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libbum's review against another edition
3.0
Spufford's writing style is exquisite. Some of the most unique and interesting prose I have ever read if you consider this book one sentence at a time.
Ultimately this fact made me rate the book itself 3/5 although it felt like a 2/5. I just could not get into it. Nothing engaged me, I drifted off reading and probably missed something important - but cared so little to go back and re-read that section.
Why? I struggle to pin that down. The concept and subject matter interest me. Having read a number of Russian texts about the period before, including the unabridged Gulag Archipelago, this one seemed right up my alley.
Fascinating in a way that I love the text and hate the story. will certainly try reading Spufford again.
Ultimately this fact made me rate the book itself 3/5 although it felt like a 2/5. I just could not get into it. Nothing engaged me, I drifted off reading and probably missed something important - but cared so little to go back and re-read that section.
Why? I struggle to pin that down. The concept and subject matter interest me. Having read a number of Russian texts about the period before, including the unabridged Gulag Archipelago, this one seemed right up my alley.
Fascinating in a way that I love the text and hate the story. will certainly try reading Spufford again.
elliot_burr's review against another edition
4.0
Love a book with a mission statement:
"He was thinking to himself that an economy told a kind of story, though not the sort you would find in a novel. In this story, many of the major characters would never even meet, yet they would act on each other's lives just as surely as if they jostled for space inside a single house, through the long chains by which value moved about. Tiny decisions in one place could have cascading, giant effects elsewhere; conversely, what most absorbed the conscious attention of the characters - what broke their hearts, what they thought ordered or justified their lives - might have no effect whatsoever, dying away as if it had never happened at all. Yet impersonal forces could have drastically personal consequences, in this story, altering the whole basis on which people hoped and loved and worked. It would be a strange story to hear. At first it would seem to be a buzzing confusion, extending arbitrarily in directions that seemed to have nothing to do with each other. But little by little, if you were patient, its particular laws would become plain. In the end it would all make sense."
"He was thinking to himself that an economy told a kind of story, though not the sort you would find in a novel. In this story, many of the major characters would never even meet, yet they would act on each other's lives just as surely as if they jostled for space inside a single house, through the long chains by which value moved about. Tiny decisions in one place could have cascading, giant effects elsewhere; conversely, what most absorbed the conscious attention of the characters - what broke their hearts, what they thought ordered or justified their lives - might have no effect whatsoever, dying away as if it had never happened at all. Yet impersonal forces could have drastically personal consequences, in this story, altering the whole basis on which people hoped and loved and worked. It would be a strange story to hear. At first it would seem to be a buzzing confusion, extending arbitrarily in directions that seemed to have nothing to do with each other. But little by little, if you were patient, its particular laws would become plain. In the end it would all make sense."
hammo's review against another edition
3.0
Having read several great reviews of Red Plenty, there was little left in the book itself to find new and interesting.
> "You know about animal behaviour?"
> "Not so much" she said "I'm a microscope biologist."
> "Ah, well pretend you do. Dear old Solzhek here will never be able to tell the difference."
> They understood that if ordinary people were to live the way the kings and merchants of old had lived, what would be required was a new kind of luxury, an ordinary luxury built up from goods turned out by the million so that everybody could have one.
> "You know about animal behaviour?"
> "Not so much" she said "I'm a microscope biologist."
> "Ah, well pretend you do. Dear old Solzhek here will never be able to tell the difference."
> They understood that if ordinary people were to live the way the kings and merchants of old had lived, what would be required was a new kind of luxury, an ordinary luxury built up from goods turned out by the million so that everybody could have one.
heavenlyspit's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
wevans's review against another edition
5.0
Fascinating, humanizing, lyrical, and haunting. Reads almost like speculative fiction, evoking a Soviet Union wracked with growing pains: torn between a history of poverty and serfdom and an enlightened future of scientific plenty that proves maddeningly elusive. Spufford balances a large cast of characters beautifully, with each new perspective illuminating a different angle of a very big story. Highlights include the convoluted saga of the viscose stretching machine; the tense and dramatic chapter pitting lung cells against the cold equations of cancer; and Khrushchev's sorrowful coda.
