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.
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