A review by yanareads6969
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

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.