Category Archives: Russia

Review: AGENT 6 by Tom Rob Smith

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AGENT 6 is the somewhat epic conclusion to Tom Rob Smith’s trilogy featuring MGB agent turned human being Leo Demidov. It takes readers from 1950 to 1980 and from Russia to America to Afghanistan in something that feels less like a thriller than it does a haphazard tour through the lowlights of Soviet-era history. As the book opens we’re in 1950 which is earlier than the action in the first two books and we see Leo at the height of his powers as a security agent who very much believes in the value of his role to the country he loves. He has been assigned a new agent to mentor and there are chilling scenes in which Leo teaches his protegé what to look for in a person’s diary in order to discern how much harm that person could potentially be to the State (the premise being that no one with a diary could be entirely harmless). Leo is also asked to assist with arrangements for the visit to Russia of American singer Jesse Austin (loosely modelled on Paul Robeson), one of the few western artists permitted to visit the country and only because of his professed belief in and support for communism. The visit provides an opportunity for Leo to properly meet Raisa, a woman he spoke to briefly on the train one day and the person who will become his wife.

This action ends rather abruptly and we jump forward 15 years to the period following Leo’s downfall and departure from government service (all of which is covered in the other two books in the set, CHILD 44 and THE SECRET SPEECH). Leo is disillusioned but seems happy enough; his loss of faith in the communist state is made up for by having his family around him. However that family, his wife Raisa and adopted daughters Elena and Zoya, are soon off on a state-sponsored trip to New York where the girls are to be part of a joint choir with American children at the United Nations. Many of the reviews and synopses I’ve seen describe subsequent events to this but I think that spoils things so shall stop here, except to say that members of the Russian delegation get in touch with their supporter Jesse Austin and the trip does not end as expected.

I almost didn’t bother reading this book after the disappointment which was its predecessor but I had an urge to complete the trilogy and did wonder if Smith had managed to recreate any of the magic of his first book, CHILD 44, which I can still remember passages from three years after reading it. In the end I am glad I read AGENT 6 because it washed away the distaste left behind by the ludicrous second novel, even if it didn’t manage to achieve the particular magic of that first novel.

The biggest difference between CHILD 44 and the subsequent books is that CHILD 44 essentially told a single, coherent story and almost as a by-product of that demonstrated broader points about the awfulness of a totalitarian regime, the lengths people will go to when they are pushed too far and the misery that can accompany seriously having to question one’s long-held beliefs. The story itself is quite intimate and allows the reader to be drawn into Leo’s world and develop a sense of the changes he is experiencing. The remaining books in the trilogy largely lacked this layer of narrative and so, for me, the power of exploring the broader issues was dissipated as we jumped hither and thither through Soviet history without any real focus. In AGENT 6 though there is an echo of the first book’s intimacy in the thread that depicts the life of Jesse Austin and his fall from grace, orchestrated by an unforgiving government. Austin’s dignity and his wife’s steadfast support of her husband and refusal to be bitter about all they lose were heart-achingly sad, especially when juxtaposed with the mean-spirited and cynical people attempting to use the Austin’s on both sides of the America versus communism fight.

For me the rest of the book is less successful, being too disjointed and broad to be fully engaging. The large chunk that takes place in Afghanistan, where Leo is forced once again to work for the State, though this time with his eyes open, was too long-winded. It felt to me like the author was trying way too hard to highlight the parallels between the Soviet attempt to conquer the country and the current war being fought there by America and its allies. This section of the book did introduce someone who should have been a compelling and sympathetic character but she didn’t quite work for me and in the end I don’t think she or the entire section added much to this book or the trilogy overall.

Like most readers I’m sure I spent most of the book wondering when the eponymous agent 6 would appear and then being quite disappointed when it finally happened but at least the ending of this book had less of a Hollywood feel than its predecessors. I do think Smith is a talented writer and even though I don’t think the ambition of this trilogy was evenly successful I’m glad to have read it and met some of the beautifully drawn characters. If you have read the other two books in the series I would definitely recommend you complete the picture with this one but if you’ve yet to start I’d just read CHILD 44 and leave it there.

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I have reviewed CHILD 44 and THE SECRET SPEECH

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My rating 3/5
Narrator Gareth Armstrong
Publisher Simon & Schuster UK [2011]
ASIN B005KTRZHC (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 13 hours 33 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #3 of Leo Demidov trilogy
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: Pelagia & the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin

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After an abandoned attempt to read Death in Breslau I borrowed a second book from the local library to kick off this year’s Eastern Europe Challenge.

Pelagia & the White Bulldog is the first novel of a series set in late 19th century Russia and introduces Sister Pelagia: “a fidgety, curious woman, undignified in her movements and not cut out to be a nun.” She is tasked by the Bishop of Zavolzhie to investigate a situation which is vexing his Aunt who claims that someone has tried to poison the last remaining examples of the the white bulldogs with brown ears that her husband had especially bred before his death. That is really all I can tell you about the plot without delving into action that does not take place until the half-way point of the novel. Although I suppose it is not spoiling things too much to add that there is a second (eventually intertwined) storyline relating to the appointment of Vladimir Lvovich Bubenstov as a representative of the Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod to investigate religious improprieties in the town.

