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A review by maxstone98
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
4.0
I found this book oddly compelling. I say oddly because:
-I found the book really compelling on presenting life the soviet union, mostly in the scientific community, in the 1950s. I thought it was really spot on and very convincing that that was exactly how it was. And yet the author is British, not a specialist in the topic, doesn't even speak or read Russian, etc. So I have no particular reason to think it is unusually good about capturing the feel of that moment and place in time. But it sure seems like it does.
-the book jacket has a couple reviewers saying things like "genre of its own" and I feel like that is true even though I can't articulate why it isn't in the genre of historical fiction
That said, I'm giving it 4 stars because it took me 6 weeks to read. Although I was enjoying it, I also never really felt like picking it up and finishing it. A 5 star book I would have felt compelled to keep reading.
The general topic is the portion of the soviet experiment which was trying to optimize the economy to show that properly planned production was superior to the chaos of capitalism. It does a really nice job of conveying the genuine optimism and excitement about the project at first, and then the gradual disillusionment, partly as it isn't working as well but mostly as it is corrupted by political figures. Or at least it powerfully presents that picture, I guess I don't know how accurate the picture is.
Russian novel like, it has a large cast of characters, but a nice index helps one keep them all straight.
-I found the book really compelling on presenting life the soviet union, mostly in the scientific community, in the 1950s. I thought it was really spot on and very convincing that that was exactly how it was. And yet the author is British, not a specialist in the topic, doesn't even speak or read Russian, etc. So I have no particular reason to think it is unusually good about capturing the feel of that moment and place in time. But it sure seems like it does.
-the book jacket has a couple reviewers saying things like "genre of its own" and I feel like that is true even though I can't articulate why it isn't in the genre of historical fiction
That said, I'm giving it 4 stars because it took me 6 weeks to read. Although I was enjoying it, I also never really felt like picking it up and finishing it. A 5 star book I would have felt compelled to keep reading.
The general topic is the portion of the soviet experiment which was trying to optimize the economy to show that properly planned production was superior to the chaos of capitalism. It does a really nice job of conveying the genuine optimism and excitement about the project at first, and then the gradual disillusionment, partly as it isn't working as well but mostly as it is corrupted by political figures. Or at least it powerfully presents that picture, I guess I don't know how accurate the picture is.
Russian novel like, it has a large cast of characters, but a nice index helps one keep them all straight.