Snowdrops [Paperback]

I can understand why "Snowdrops" reached the Booker Shortlist, but also why some people think is should not have done so.

On the plus side, Miller puts his firsthand knowledge of Russia to good use by recreating the tasteless materialism and perpetual undercurrent of violence and sleaze in the raw capitalism following the collapse of Communism. He describes well how individuals are inexorably contaminated by exposure to corruption, even if they think themselves to be morally superior, or immune.

In what turns out to be a psychological drama rather than a crime thiller, the narrator Nicholas, a thirty something commercial lawyer posted from London to Moscow, builds up tension as he is gets ever more entangled with the beautiful Masha and her younger "sister" Katya. Even though he suspects they are not what they seem, he suppresses any doubts and passively goes along with them in providing legal support for what is on the surface a simple property exchange without questioning their actions.

I like the introduction to a new vocabulary: "minigarch" for a rich Russian who isn't quite in the oligarch league, "krysha" for the shady character who provides protection and "fixes" things, or "elitny" to describe a smart restaurant or club. Miller is also good on all the different kinds of snow - from the light, damp October snow called "mokri sneg", through the deep heavy snow falling overnight "like a practical joke", the mounds of snow which make walking an obstacle, and finally the end-of-May snow... by which God lets the Russians know he hasn't finished with them yet". He brings home how the weather dominates Russians' lives through the course of the almost unbearably long and cold winters and the all too short hot summers.

There are some striking descriptions of places e.g. of the Moscow river, "the ice on the river was buckling and cracking, great plates of it rubbing and jostling each other, as the water shrugged it off, a vast snake sloughing of its skin."

Likewise, the sharp descriptions of people e.g. of a man who has allowed himself to become corrupted, " He was a short, pale man with thick hair, thick Soviet glasses and worried eyes. I suppose if you wanted to you could say he looked like a sort of compressed and stunted version of me."

On the down side, I wondered whether it was advisable to tell the reader quite so often that certain characters are liars or cheats, or to imply what is about to happen. It might have been more powerful to have left the reader to deduce all this, and only have Nicholas acknowledge his own culpability at the end. As it is, the climax of the book proves underwhelming, like a balloon that fails to burst with a startling bang because so much air has leaked out of it already.

Overall, this is an impressive "first novel". Much of the writing is good, as is the basic plot idea. However it is a quick, absorbing, mildly thought-provoking and moving read rather than the shattering emotional experience it could have been.

I first heard about this novel on The Review Show on BBC2 and was intrigued enough by the discussion to break my resolution about not buying any more books until (a) they were available for Sony eReader; and (b) I was ready to read them.But right from the exquisite jacket design, I was so gripped with this book that I decided a physical copy was in order. I picked up Sunday evening, and would have happily read it in one sitting if only life hadn't been so tortuously in the way. As first time novels go, this is an enormous achievement. The prose is dazzling and Moscow is evoked in a way that makes this the Gorky Park for the post-Wall generation.

The plot is entirely linear, and is essentially the inevitable forward motion of one man's failure to swerve any of the moral hazards he encounters while working as an expat lawyer in Russia. The narrator is very clear about what a flawed and cowardly creature he is, and yet it is a joy to read on because of the insights he offers into Russian culture and society.

As someone who has lived and worked as an expat in two European countries, I felt this book really nailed that heady sense of possibility that comes with the early stages of living abroad; the feeling that you can be who you want to be, run risks you never would normally take because you've stepped out of time for a bit.To me, this was neatly underlined by the notion that the text was effectively a long, confessional letter from the narrator to his fiancée. During discussion on The Review Show there were those who felt this narrative conceit didn't quite work, but personally I found it added real resonance to the novel. By quietly reminding us now and then that the narrator did actually want his wife-to-be to have a good opinion of him, and to accept him depraved past and all, we were reminded that the real stakes here are moral jeopardy. Depravity is only interesting if those engaging in it have their doubts, and so find their own behaviour wanting.

All in all, this a novel to thoroughly enjoy and admire, and I would have given this five stars if not for two things which began to wear thing by the end. Firstly, I'd have been happier if the two parallel strands of the plot had amplified each other more in some way, rather than simply being two different examples of the same character's moral indifference. Secondly, I found the prose relied a bit too heavily on unwarranted foreshadowing, which then tended not to deliver as big a bang as promised somehow. But overall, there is no shortage of things for the reader to be gripped by, and to admire.

I only hope A.D. Miller is out there somewhere right now putting the finishing touches on his next novel.

"Snowdrops" has come heralded by just about everybody, including many people on the Amazon sit. Although it's a good read, well-written and very informative about modern Moscow and all its moral uncertainties, I was left with the feeling that I'd read a very empty novel, in which nothing really seems to have happened. The narrator has committed a great ill and been sucked into a moral vaccuum, almost willingly, and the book forms his confession to the girl that he is now going to marry, having returned to England and left Russia (and part of himself) behind. The problem was that, even though he says he's being bewitched by money and power and sex and the temptation to just opt out of morality, it never really FELT like that. It was all just a little bit flat.

A book I could definitely take or leave - I wonder what all the fuss is about!