I have to admit to struggling with this book and in some ways I shouldn’t have been surprised. One of the reasons I stopped a formal study of literature during my University days was that I couldn’t face reading what I came to think of as ‘another bloody Russian’ that the syllabus seemed to be full of. I don’t know if it is the original writing or the way the language is translated into English but the one thing the Russian fiction of my acquaintance has in common is an unwillingness to use 10 words when 200 (or 2000) are available. I found the flowery, long-winded prose of Tolstoy and Dostoyesvky dread-inducing all those years ago but I thought perhaps a less ‘worthy’, more recent title might be different. Alas I did not find it so. Amidst the interminably lengthy descriptions of nothing much at all there is a story, of sorts, here but not one that kept me particularly engaged (and not one that couldn’t have been told in one-third the word count). I teased out some interesting observations about the politics of the day but as a mystery the book left a lot to be desired in that the culprit for the crimes that were eventually described was obvious almost from the outset and the way in which Pelagia deduced the answer bordered on the inane.

I didn’t find the characters particularly enjoyable either. I thought I would like Pelagia’s quirkiness but she soon turned into a kind of reject from a Carry On movie what with knocking over fruit bowls and spilling tea in men’s crotches and whatnot. Slapstick has never been my humour of choice. The rest of the characters were all pretty formulaic for the intimate melodrama the book turned into, though the way Bubenstov hid is evilness was the most entertaining thing about the book for me.

I know there are readers who don’t share my admiration for brevity and conciseness and more who simply enjoy the kind of writing that Akunin has produced here. I am probably the poorer for not being able to appreciate this particular style but it can’t be helped. For me the hints of wry humour and mildly interesting plot were lost in the flowery, tangent-riddled prose that made me want to poke my own eyes out with one of the knitting needles that Pelagia carried everywhere.

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I couldn’t find much in the way of online reviewing of this book but did come across a 2006 review in the UK paper The Independent that describes a similar reaction to mine. However in the interests of fairness you might want to check Amazon for some more positive reviews.

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My rating 2/5 (yes it probably is a little low, but it’s my opinion after all, as all the reviews here are, I’m not making any claims to objectivity)
Author website http://www.boris-akunin.com/
Translator Andrew Bromfield
Publisher Weidenfield & Nicolson [this translation 2006, original edition 2000]
ISBN 0297852507
Length 295 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #1 in the Sister Pelagia series
Source borrowed from the library

Review: The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith

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It is 1956 in Russia. Former MGB Officer Leo Demidov and his wife Raisa are trying to make a life for their odd little family. Raisa has only recently fallen in love with the man she was married to for many years before that but she could not love him while he carried out the brutal instructions of his superiors in the Stalinist regime but Leo had an epiphany three years earlier (depicted in the first book in this planned trilogy, Child 44) and stopped his violent activities. Now they are adoptive parents to Elena and Zoya whose parents were killed in an incident in which Leo participated and while 7 year old Elena is happy enough to join the new family 14 year old Zoya cannot forgive Leo for his role in her parents’ death. When Stalin’s successor Nikita Kkrushchev, gives a speech denouncing and apologising for the brutalities committed by the state under Stalin, one woman from Leo’s past who now calls herself Fraera begins a program of violent revenge which involves taking from Leo everything he holds dear.

In an author interview included in my edition of this book Smith declared he wanted to write something with the excitement of the TV show 24 and I think he has succeeded (although I’ve only ever seen a handful of episodes of that show). It is a thriller in the Robert Ludlum style with action and plot twists a-plenty. We move at breakneck speed from Moscow to a prison ship to a Gulag to occupied Hungary and we watch people turn on each other again and again until this reader could barely keep track of who was on which side.

I couldn’t help but compare this book to its predecessor which was one of my top ten reads of last year and the comparison is fairly unflattering. Where Child 44 provided subtle and intimate portraits of a range of people and depicted a quite breathtaking range of emotional stories The Secret Speech has a singular bludgeoning, violent tone and is full of people motivated primarily by self-interest, vengeance or both. There is really only one character whose motives are different and sadly she is not terribly well developed. For me the least impressive part of Child 44 was the final quarter of the tale which moved from careful psychological suspense to Hollywood style thriller and The Secret Speech has continued that later aspect without incorporating the pervading sense of oppression and fear that made the  first book so compelling. Reading this book I never once forgot that I was reading a fictional tale whereas the first book was so absorbing that you could believe those decisions had been made and emotions had been felt by real people.

The story here is overly complex and relies too heavily on a string of coincidences and unlikely escapes and the book is driven mostly by narrative instead of its characters. Leo is a far less complicated character in this novel, although there are glimpses of his insightful introspection when he considers the problem of his interactions with his adopted daughter. But whereas in the first book I could sense his angst about having done bad things for what he thought at the time were good reasons here he seems to have no compunction about doing bad things, presumably because the good reasons are different ones than before?

