The Arbat is a Moscow neighborhood; its children are the teens and twenty-somethings caught up in Stalin’s increasingly repressive communism of the 1930s. These youth are generally supportive of the socialist ideals that brought communists to power in the years when they were born, are anxious to uplift of the proletariat and at the same time enjoy the vices and virtues of cafes, restaurants, and urban nightlife. One of their own, however, Sasha Pankratov, is exiled to Siberia on charges that are unfairly enforced by a mid-level government apparatchik. Stalin is portrayed throughout as an increasingly paranoid and unstable megalomaniac. Sasha’s friends blindly feel their way into an increasingly uncertain future — the rule of law is vanishing, Germany is increasingly militaristic, government is less trustworthy — and Sasha must decide how to make meaning with what is left of his life in a world with other exiles surviving among Siberian peasants. Rybakov wrote this book while still under communist rule and released it just as perestroika was first opening the USSR. My mother’s Russian immigrant friend was a child of the Arbat and says the book is spot on accurate.
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The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon *** (of 5)
In 1908 a Jewish immigrant named Lazarus Averbuch knocked on the door of Chicago’s police chief. After handing the Chief Shippy a letter (we never learn what it says), a frightened police force shoots Lazarus several times until he is quite dead. Aleksander Hemon writes one fictional account of Lazarus’s murder, a second of the author’s parallel immigration from Bosnia to the United States, a third about his investigation into Lazarus’s origins in Eastern Europe and life in Chicago’s tenements, and a fourth as a travelogue back to Bosnia taken by the author and a fantastical story-telling companion named Rora. Lazarus dies because deeply anti-Semitic law and order fears anarchists are destroying America and anyone with dark skin, big ears or a nose that might be Jewish is suspect. Immigration to a new country is awful, except it is not as bad as the pogroms that drive you to flee. Getting an author’s grant to take adventures through post-war Sarajevo and rural slavic countries provides good product for a novel, but ambitious, and award-winning as the novel is, the multiple story lines all remain too independent to cohere into a compelling whole. -
One of Us by Asne Seierstad **** (of 4)
Even if you do not recall the Oslo terrorist attack in 2011, the opening pages of this book make certain there is no surprise. Anders Breivik, a native of Norway exploded a homemade bomb in front of the Prime Minister’s residence and then drove a van to Utoya Island to murder socialist youth. He killed seventy-seven people, most of them children, nearly all with gunshots to the back of the head. Only a few pages after it opens, the story returns to the beginning of Anders Breivik’s life to uncover in page-turning detail his development as a right-wing terrorist bent upon preserving Norway’s ethnic purity from creeping left-wing government policy. Breivik emerges as a psychotic, deranged killer. Except his continued lucidity and consistent logic of self-defined clarity of purpose make him indistinguishable from any member of ISIS, the Taliban, fanatical Israeli settlers and their Hamas counterparts, the routine gun-wielding mass shooters that too routinely make our headlines, more than a few affiliate of the NRA, and several of my neighbors in northwest Pennsylvania. One of us. This book explains what runs through their minds and then asks us to define the border between idealistic soldier of freedom and the psychologically impaired. -
The Immortal Irishman by Timothy Egan **** (of 5)
The immortal Irishman is Robert Meagher, surely the most famous and interesting person I’ve never heard of. Meagher (pronounced Mar) was an incomparably gifted nineteenth century orator and supporter of human rights. He formed part of a cadre of Irish intellectuals that fomented a failed revolution against British rule at a time when infected potatoes puddled in Irish fields, millions were starving, and British landlords exported wheat and oats form Ireland to England. In return for defying Queen Victoria and her troops, Meagher was sentenced to death, only at the last moment having his sentence commuted to lifetime banishment in Tasmania. After many years in virtually solitary exile, he escaped to America, overcame harsh anti-Catholic racism, and spoke his way into becoming a leading general of an Irish brigade in the U.S. civil war. Lincoln counted him as a confidant and following his wartime leadership of one of the most recognized battalions on either side of the conflict, Meagher became governor of the Montana territory, reluctant to fight Indians because he understood their plight as being in brotherhood with the plight of enslaved Africans and oppressed Irishmen. Egan’s account of Ireland’s subjugation is exceptionally clearheaded, and his retelling of the Civil War is as compelling as any I have ever encountered. -
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith *** (of 5)
Let’s first state the not-so-obvious: Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym used by J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame for her mystery series featuring detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant, the alluring Robin (no obvious relation to Batman’s loyal sidekick.) The Silkworm features Rowling’s marvelous ability to capture character, dialogue, and contemporary London’s ether. The Silkworm is Strike’s second major case in which the metro police have misapprehended a perpetrator. To catch a killer, Strike must infiltrate the self-important world of authors, editors, publishers, and agents, and more tedious still, analyze a piece of contemporary obscure prose. No doubt Strike is serving as Rowling’s mouthpiece for a world she only joined through great effort and for which she presumably maintains only marginal respect. The whodunnit is legit, the main characters suitably on the knife edge of credible and over-the-top, the book a little too long, and Rowling’s mastery of the written word on full display. -
