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hannahstohelit 's review for:
Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy
by Ben Macintyre
MacIntyre is just really, really good at this, is what I can say. Sonya herself was fascinating, which helps- it was fascinating to me how years of learning stories of Soviet spies as antagonists made me read her in a quite sinister light at least initially, even though the majority of the spying she actually did was against Nazi Germany. In general, Jewish communists outside the USSR are always a fascinating phenomenon to read about, and the fact that she was actually in the USSR under Stalin while people were being purged gives an interesting view of her.
Sonya's life being fascinating helped, of course, but Macintyre did an excellent job of finding the shape of it for a book- identifying and foregrounding the people and themes that were not just interesting but significant over the book's arc, setting the stage for the story in a masterful way. The story of Ursula's first husband Rudi was, I think, the greatest example of this- another writer might have tried to foreshadow his eventual fate more, but Macintyre plays it just right. He just does a really well judged job of shaping and pacing the story- I'd be very curious to read Ursula's own accounts to see if he followed cues from her or if this was his own synthesis. Either way, really great.
Sonya's life being fascinating helped, of course, but Macintyre did an excellent job of finding the shape of it for a book- identifying and foregrounding the people and themes that were not just interesting but significant over the book's arc, setting the stage for the story in a masterful way. The story of Ursula's first husband Rudi was, I think, the greatest example of this- another writer might have tried to foreshadow his eventual fate more, but Macintyre plays it just right. He just does a really well judged job of shaping and pacing the story- I'd be very curious to read Ursula's own accounts to see if he followed cues from her or if this was his own synthesis. Either way, really great.