The sympathetic and flawed lead character puts a haunting human face on contemporary Russia, often demonized by the media.
A successful businessman’s involvement with a woman determined to rescue sex trafficking victims exposes the underbelly of the New Russia in this noir-esque character study.
Nikolai Delov, pushing age 50, co-owns with his brother “the largest family-owned trucking company in the Russian Federation,” a company his truck driver father founded. Delov is a public success. He proudly displays a photo of himself receiving an entrepreneurial award from President Boris Yeltsin (“A perfect example of what a renewed Russia is all about”). His private life, though, is in more of a shambles. Divorced, he suffers strained relations with his son, Valentin, a talented artist with no interest in joining the family business, who is trying to open his own gallery. One morning, Delov is visited by Inessa Zorina, who runs a foundation that provides “ ‘safe environments’ for girls escaping the sex trade.” In their initial meeting, she is simply seeking a financial donation to establish housing for the young women, but things get interesting when she prevails upon him to help her rescue a young woman from her pimp. The entrepreneur’s growing relationship with Zorina puts him at further odds with powerful business rival Vladimir Konstantinov, the scion of a Yeltsin-era oligarch. Delov uses this competitor as a benchmark to measure his own success (“An unfair standard…since Vladimir Konstantinov was anything but a truck driver’s son”). Is Konstantinov jealous of Delov and Zorina’s affair? Is it just a coincidence that Valentin is arrested and charged with being a Banksey-like covert graffiti-tagger? In a striking plot development, Delov himself comes under investigation when it appears a branch of his company is involved in the trafficking of young women. Dante (The Tiger’s Wedding, 2012) has crafted an engrossing novel with an evocative and authentic sense of place and an engaging protagonist facing myriad challenges (“If something dire happened to him, what might become of the company?”). In noir tradition, Delov finds his world upended by dark forces of which he is aware but had always been able to navigate. “Corruption is a terrible thing,” he notes at one point, “until it works in your favor.” That is a statement as true in Putin-era Russia as it was in Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles or Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago.
The sympathetic and flawed lead character puts a haunting human face on contemporary Russia, often demonized by the media.Pub Date: July 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-91225-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Omsk Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy,...
Britisher Haddon debuts in the adult novel with the bittersweet tale of a 15-year-old autistic who’s also a math genius.
Christopher Boone has had some bad knocks: his mother has died (well, she went to the hospital and never came back), and soon after he found a neighbor’s dog on the front lawn, slain by a garden fork stuck through it. A teacher said that he should write something that he “would like to read himself”—and so he embarks on this book, a murder mystery that will reveal who killed Mrs. Shears’s dog. First off, though, is a night in jail for hitting the policeman who questions him about the dog (the cop made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm when he can’t stand to be touched—any more than he can stand the colors yellow or brown, or not knowing what’s going to happen next). Christopher’s father bails him out but forbids his doing any more “detecting” about the dog-murder. When Christopher disobeys (and writes about it in his book), a fight ensues and his father confiscates the book. In time, detective-Christopher finds it, along with certain other clues that reveal a very great deal indeed about his mother’s “death,” his father’s own part in it—and the murder of the dog. Calming himself by doing roots, cubes, prime numbers, and math problems in his head, Christopher runs away, braves a train-ride to London, and finds—his mother. How can this be? Read and see. Neither parent, if truth be told, is the least bit prepossessing or more than a cutout. Christopher, though, with pet rat Toby in his pocket and advanced “maths” in his head, is another matter indeed, and readers will cheer when, way precociously, he takes his A-level maths and does brilliantly.
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy, moving, and likely to be a smash.Pub Date: June 17, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50945-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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