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Snowdrops
 
 

Snowdrops [Kindle Edition]

A.D. Miller
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (250 customer reviews)

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Review

'Snowdrops assaults all your senses with its power and poetry, and leaves you stunned and addicted.'
--Independent

'A superlative portrait... Snowdrops displays a worldly confidence reminiscent of Robert Harris at his best'
--Financial Times

'Reads like Graham Greene on steroids... Miller's complex, gripping debut novel is undoubtedly the real thing'
--Daily Mail

'Miller brilliantly showcases Moscow as his novel's strutting, charismatic star... disturbing and dazzling'
--Sunday Telegraph

'Tight, compelling... A totally gripping first novel'
--The Times

'A tremendously assured, cool, complex, slow-burn of a novel and a bleak and superbly atmospheric portrait of modern Russia'
--William Boyd

'Superbly atmospheric... Elegantly written, and spot on its detail'
--Observer

'A chilling first novel about the slide from relative innocence into amorality. I love the honesty of the writing, and the way the furious cold of a bitter Moscow winter gradually emerges as a character in its own right'
--Julie Myerson

'Intoxicating... It will whirl you off your feet and set your moral compass spinning... A.D. Miller's sophisticated and many-layered debut novel skewers the relationship between victim and abuser, self-delusion and corruption, love and moral freefall' --Spectator

Product Description

Snowdrops. That's what the Russians call them - the bodies that float up into the light in the thaw. Drunks, most of them, and homeless people who just give up and lie down into the whiteness, and murder victims hidden in the drifts by their killers. Nick has a confession. When he worked as a high-flying British lawyer in Moscow, he was seduced by Masha, an enigmatic woman who led him through her city: the electric nightclubs and intimate dachas, the human kindnesses and state-wide corruption. Yet as Nick fell for Masha, he found that he fell away from himself; he knew that she was dangerous, but life in Russia was addictive, and it was too easy to bury secrets - and corpses - in the winter snows...

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 502 KB
  • Print Length: 285 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1848874537
  • Publisher: Atlantic Books (1 Jan 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B004IK8M94
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (250 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #686 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Andrew Miller
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
42 of 43 people found the following review helpful
By Antenna TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format: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.
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135 of 143 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
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.
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78 of 87 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
"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!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
I cannot believe this was shortlisted for the booker!
I don't normally write reviews - but this book just wound me up too much to stop myself. I was loading up y kindle before going away on holiday - and a way that usually works is to... Read more
Published 2 days ago by MariaMagdalena
good about Moscow, rubbish plot
The good news is that this book is a quick easy read and not having read anything about modern Moscow I found that aspect of the book really interesting. Read more
Published 10 days ago by Sean Slippers
Is such naivety really possible?
This superbly contextualised book is let down by the unrealistic naivety of Nicholas, the narrator and chief protagonist. Read more
Published 15 days ago by charlie
Ok
Good premise for a story but felt it did not quite deliver to the level I expected from this writer.
Published 18 days ago by Osmium12
So-so Drop
I think this book comes across as a John le Carre substitute. As we JLC fans await the next delicious installment from the master we will have to put up with offerings from the... Read more
Published 1 month ago by nickyb
Deep winter
If you want to FEEL the winter in Russia, and the wild west capitalist frontier mentality that goes with it then you will enjoy this book. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Ellie
absolute over-rated rubbish
cannot think of one redeeming point about this novel. total waste of time and wood pulp. The blurb on the back is the best-written paragraph in the whole book.
Published 1 month ago by Luisa Peapod
Followed Nicholas round on Google maps....
I have not stopped people to read this book. There are very well written full praising reviews on this book already but I loved the brilliant insite into corruption and sleaze in... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Gillian Rollins
Snow Drops by A. D. Miller
An intelligent man is willingly reeled into a web of deceipt and lies by the promise of love and sex in modern Russia. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Elizabeth Teal
Superbly atmospheric book set beyond the fringes of civilisation
This really is an outstanding novel which brilliantly captures the descent into amorality experienced by a 30-something English lawyer in Moscow. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Dwight Braxton
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Popular Highlights

 (What's this?)
&quote;
Life is dangerous, said Masha, dripping an arm around me. No one survived it yet. &quote;
Highlighted by 108 Kindle users
&quote;
The snow let you forget the scars and blemishes, like temporary amnesia for a bad conscience. &quote;
Highlighted by 55 Kindle users
&quote;
I could tell that one of the Russian proverbs he loved was on the way. The only place with free cheese is a mousetrap. &quote;
Highlighted by 53 Kindle users

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