorted that, stumbling across them, the brain has no idea what they are or where they are from.'Where is Eleni?''Muerta,' says the doctor.Leo's eyes close, he is oddly calm watching the bomb hurtle towards him. One last look before he is swept away. He searches his mind and does not recognize the view. A thick fog smothers everything; he can just make out a few faintly familiar shapes. Muerta. He already knows she is dead. At the point of asking he had no idea but when he hears the answer it sounds like the confirmation of a memory he can't seem to bring to his mind. Something lurches out of the blur into sharp focus. Eleni. Droplet brown eyes, rich mane of ebony curls, bundle of electric energy,singing. Always singing, like others breathe. For a fleeting moment he feels her brightness and warmth. They were like a single atom, indivisible.The bomb is almost upon him. The atom is about to be split. The energy to be unleashed, ferocious and uncontrollable.'Can I see her?''No es buena idea.''Where is she?''Here, in another room.'A game is being played. The doctor doesn't want the patient to see his dead lover -- at least not yet. He is saying, 'Let's pretend she is not really dead. Muerta -- it's just a word.' This is a game of damage limitation. Leo plays along. He doesn't know where he is or how he got there. He has no memory of recent events. He knows only that he loves a girl called Eleni and that he must see her at all costs. He senses the panic in the doctor. If he shows any sign of cracking the doctor will keep them apart. So he plays calm.'Please let me see her.'The doctor clocks the steely determination in Leo's eyes and seems reassured; maybe the boy can cope after all. He doesn't know the story of these two young foreigners. He doesn't know the strength of their relationship.'Venga,' he says softly and indicates the door.It is only then that Leo realizes he is lying on a bed and that he must have been unconscious. His waking words were for Eleni. Something of that delirious soup lingers with him. Why does the doctor speak Spanish? The question hangs in his thoughts like a piece of string whose other end is lost in the haze. He pulls it and a thread emerges from the fog. A memory clings to it. I'm in Latin America. I came here with Eleni. But where? Guatemala? No, weflew to Colombia from there. Colombia then? No. He tugs at the string harder. No, not Colombia. After Colombia came Ecuador. Ecuador, what comes after Ecuador? Where were we going next? He pulls harder, the twine is fraying. Peru. From Ecuador to Peru. How? How did we get to Peru? The string snaps. No memory of getting to Peru. I must be in Ecuador or Peru. Probably Ecuador. I can't remember Peru. He contemplates the broken thread; he has no idea where to find the other end. He is at the edge of a hole whose size is as yet unfathomable. He stares into the void like a senile man who in a moment of lucidity knows that his mind is lost.He pulls himself to his feet. His head swirls and he puts his hand on the bed to steady himself. He blinks hard and tries to focus on the enamel basin on the wall opposite. One of the taps dribbles annoyingly; it must have been leaking for years because the water has left an ugly brown stain in the sink. Wherever he is, it is in a state of neglect. The paint peels from the walls and thick spiders' webs hang undisturbed in the corners. A solitary gecko surveys the scene from the ceiling. The doctor takes him by the arm and leads him down a corridor.They stop in front of a closed door. Leo knows she is on the other side. The doctor pushes it open. Eleni lies on a trolley bed. There is blood on her blue shirt; her shoulder is out of joint. There is a graze on her cheek. Now the bomb hits. Something inside him yields and the full implication of events explodes inside him. His blood thunders out of control, coursing through him like a river that has burst its banks; legs shudder and give way at the knees; breath shortens and rasps in his throat. His heart rejects the returning blood and empties itself; stomach locks, sending undigested waste crashing into the colon; anus pulls tight toprevent evacuation. His nose charges with fluid mucus, eyes blink obsessively, vision blurs with tears. He collapses to the floor and screams a high guttural scrape. Nurses three rooms away stop in their tracks like mothers responding to a baby's cry. People come running from all directions. The doctor closes the door. A murmuring crowd gathers outside. Some of the people know what has happened. They are witnesses who are being treated in the clinic themselves. They have been wondering what would happen when the gringo came round and was told his girlfriend had died. 'My God,' they have been saying, 'when that boy wakes up ... it is too terrible to contemplate.' And they cross themselves and thank Jesus that they will see their loved ones again.�
Leo is sobbing in a crumpled heap. He has never been so alone. Lost in some nameless South American town with his mind half gone. He stands up and goes to Eleni. He caresses her face tenderly. Her skin is still warm. Perhaps she is not dead, maybe she can be brought back to life. He looks at the doctor with a wild stray optimism in his eye. The kiss of life, maybe he can bring her back with the kiss of life. He pinches her nose and opens her mouth and breathes his desperate hope into her. Again and again he pours his life into her. Then he beats on her heart to make it beat. Harder he pummels. He knows that he is hurting her, that she will be bruised, but it is the only way. The doctor puts his hand on Leo's shoulder. But a pathetic tenacious hope has gripped Leo.'Electric shock. Have you got shock treatment? Er ... choc electrico. Tienes?''No hay, se�or. Esta muerta.'She can't be dead, he will not believe it. He