The character of Fraera is used to advance much of the plot but I found her motivations confused and overall she was not convincing. She demands her gang members behave in exactly the same way as the State demanded of its workers like Leo (i.e. blind obedience regardless of the instructions up to and including murder) and I’m not convinced that having one of the characters point this out excuses the fact that it is a fairly blunt plot device (and really just increases the body count).

If you’re after an adrenalin-filled thriller with loads of fighting and in-the-nick-of-time escapes then you will enjoy The Secret Speech and probably won’t need to have read the first book as Smith has done a good job of incorporating information from the previous book without making it too boring for those who have read it. It does weave real and fictional events together well too and if you’re anything like me it will send you off to ‘research’ (i.e. google) which of the events that were depicted were real. If you’re looking for something extra, like the intimate character portraits of Child 44 then I think you might be disappointed, though perhaps I was being unreasonable in expecting a second exceptional book.

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The Secret Speech has been reviewed at Euro Crime

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My rating 3/5
Publisher Pocket Books [this edition 2010, original edition 2009]
ISBN 9781847391605
Length 449 pages
Format paperback
Source I bought it

Review: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

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Title: Child 44

Author: Tom Rob Smith

Publisher: Whole Story Audio Books

ISBN: N/A (digital download via audible)

Length:14hrs 23mins

Narrator: Steven Pacey

It’s the early 1950′s in Russia and Leo Demidov is a war hero and high-ranking officer in the security services (specifically the MGB). He is asked to handle the delicate issue of a fellow MGB officer whose son has just died and who is claiming the boy was murdered rather than dying in accident as the official paperwork claims. Leo must convince the boy’s parents to stop making the claims of murder or risk their own arrest because, as everyone knows, senseless murders only happen in Corrupt western countries. At the same time Leo is investigating whether or not a Moscow vet, Anatoli Brodski, is a traitor as has been alleged. Both cases turn out to have unexpected impacts on Leo’s life when he’s thrown out of the MGB and he and his wife Raisa are punished for their transgressions.

In his debut novel Smith has painted a bleak picture of Stalin’s Russia where blind faith in the State, or pretence of it, is the norm. Across the disparate parts of this story people’s actions and decisions are fuelled by paranoia, desperation and vengeance. Many people abuse whatever power they have and many others live in constant fear of that abuse. The few acts motivated by love, friendship or hope are memorable for their rarity. In some ways this is a familiar picture of Russia during this era but I thought Smith did a better job than many writers in demonstrating the subtle differences in people’s behaviour and exploring the reasons behind that behaviour rather than portraying everyone in as stereotypical good and evil as is often the case.

Few of the characters are likable however understandable their actions may be. But likable characters aren’t necessary for me to find a book engaging: far more important is their believability and I found these people very credible in the context of the world Smith has depicted. I did though, in the end, grow quite fond of Leo even though many of his actions were abhorrent and I’m not entirely convinced that the kind of redemption explored in the novel is possible in the real world.

The writing is breathtaking in the way it depicts scenes so vividly that you’re transported to the places where action takes place and can feel the emotions of those involved. The opening passage for example, in which two young brothers catch a cat so they can eat a proper meal during a time when their entire village is literally starving to death, is stunning. By the end of it I swear my own amply full stomach was growling in sympathetic hunger pangs. Smith uses rich descriptions and exquisite details to provide a vivid picture of a time and place I’m very happy to have only visited in fiction.

For the most part the structure of the book is good too. Rather than the story unfolding in a linear fashion readers are shown events in various people’s lives which, at first, seem to have nothing to do with each other but later turn out to be related in unexpected ways. This piecing together gives the book an epic feel which is unusual for a book that takes place over the period of only a few months. My main criticism of an otherwise terrific book is that in the last third the plot moved from credible to silly with the number of ‘in-the-nick-of-time’ escapes and coincidences used to get to the ending. The sudden shift from nicely paced narrative to edge-of-your-seat thriller was jarring and unnecessary: these people’s stories were gripping enough without the addition of the ‘Hollywood’ elements and a resolution in keeping with the rest of the novel would have made much more sense.

There was a lot of hype about Child 44 when it was published (it was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize) which made me wait a while before reading it but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It’s an evocative portrayal of a time and place that’s been demonised many times in literature and movies but rarely explored in such a thoughtful and thought-provoking way.

Audio book Specific Comments: A couple of times the narration crossed the line from reading into performance although it was only with the voices of a couple of minor characters so it wasn’t too jarring. Listening to this book provided an unexpected advantage too. When reading books set in non English speaking places I, being woefully monolingual, usually have to come up with some anglicised version of people and place names to keep everything clear this can interrupt the flow of my reading. Having the many names pronounced perfectly for me removed this frustrating element and I found it much easier to keep track of all the places and people than I normally do with foreign names.

My rating 4.5/5

Other Stuff

Reviewed at It’s A Crime (Or A Mystery)

Reviewed at Euro Crime