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A review by candacesiegle_greedyreader
The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley
5.0
Valery Kolkhanov is six years into a ten year sentence in the Gulag. He's been doing okay, even now that he's noticed his bones fracturing for lack of calcium. He never thinks about his life Before, when he was a biochemist, but suddenly, his old mentor springs him from the taiga and plops him down at her new lab in a radioecological research facility known as City 40. He's given a stopwatch with instructions about how long he can be outdoors before becoming sick from the radiation.
It's 1963 and the Soviets are terrified that the Americans will discover City 40 and bomb it, but it only takes a day for Valery to realize that the real danger is in the program itself. He's horrified to realize that six years of keeping his head down in the Gulag is lost when he's back in his own field. He can't help but point out the bad math in the calculations of danger which puts him more and more in contact with the KGB agent in charge of City 40, who's already told Valery that he has shot a scientist this week who made the same observations. But somehow, he does not shoot the little skinny starved biochemist then and there. What's that about?
"The Half Life of Valery K" is creepy and frightening, but punctuated by humanity, hope, and even love. It's impossible to put the book down without wondering when you'll be able to get back to it. Natasha Pulley's characters are surprising and filled with contradictions. The suspense almost hurts.
Then you find out that the story is based on a real, utterly terrifying incident while in real time Russian soldiers are surrounding Chernobyl as they invade Ukraine. This Soviet-era historical novel is scary and hell and not to be missed.
It's 1963 and the Soviets are terrified that the Americans will discover City 40 and bomb it, but it only takes a day for Valery to realize that the real danger is in the program itself. He's horrified to realize that six years of keeping his head down in the Gulag is lost when he's back in his own field. He can't help but point out the bad math in the calculations of danger which puts him more and more in contact with the KGB agent in charge of City 40, who's already told Valery that he has shot a scientist this week who made the same observations. But somehow, he does not shoot the little skinny starved biochemist then and there. What's that about?
"The Half Life of Valery K" is creepy and frightening, but punctuated by humanity, hope, and even love. It's impossible to put the book down without wondering when you'll be able to get back to it. Natasha Pulley's characters are surprising and filled with contradictions. The suspense almost hurts.
Then you find out that the story is based on a real, utterly terrifying incident while in real time Russian soldiers are surrounding Chernobyl as they invade Ukraine. This Soviet-era historical novel is scary and hell and not to be missed.