continues to breathe into her. He begs for a miracle and a miracle happens. A low raspybreath comes up from deep within her. It is a sound he will remember for the rest of his life.'She's alive. She's breathing. Did you hear it?'The doctor is motionless. Leo is suddenly animated, he doesn't need this stupid, lazy doctor, he can resuscitate Eleni on his own. He fills her up feverishly and each time she responds with a breath.'Se�or, se�or!' The doctor places his hand again on Leo's shoulder. He ignores it, his heart is flying, he almost wants to laugh.'Se�or, she is not breathing. It is your breath coming back from her lungs.'Leo feels for Eleni's pulse. There is nothing. Once more he plummets into despair. He kisses her forehead and whispers words learned from her native Greek: 'Matyamou, karthiamou, psychemou.' My eyes, my heart, my soul.He strokes her hair as he used to sometimes when she was sleeping. Slowly the heat leaves her body. A minute later he is howling like a dog. How long this lasts he has no idea.�
The old doctor looks on from a corner. He battles back his own tears, he does not want to let his feelings conquer his professional dispassion. Later he will return home and weep in his wife's arms and hug her hard for many minutes, savouring her breath, her perfume and her love.�
The story has spread through the hospital and the crowd outside the door have been overcome by that unsavoury curiosity that grips people in the face of tragedy. Someone pushes open the door. They see a man ravaged in grief, his face raw and twisted,and next to him a small woman lying gnarled and lifeless on a bed. As one they draw in a sharp breath, and for a moment their faces mirror Leo's.'Go away, clear off. This is not a freak show. Leave me alone ...' And even as he speaks Leo's voice cracks and fades away. They have seen enough, they are ashamed and someone closes the door.�
The episode triggers a thought in his clouded mind. Why do I recognize those people? He turns to the doctor.'What is the date?''It is the second of April, senor.''The second of April?' He searches desperately inside for a connection.'Where am I?''Latacunga, se�or.'Latacunga -- he knows the name. Yes, now he remembers that he has been through Latacunga before. There is a busy market in the town square. He changed buses there with Eleni to go into the mountains. He is in Ecuador.'What date is it?' He forgets that he has just asked this question.'It is the second of April.''The second of April? What happened?''You were in a bus crash, se�or.'Nowhere in his memory can he place this information. It does not even create the slightest ripple across his psyche. He sits with the idea for a moment. No, he does not remember a bus or a crash. The thought hangs outside him like an alien trying to gain entry. His brain refuses to connect this information to any synapse or nerve ending. And yet somewhere lost in the internal wreckage sits the little black box, the flight recorder which carriesthe truth of what happened. A strange protective mechanism has kicked in which prevents him getting too close to the epicentre of his trauma. Like a witness in a court case who is not obliged to give evidence which could implicate him, so the body refuses the mind access to the information which could damage it.'What date is it?' He wonders if he has asked this question before.'The second of April, se�or,' the doctor repeats patiently.'What year?''1992.'Leo grapples with the year. He set off in 1991. When in 1991? The end, near the end. December 1991. So what happened over the last four months? A small light switches on and he sees himself lying on a beach with Eleni. It is New Year's Eve; they have taken a day trip from Cartagena in Colombia to a tropical island. Eleni is wearing her pink swimsuit. They lie there in sunbleached bliss with the surf at their feet. He turns to her and kisses her warm cheek.'You know, I can't think of anything in the whole universe that I want. I've got you at my side and I love you and that's it. There's nothing more to life than this.'Eleni smiles, leans over and kisses him. 'Let's photograph it,' she says. She takes out their small instant camera and holds it at arm's length above their heads and points it towards them. They check their positions in the reflection on the lens and take the picture. Click.�
He looks down at her corpse. The memory acts like a pair of hands that plough through his breastbone, rip open his ribcage and expose his heart to the elements. His spine melts away and hestands before his dead lover like a piece of limp flesh. He cannot breathe. His only thought now is that he wants to die and go with her.From nowhere he feels a shooting cramp through his leg. He looks down and notices his jeans are ripped and covered in blood. Next he feels a throb in his hands. They are cut and bleeding. Shards of glass stick out from the skin. For a moment he becomes quite self-absorbed picking out the splinters.His right shoulder is badly bruised and his hip joint fires sharp warning shots up his back. He realizes that he has suffered injuries all down his right side. But worst of all is his right knee. He cannot bend it or even feel it. How could he not notice the pain until now?�
