A review by wevans
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

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.