The Snail on the Slope

By: Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Olena Bormashenko - translator

Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla

The Snail on the Slope takes place in two distinct worlds. One is the Administration, an institution run by a surreal, Kafkaesque bureaucracy whose aim is to govern the forest below. The other is the Forest, a place of fear, weird creatures, primitive people, and violence.

Peretz, who works at the Administration, wants to visit the Forest. Candide crashed in the Forest years ago and wants to return to the Administration.

Their journeys are surprising and strange, and listeners are left to puzzle out the mysteries of these foreign environments. The Strugatskys themselves called The Snail on the Slope "the most perfect and the most valuable of our works".

©2018 Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Okay Story with a Fantastic Epilogue

The story itself is okay but frustrating in areas. People do unspeakable crimes casually and openly, while stupid but tame people go along with the most bizarre routines and ideas. There is a great deal of repetition and you really feel like something else is going on. You follow two different characters each attempting to switch places and come across the most frustrating blockades. With small steps, our protagonists discover the reality of their situations, but unable to save their simple minded communities.

The epilogue explains the why for a lot of the books extractities and reveals the power of censorship. We discover the authors had created an entire universe, as parts were cut out by the editors, they had encased their ideas within a larger frame work in which the removed sections lived in secret. The Strugatsky's had made it very difficult to discern their interpretation of the story, to save themselves, but also allowed the tale to carry different meanings for their readers. I personally had gathered an entirely different interpretation and was awestruck when I heard the original intent of the creators. This only ads to the story in my eyes.

What insanity must feel like

I had recently finished the Dead Mountaineer's Inn and thought the Strugatsky brothers were a safe bet for a good read that would keep me interested so after perusing their available books I decided to go with, The Snail on the Slope. The beginning of the book is awesome. It's got the humor they like to sprinkle into their work, and the narrator's performance does a great job of doing justice to the characters. However once I got past a certain point I couldn't understand what was going on at all, and I was paying the utmost attention to the book, I finished because I felt the middle portion turning my brain to mush was the brothers challenging me. The afterword from Boris Strugatsky does explain the point to the madness though, which saves the book, but ultimately I can't give The Snail on the Slope any more than 3 stars.

Confusing... fun?

I've read several other Strugatsky Brothers novels, and this was among the more confusing. But it was a fun ride along the way, and by the time I had finished the afterword, I think it was all worth it. Fans of the Strugatskys will find a lot to like here...

front load the author's note

I'm not sure if this would have been better with a different narrator. His voices and manners were annoying. but I think perhaps the script was equally annoying.

it at least made more sense after hearing the author's note at the end. but it felt largely like a less interesting rehash of The Doomed City