What is the date? he wonders. He is too embarrassed to ask again. The door opens. The crowd has disappeared. A policeman enters and asks Leo to accompany him to the bus station to identify his bags. Leo is reluctant to leave Eleni's side but he is strangely open to suggestion. There is no fight left in him and he obediently follows the policeman out of the room. The doctor follows and Eleni is left in peace.'What is your name?' asks the policeman.'Leo Deakin.''It is very close, Leo, it won't take a minute,' the policeman says in Spanish.They step out of the clinic into the blinding evening sun and a wall of heat. The huge central plaza sprawls before them. A bustling South American market in full flow. On one side live cattle are being auctioned, llamas and cows foul the floor and chickens, foot-tied in hanging clusters, fill the air with feveredclucking. The fruit sellers sit on blankets in rows with their produce fanned out before them, and the wealthy Ottovalo Indians, hair in long plaits, hawk their multicoloured hand-woven hammocks and ponchos. Leo breaks out into a sweat. How unbearable the world is, so callous and indifferent. He shudders and recoils like a snake prodded with a stick. Lives beset with trivia and humdrum chores. Tedious mundane pathetic existences spent serving material gain. He is looking at the world through binoculars held the wrong way round. All is small and distant, unreachable and detached. He belongs to another world now, a bubble where he can hear his heartbeat and feel his skin wrinkle. The marketplace is a muffle a million miles away. Sounds are cushioned and unreal. He is underwater and no one notices that he is drowning.On his previous visit to that square he and Eleni could barely walk a yard before being swamped by hawkers and draped in clothes or jewellery they did not want. They resisted all offers until Leo caught sight of two tiny carved Inca heads, one male and one female. He bought them without haggling, and gave the male head to Eleni as a keepsake.But now as he walks through the square the traders instinctively turn away. For once he is avoided and ignored. There is something in the eyes of this man who is locked in a state of tragic bewilderment that disturbs the stallholders and dries the throat. This man is definitely not on a shopping spree.�
The policeman leads them to a small hut at the bus terminal. Normally it is full of bus drivers and ticket collectors but today they are huddled outside animatedly discussing the accident. They fall silent when they see Leo approaching. The hut ispacked high with bags and there, right in the middle, are two large rucksacks. He clambers towards them, unsure if they are his. He tries to lift the bags but a wave of dizziness overcomes him and he totters and winces. The doctor steps forward and picks the two bags up. Leo notices an ice pick and a pair of crampons sticking out from one of the bags. He stares at them curiously. He double-checks the nametag and sees Leo Deakin written on it.�
As they walk back across the square Leo's eyes flick side to side as he desperately tries to remember. Neurons and synapses spark inside him and suddenly something bolts out of the gloom. They are in a mountain hire shop in Quito. Leo loved climbing mountains; it was one of the most perfect pleasures in life. Perfect, because once you had gained the summit you knew you could go no further. You had a complete sense of achievement. This was a rare sensation for him in a life where so many activities were ongoing, never-ending, where you had to look into the future for any sign of contentment. Cotopaxi, which towered over the plateau like an alluring cone-shaped exotic dessert, was going to be a huge challenge. The assistant in the shop told them to spend the night at the mountain lodge at five thousand metres, maybe even two nights to acclimatize. He advised them to set off at 2 a.m. on the day of the climb so as to reach the summit for dawn, and return before the afternoon thaw, which would be treacherous. Crampons and picks would be a necessity, but if the weather held the walk would not be too difficult.'Are you both going to the top?' he asked.'Not me,' said Eleni. 'I'm climbing to the lodge and that's as far as I go.''Don't take any risks,' he warned. 'A couple of novices died up there last year.'Leo recalls eating breakfast. They had gone to their favourite cafe near their hotel. He had eaten a fruit salad with granola and honey. 'Breakfast of the gods,' he had called it; pineapple, maracuya, mango and passion fruit. As he recalls it he tastes it again. Eleni had scoffed down a banana pancake with melted chocolate, and could not prevent the hot sauce dribbling down her chin. They had lingered over coffee. Afterwards they had returned to their hotel and picked up their heavy backpacks and set off for the bus station. There it was at last, the bus station. They were later than they had planned by over an hour. Would Eleni be alive now if they hadn't taken so long over breakfast? His memory stops at the bus station; he still cannot see any aspect of the journey in his mind. Perhaps it is better not to know, but he cannot seem to stop his thoughts racing. The holes are slowly filling up, and despite itself the brain will work until the job is completed.RANDOM ACTS OF HEROIC LOVE. Copyright � 2007 by Danny Scheinmann. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
From Publishers Weekly
Young Leo Deakin wakes in a hospital in Ecuador in 1992 to discover that his girlfriend, Eleni, has died in a bus crash. Overwhelmed with guilt and grief, Leo returns to life seeking the meaning behind his new predicament: left behind, haunted by his dead lover and ambivalent over whether he should shake her hold on him. In an effort to break through his son's grief, Leo's dad imparts the tale of Leo's grandfather Moritz Daniecki, who as a WWI POW escaped across the Siberian wasteland to make it back to the woman he loved. The parallel powers of love and grief form the meeting points of these mirror sagas, which Scheinmann combines to remarkable effect. Leo and Moritz are tender, deeply feeling, put-upon characters who never descend into mawkishness; indeed, readers will feel most for Leo when he's at his worst. Dotted with strange scientific trivia, this beautiful debut novel provides deft moments of poignancy and surprise. (Jan.)