nwhyte's review against another edition
4.0
This is a really interesting book, a light on an important period of history (the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1969) of which I knew much less than I had realised, looked at through the eyes of true believers in the economic system of Communism as it developed under Khrushchev, who were then bitterly disappointed as Brezhnev and Kosygin (and later Brezhnev alone) took over. I grew up at the tail end of the Brezhnev era, when the Soviet system seemed monolithic and permanent; subsequent events proved that in fact it was not nothing of the kind, and Spufford's book reminds us that it was all actually rather recent anyway. It's told as a series of short stories from the point of view of some of the key economic / cybernetic thinkers of the time, including Khrushchev himself, with some perspectives from ordinary middle-class Soviet life thrown in for good measure, all meticulously footnoted; also all very human, and all told with good humour, to the point where one can understand how otherwise intelligent people could have believed in the system and wanted to perpetuate it. Strongly recommended.
Apart, that is, from the front cover which spells the title ЯED PLENTY rather then RED PLENTY, because, y'know, Я makes it look Russian. Look, Faber, this is simply not good enough. Я in Cyrillic is a vowel, not a consonant, and sounds nothing like R. While I am on the subject, И is also a vowel and sounds nothing like N; and Д is a consonant which sounds nothing like A. Putting ЯED PLENTY on your front cover is not cute, it is ignorant, and will certainly deter anyone with any real knowledge about Russia from even picking the book up in the shop, let alone buying it. It's up to you if you want to alienate your potential readership; I would have thought not, myself, but what do I know?
Apart, that is, from the front cover which spells the title ЯED PLENTY rather then RED PLENTY, because, y'know, Я makes it look Russian. Look, Faber, this is simply not good enough. Я in Cyrillic is a vowel, not a consonant, and sounds nothing like R. While I am on the subject, И is also a vowel and sounds nothing like N; and Д is a consonant which sounds nothing like A. Putting ЯED PLENTY on your front cover is not cute, it is ignorant, and will certainly deter anyone with any real knowledge about Russia from even picking the book up in the shop, let alone buying it. It's up to you if you want to alienate your potential readership; I would have thought not, myself, but what do I know?
emmkayt's review against another edition
5.0
Face it, you've been waiting all your life for a fictional account of the intricacies of mid-twentieth century Soviet economic planning, WITH FOOTNOTES, and you didn't even know it! The author usually writes non-fiction, and initially set out to do so here, but somewhere along the line he settled on a marvelous structure of interrelated fictional vignettes, each section framed both by a quotation from a Russian fairy tale and by an italicized non-fiction introduction to the historical developments in question. The particular focus is on the USSR's mid-century shift to try to move from the quick ramping up of an industrial economy to the creation of 'plenty' for its citizens, and its challenges. Well-explained, and the stories are funny, poignant, and illuminating. There is an entire chapter in which a character applies linear programming methods to the distribution of potatoes. I loved it.
yanareads6969's review against another edition
4.0
For the most part, I loved this book from the beginning, and at times wondered if the author was Russian himself having such a good feel for even the minute details and atmosphere of Soviet/Russian life (he isn't). Great work of historical fiction, great footnotes (one of those books where you actually enjoy reading them as you read the book, nerd or not), great introductions to each section by the author so that you understand the real history behind the stories. But the stories are for the most part independent little works and so need to be judged that way, and when it comes down to it some are easily 5-star (where Khrushchev visits America, at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, the Novercherkassk massacre, giving birth in a Soviet hospital, Khruschev's retirement, both of the ones in Akademgorodok) and some are not. The strongest are the more memoir-style stories that really go into the human experience of Soviet life, many of which are more at the beginning of the book, and I found the ones to be based around economics/production/technology to be weaker. These tended to be jargon-filled and hard to follow, and I ended up relying on the footnotes to figure out the greater points. If you love economics you may love those stories, I just found they did not fit with some of the others. I also liked having characters like Galya, Emil, Zoya, and Fyodor to follow throughout the book, but now and then it got confusing who we've seen before and who we haven't, even though the author attempted to fix this with the cast reference at the beginning. Overall though, a fantastic book if you're trying to get some insight into the mind of the USSR.
rtassicker's review against another edition
5.0
The best book I've read this year: a strange kind of historical anthology with a fascinating setting and characters, both real and imagined, and an exploration of the promise and problems of the planned economy.