A Review of The 12 Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov

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A wonderfully funny book that takes the reader all across the USSR from small provincial towns to the big city lights of Moscow, and the mountains of the Caucuses.

The premise is simple. Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyoninov's mother-in-law confesses to the former nobleman that she has his their family's jewels in one of their old Gambs chair's stuffing. Now Vorobyoninov teams up with the smooth operator, Ostap Bender, to find the chairs and gain their riches. The problem is that there are twelve identical chairs that have each an equal chance of containing the loot.

This book is very funny. It pokes fun at the system Ilf and Petrov are living under, purposefully has character misquote authors and get historical facts wrong, and the dialogue between characters is also hilarious.

The character's also each have their own personalities that are fun to watch change and grow. For example, Vorobyaninov wakes up and depending on his mood either says "Guten Morgen" or "Bonjour" before this adventure starts. Ostap is the son of a Turkish subject whose smooth talking usually gets him out of jams. He is very money conscious, to the point that he makes sure to tell Ippolit that he now owes him 2 Rubles for the shave and haircut he had to perform on him after the hair dyeing process failed.

While inspecting a social security building for the chairs, Ostap is disguised as a fire inspector and sets off a fire extinguisher that shoots off not foam, but rather a high-pitched whistle for the duration of the inspection until nearing the end it sends out a stream of foam. This was very well written and very funny.

Ilf and Petrov also poke fun at the USSR. They talk about how some of the furniture that was taken from Vorobyoninov's family was given to an official, talk about how the head of a town improvement department tore down a triumph arch in order to improve traffic, and even have one character mention how he has kept the record of where all the seized furniture has gone in case the USSR fails and the information is worth something.

The funniest part of the book to me was the whole Vasyuki chess debacle. Bender being so confident in his con abilities that he thinks he can play the part of a chess grand master and fool a whole chess club is hilarious. He accidentally plays certain openings, he tries to steal players pieces, and has no idea what he is doing. All the while this whole time, he has only played chess one time before in his life.

Another one of the funny moments came when Ernest Pavlovich Shchukin gets locked out of his apartments after lathering up with soap and has no towel. Picturing a grown man covered in bubbles, on his apartment's landing, yelling down for help, too scared to walk down to get a spare key is hilarious.

Also need to remember to ask if the price of oats has gone up if something is too expensive!