The half life of Valery K, by Natasha Pulley

 

Valery K is a prisoner in a Russian labor camp who is released early in 1963 to work on a scientific study of the effects of radiation on an entire ecosystem six years after an accident blew up a nuclear reactor. As he begins to look into the flora and fauna in the region, he realizes that there’s much more going on than he’s been told; in fact, everyone in the region is being exposed to high amounts of radiation daily, although they’ve been told it’s safe, and there are unethical secret experiments on radiation’s effects on humans also taking place.

The writing in this book is top notch. The story flows well at a good pace and never falters. The characters are well-developed and believable, and the reader empathizes with their predicament. They are forced to lie constantly and speak in code, and the strain this puts on them is huge. The author writes about the research she conducted while preparing to write this book, and the fact that most of the book is based on documented facts and circumstances is truly amazing. Even though there is a lot of tragedy and sadness in this book, with characters suffering and sometimes dying from radiation sickness, there is also a lot of humor as well. Especially enjoyable is an octopus, whose sole purpose in the novel seems to be to provide a bit of comic relief. My book club has selected this book for our March read, and I can’t wait to discuss this with them. I think there’s a lot here that will be very educational to most readers (it was for me) and it would generate a lot for people to talk about. It opened my eyes to a time in history that seems to have receded to the distant past, but which is really just yesterday, and some of the concerns raised by the book about nuclear power, are still very much relevant today.

There is nothing for you here, by Fiona Hill

 

After seeing Fiona Hill's testimony before Congress and reading her earlier book about Vladimir Putin, reviewed here, I was eager to read her memoir about growing up in the northeast of England in a mining town that had experienced high unemployment after the mines were shut down in the 1980s under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. This is much more than a memoir, however; it's a deeply-researched exploration of how the economics of the U.K. and U.S. in the 1980s, and of Russia in the 1990s, decimated manufacturing and mining communities in those three countries leading to many of the same problems. Hill incorporates her own experiences to show how class discrimination is a significant barrier to personal advancement in the U.K. and the U.S., where it is exacerbated by racial discrimination as well. She closes the book with policy recommendations that could be helpful in transcending these problems.

We are the light, by Matthew Quick

 

I loved this heartbreaking novel by author Matthew Quick. Epistolary novels offer so much in the way of telling a story while also allowing for the narrator to be somewhat unreliable and drawing out the tension. The premise of this book is that in the aftermath of a mass shooting in a movie theater in this small Pennsylvania town, the narrator develops a close friendship with the brother of the shooter who has been treated like a pariah by the rest of the town’s residents. They decide to make a feature-length monster movie that will include the survivors of the shooting as cast members and debut the film in the same theater where the shooting occurred and which has been closed since; this is intended to help the town heal from its pain. The narrator tells the story through letters to his Jungian therapist who was also a victim of the shooting. The main characters are interesting, likable, and well-developed; the secondary characters are also believable.  

I think the writing is superb, and the story and plot demonstrate such humanity and empathy while also showing the real trauma and pain caused by senseless acts of violence. Given that mass shootings appear to be an almost daily occurrence now, this book is very timely and would be a great selection for book clubs or other group reads. It would generate a lot of discussion and really makes you think about the causes of violence, but also why some people survive traumatic childhoods and others go on to perpetuate the trauma. But the story mostly revolves around the victims of violence and how it can and