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Just Beautiful
By Gina
This was a beautifully written story which I was sad to see end. It truly touched my heart. I was totally transported into these people's lives. The stories were so different, yet the same--the journey we call life. I can't wait for Scheinmann's next book. Bring it on!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
2 beautiful love stories...
By S. Barnes
Five stars are not enough! 'Random Acts of Heroic Love', is an incredible debut novel from Danny Scheinmann. A labour of love in itself; in his acknowledgements the author says it took six years and numerous drafts to get it right, but all that painstaking work has paid dividends. It's a wonderfully rich, insightful and wrenchingly emotional novel.
The story begins in 1992 with Leo, a young PhD student, waking up in an Ecuadorian clinic to find that his girlfriend Eleni is dead. Eleni. His soulmate. The other half of his whole. She's been killed in a bus crash they were in - the only victim of the crash. Leo's loss, and his attempt to go on living, picking up the pieces of his previous existence, without Eleni, is just one half of the book. Leo turns to Physics to try and find some answers and interspersed throughout the pages of the novel are facsimile pages from a journal Leo was keeping to help him get through Eleni's death... One of the quotes Leo finds is the one I used for the title of my review.
The other story, which picks up at chapter 3, is every bit as heart-wrenching. It is the story of another young man from Galicia, Moritz Daniecki, caught up in the war on the Russian Front as a soldier from 1914 through to 1917. In 1914 before the outbreak of war, young Moritz meets the love of his life, Lotte, and they declare their love for each other before Moritz goes to war. During the war he suffers unbearable conditions before finally escaping from a prisoner of war camp in Sibera. Moritz tells the story of how he is driven across the Siberian wilderness by his everlasting love for Lotte. It is her memory and the letters that he writes to her that keeps him going on his journey... not knowing what he will find at the end.
The two stories are truly beautiful. Both young men are kept going through each and every day by their memories of love, and the connection between the two is revealed at the end (if you haven't already guessed). Superbly written. The harshness of a Siberian winter and First World War horrors are vividly brough to life by Scheinmann. The book takes you on a non-stop emotional roller coaster and only those with cast-iron feelings will remain unmoved! An exceptional book.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Parallel stories eventually hook up
By Dave Schwinghammer
When I'm desperate for a good book, I turn to Book-of-the-Month Club, one of the best sources for mid-list writers who don't get a lot of promotion. That's where I found Danny Scheinmann's RANDOM ACTS OF HEROIC LOVE.
RANDOM ACTS is really two parallel stories. In 1917, Austro-Hungarian soldier Moritz Daniecki escapes from a Siberian prison and walks seven thousand kilometers to find Lotte, the girl he left behind. He has several near-death experiences but his quest for Lotte keeps him alive. This one is based on Scheinmann's grandfather's experience. The second story jumps ahead to 1992. Leo Deakin's wife, Eleni, is killed in a bus accident in Ecuador. He blames himself and has an awful time getting over her death. Leo's thread takes some time to develop; he's a doctoral candidate, studying ants. Lots of people try to help him overcome his grief. Perhaps the most interesting is Roberto Panconesi, a physics professor with a unique perspective on the afterlife. Leo attends his lectures and keeps a notebook with illustrations. They're included in the book. I began to look forward to them; they're about love occurring in the natural world. Red ants mate in mid air. The Arctic Tern circumnavigates the globe to breed in the Arctic. It takes Scheinman almost three hundred pages to connect the two stories.
I chose this book because of the POW story and wound up loving it because of the Leo story. Roberto Panconesi shows Leo that colliding atoms are irretrievably connected until another relevant collision occurs. In other words, Leo won`t get over Eleni until he finds another girl.
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