Reviews with content warning for War - The Secrets We Kept: The sensational Cold War spy thriller

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The Secrets We Kept: The sensational Cold War spy thriller by Lara Prescott

4 reviews

mnboyer's review against another edition

adventurous emotional informative inspiring mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

In the middle of the Cold War, secretaries become spies and get involved in a plot to smuggle "Dr Zhivago" manuscript(s) out of Russia -- okay, books about famous books, count me in! Now, that is not to say that I genuinely would pitch this to people as a 'spy novel' because a lot of the spy stuff is lacking... there's not as much mystery and intrigue there as there should be. It is also fair to say that this is largely in part to to the fact that Lara Prescott weaves her own love story into this book, and that love story takes a little more front seat. Nonetheless, it was an interesting story about how many people were involved in trying to get "Zhivago" published -- how many people were actually going to risk their lives for a book.

Okay so here's the question... how true is this 'based on a true story' book. Well, the CIA was heavily involved in smuggling "Zhivago" out of the USSR so that they could publish it in the US. They were then involved in smuggling it back into the USSR so it could be published and distributed there as well. Boris Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya were lovers and Olga really was the muse for one of the characters in his novel -- she did go to great lengths and through many USSR interrogations where the USSR wanted to know more about the novel, what Boris was doing, etc., and she never gave Boris up (to our knowledge). All of this was discussed in 2014, when the CIA suddenly started talking about their efforts to save "Zhivago"... I don't know why the CIA gives up their own secrets and stories, but, hey, it makes for good literature.

The book was written in Italian at one point, the CIA had it translated back to Russian, and sight unseen the USSR had banned it. There's just a lot going on! And then you add women typists who were all involved in this espionage and you end up with this novel. Sure, the two main characters are not 'real' and are fictionalizations. Sure, their love story is therefore its own fiction. But, the larger things going on really did happen.

Now, be forewarned, there are discussions or rape and violence in the novel. Spoiler: Olga is pregnant when sent to a gulag in Russia for not giving Pasternak up, and she ends up losing the baby (we do know that Olga did lose a baby, Pasternak remained married, and he never gave her the option to have another child after the closing of this novel, which actually makes me feel pretty bad for Olga -- you can go to prison for this guy but he won't let you have his child, boo).

Overall, I really enjoyed this. I wish there was less focus on the romance that Prescott was creating between two lady spies and more focus on just being cool, kick ass spies... but that's really just a personal opinion. I just wish we could have a spy/espionage novel with women as main characters who are solely focused on their job, not finding romance (this seems near impossible in the historical fiction world, as every woman out there apparently has to find a soulmate). 4 stars.

Content Warnings