Dead Wake by Erik Larson *** (of 4)
In 1915 the largest, fastest, and most luxurious ship on the ocean was the Lusitania. Crossing the Atlantic by ship was the only way to get from America to Europe and back only in 1915 the first World War had engulfed most of the continent from England to Russia. Britain’s incomparable navy had completely blockaded Germany (though Erik Larson never mentions this precursor) and Germany retaliated with the one technological advantage it possessed on the high seas: U-Boats. You can see where this is headed and Larson does his best to build suspense but falls short when he overplays the “If Only” card. If only the Lusitania had left New York twenty minutes earlier rather than waiting for Captain Turner to show someone around the boat; if only the ship was running four engines, rather than three; if only, the fog on the day of the attack had been thicker a little longer or a little shorter or Captain Turner had zigged instead of zagged then surely the meeting of a U-Boat torpedo and the hull of Turner’s ship could have been avoided. Larson conveniently overlooks the fact that so much of war is chance and instead tries his best to make the case that because the Lusitania was the biggest and fastest ship on the Atlantic, and the first significant loss of life for Americans, that its sinking was what dragged America into the first World War. As dastardly as it might have been for Germany to sink a passenger liner (there were probably arms hidden on board), and killing so many civilians, the U.S. did not mobilize for another two years. Another overplay on Larson’s part. -
Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews *** (of 4)
An American CIA agent, Nathaniel Nash, is sent to Russia to manage a key asset at the same time a Russian intelligence agent, Dominika Egerova, is tasked with spying on Nate. While each attempts to seduce the other into becoming a double agent, without, of course, giving up their real identities, they also fight not to commit the cardinal error of falling truly in love. The author, Jason Matthews, is a former CIA operative himself so the tradecraft described in great detail rings uncannily true. Likewise, his description of CIA personalities and Vladimir Putin’s Soviet style directives of Russian secret services feels like a peek into world that must be going on all the time without our ever knowing. Matthews won an Edgar award for best first novel and his second book starring the same two spies, Palace of Treason, has just been published. -
All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer *** (of 4)
Henry and Celia were working for the CIA in Vienna when a hijacked plane landed and failure of international spy agencies to respond appropriately led to the death of everyone on board. Six years later the CIA is still trying to figure out what went wrong and Henry tracks down Celia before closing the books on the case. At the time of the hijacking Henry and Celia were lovers, spies, intelligence gatherers, in the midst of a frantic race to outsmart terrorists, and professional liars. Now, we watch as the two meet for dinner, both in search of a truth that has eluded them, and both playing all their spycraft skills at the table. -
Paper Love by Sarah Wildman **** (of 4)
Sarah Waldman’s grandfather escaped the Nazi Aunchshloss in Austria by the skin of his teeth. He settled in America, opened a successful medical practice, and lived a life of joy and optimism. In his closet, discovered only after his death, are the letters of his true love, Valy, left behind in Vienna and Berlin. As the jaws of the Nazi vice slowly draw closer together around Valy’s diminishing life her letters to America become increasingly desperate, personal, and ultimately heartbreaking. By searching for Valy’s story, the history of one woman whose trail leads into the maw of the Shoah, Waldman answers one of the most difficult questions asked of Jews. Why did Jews let the Nazis do this to them? Here we see how it happened to Valy who stayed behind to be with her mother when even in 1938 things seemed like they could not get so bad that abandoning a country, a livelihood and the only family you still had was the only means of saving any member of your family. Because we read this book knowing the outcome and that those Jews still in Europe could never know what was yet to come we are even more chilled as Nazi restrictions build one upon another. And then the really unanswerable question comes to the fore. How could Nazis week after week conceive of new methods of torture: forbidding Jews to shop, ride a bus, congregate, appear in public, live in their own homes, work, live? -
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson **** (of 4)
After a couple of decades of living in Britain, Bill Bryson decides to journey around the country one last time before moving with his family back to the U.S. He takes seven weeks to do a grand loop stopping in towns large and small to describe the British Isles of the early 90s with special attention to beer, architecture, and people, in that order. No doubt, the more you know of England the more you would appreciate his observations, but even without being able to fully appreciate the locales he was visiting, I was left with some rather wonderful impressions. Firstly, Bryson reminds one of the value of seeing the world at walking speed. That alone made me reevaluate the amount of daily energy I devote just to keeping up. Secondly, tied as I am to the natural world, I don’t pay nearly enough attention to the power of buildings as individuals or in their collective. Thirdly, this book is vintage early Bryson. He is so funny on so many occasions I laughed aloud as if I was the one who had consumed one too many brews. If you have a chance to listen to the audiobook. It’s a remarkable read aloud.
