Book Review Club - November 2019 (The Secrets We Kept)

I decided to review a second book this month because, like the first review I wrote, this book is a historical fiction story.  It's based on facts obtained through extensive research, including reading declassified CIA reports on the matter.  It's considered a work of fiction because things like personal conversations that cannot be known (although, per the author, some are pulled directly from the CIA reports and included in this work).

The book is The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott.  The story is about the efforts made to make public the novel Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak from the perspective of his mistress and CIA operatives.  Pasternak worked on the book for 10+ years and the Russian government did not want it to see the light of day as it was considered anti-government, something that was punishable by death.  People who were perceived to even have anti-government thoughts would go missing, never to be seen again.  So despite this potential threat hovering over him, Pasternak continued his work.

Like the other book I reviewed, this would be a great story even if it wasn't based on known facts.  It was primarily told from the perspective of Olga - Boris' mistress, Irina - a new CIA employee and Sally - a veteran of CIA missions.  I say primarily because we do get into the heads of other characters but those are the main three.  I don't know if these were real names of people involved other than I do know that Boris Pasternak did have a mistress who went through and endured the hardships described as a result of her relationship with Boris, including being put in a hard labor camp simply because she was Boris' mistress.  The intent was to hurt Boris so that he would stop working on the book.

The book also explores the lives of the people involved in getting Doctor Zhivago published.  Russia didn't want it published but the US took steps to ensure that not only did it get published, that it was widely distributed within Russia.

Personally I've never read the book or seen the movie (Doctor Zhivago that is) but reading this book definitely made me want to read the book AND see the movie!

The story was well told and well written.  The only problem I had with it was it was not clear to me initially that the story was being told from the perspective of different people.  The prologue was titled "Typists".  Chapter one was titled "The Mistress".  Chapter two was "The Applicant".  Those were three different perspectives but I didn't realize those were the character identifiers until around page 80 because each chapter was told in first person perspective and there was no change in writing style to easily identify the character.  For example, in The Help (a book I LOVED, by the way) each chapter was labeled with the character name but the writing style changed to encompass the character's personality so even without the character name to identify who was "talking", it was easy to tell whose perspective was being presented and that wasn't the case in The Secrets We Kept.  At least in my opinion.  I think the author thought it would be cute to have "covert" names for the characters but it just confused me - at least initially.  I remember around page 200 I went back to the table of contents to confirm what happened to which character.  This was partly my fault because I jumped into reading the book without having any idea what it was about but I do also fault the author for not making clear character distinctions with her writing.  It was still a good book though.

Bottom line, it was a good story, and a good book worth reading.  I would highly recommend it.

For more reviews go to barriesummy.blogspot.com.