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The Secrets We Kept: A novel

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The Secrets We Kept: A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick Kindle Edition

by Lara Prescott (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 8,970 ratings

Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A thrilling tale of secretaries turned spies, of love and duty, and of sacrifice—inspired by the true story of the CIA plot to infiltrate the hearts and minds of Soviet Russia, not with propaganda, but with the greatest love story of the twentieth century: Doctor Zhivago • A HELLO SUNSHINE x REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK

At the height of the Cold War, Irina, a young Russian-American secretary, is plucked from the CIA typing pool and given the assignment of a lifetime. Her mission: to help smuggle Doctor Zhivago into the USSR, where it is banned, and enable Boris Pasternak’s magnum opus to make its way into print around the world. Mentoring Irina is the glamorous Sally Forrester: a seasoned spy who has honed her gift for deceit, using her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Under Sally’s tutelage, Irina learns how to invisibly ferry classified documents—and discovers deeply buried truths about herself.

The Secrets We Kept combines a legendary literary love story—the decades-long affair between Pasternak and his mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya, who inspired Zhivago’s heroine, Lara—with a narrative about two women empowered to lead lives of extraordinary intrigue and risk. Told with soaring emotional intensity and captivating historical detail, this is an unforgettable debut: a celebration of the powerful belief that a work of art can change the world.

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September 3, 2019
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Popular Highlights in this book

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We unveil ourselves in the pieces we want others to know, even those closest to us. We all have our secrets.
Highlighted by 824 Kindle readers
Secretary: a person entrusted with a secret. From the Latin secretus, secretum. We all typed, but some of us did more. We spoke no word of the work we did after we covered our typewriters each day. Unlike some of the men, we could keep our secrets.
Highlighted by 731 Kindle readers
Frank Wisner was the boss under the big boss, and the father of the Agency’s clandestine ops.
Highlighted by 478 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of September 2019: There are a few love stories in The Secrets We Kept, mostly of the unhappy kind: adulterous, unrequited, forbidden, and ill-fated. And in between these thwarted romances, history happens. In Russia, a mistress suffers years in a Gulag rather than betray her married lover—Boris Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago—to Stalin. Her suffering inspires Pasternak to create Lara, a literary heroine for the ages. A few years later, in mid-1950s Washington DC, two intriguing, courageous women work as spies for the CIA while masquerading as typing pool secretaries. It’s a long way from the Gulag to the Beltway, but Prescott cleverly links these two narratives via the progress of the Doctor Zhivago manuscript, whose besieged creator half-pleads, half-prays, “May it make its way around the world.” That this contraband masterpiece did make its way around the world while Russians were forbidden to read it, and that the CIA hatched an audacious plot to smuggle it into Soviet Russia so as to turn its citizens against communism, is credited to men with famous surnames: Pasternak, Stalin, Dulles, and even publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. But Prescott’s mesmerizing novel brings women out of the shadows and gives them their due, as spies and muses yes, but also as unsung heroines who put their lives on the line to get a novel out into the world, trusting that to do so would rouse a nation and change the course of history. --Vannessa Cronin

Review

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST • NPR • ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY •THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • LIBRARY JOURNAL • THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

"A gorgeous and romantic feast of a novel anchored by a cast of indelible secretaries."
—The New York Times

"Enthralling... This is the rare page-turner with prose that's as wily as its plot."
—Vogue

"Proto-feminist Mad Men transposed to the world of international espionage—all midcentury style and intrigue set against real, indelible history.”
—Entertainment Weekly

"Prescott clearly had fun crafting this story, and the result is a novel that’s a delight to read — and a secret worth sharing."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"The Secrets We Kept is simply sensational. Two gripping narratives unfold in the pressure cooker of the Cold War: passionate, courageous Olga who stands in the shadow of Soviet author Boris Pasternak yet inspires him to write a heroine for the ages, and the cynical, equally-overshadowed women of the CIA who help bring Pasternak's masterpiece Dr. Zhivago to bear as a weapon against Soviet oppression. From the gulags of the USSR to the cherry blossom trees of Washington DC, the story grips and refuses to let go. Lara Prescott is a star in the making."
—Kate Quinn, New York Times Bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network

"Prescott crafts a cloak-and-dagger story of passion, espionage, and propaganda."
—The Wall Street Journal

"A page-turner that is at once a spy thriller, historical fiction and heartfelt romance...A thumping good story."
—The Columbus Dispatch

"Through lucid images and vibrant storytelling, Prescott creates an edgy postfeminist vision of the Cold War, encompassing Sputnik to glasnost, typing pool to gulag, for a smart, lively page-turner. This debut shines as spy story, publication thriller, and historical romance with a twist."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A whirlwind of storytelling. In Prescott’s supremely talented hands, the result is no less than endlessly fascinating, often deliciously fun as well as heartbreaking.
The Secrets We Kept is a dazzling, beguiling debut."
—BookPage(starred review)

"Delightful... An intriguing and little-known chapter of literary history is brought to life with brio."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Epic in scope, deliciously meaty, and utterly convincing.”
—Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

“Stylish, thrilling, smart, vivid.”
—Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck & Other Stories

“Provocative, haunting and a damn good read.”
—H.W. Brands, author of The First American

“A first-rate novel, and it signals the arrival of a major new writer.”
—Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This

“One of the most unique and devastating novels [I have] read in years.”
—Deb Olin Unferth, author of Minor Robberies

About the Author

LARA PRESCOTT received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin. She was previously an animal protection advocate and a political campaign operative. Her stories have appeared in The Southern Review, The Hudson Review, Crazyhorse, Day One, and Tin House Flash Fridays. She won the 2016 Crazyhorse Fiction Prize for the first chapter of The Secrets We Kept. She lives in Austin, Texas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

The Typists

We typed a hundred words per minute and never missed a syllable. Our identical desks were each equipped with a mint-shelled Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter, a black Western Electric rotary phone, and a stack of yellow steno pads. Our fingers flew across the keys. Our clacking was constant. We’d pause only to answer the phone or to take a drag of a cigarette; some of us managed to master both without missing a beat.

The men would arrive around ten. One by one, they’d pull us into their offices. We’d sit in small chairs pushed into the corners while they’d sit behind their large mahogany desks or pace the carpet while speaking to the ceiling. We’d listen. We’d record. We were their audience of one for their memos, reports, write-ups, lunch orders. Sometimes they’d forget we were there and we’d learn much more: who was trying to box out whom, who was making a power play, who was having an affair, who was in and who was out.

Sometimes they’d refer to us not by name but by hair color or body type: Blondie, Red, Tits. We had our secret names for them, too: Grabber, Coffee Breath, Teeth.

They would call us girls, but we were not.

We came to the Agency by way of Radcliffe, Vassar, Smith. We were the first daughters of our families to earn degrees. Some of us spoke Mandarin. Some could fly planes. Some of us could handle a Colt 1873 better than John Wayne. But all we were asked when interviewed was “Can you type?”

It’s been said that the typewriter was built for women—that to truly make the keys sing requires the feminine touch, that our narrow fingers are suited for the device, that while men lay claim to cars and bombs and rockets, the typewriter is a machine of our own.

Well, we don’t know about all that. But what we will say is that as we typed, our fingers became extensions of our brains, with no delay between the words coming out of their mouths—words they told us not to remember—and our keys slapping ink onto paper. And when you think about it like that, about the mechanics of it all, it’s almost poetic. Almost.

But did we aspire to tension headaches and sore wrists and bad posture? Is it what we dreamed of in high school, when studying twice as hard as the boys? Was clerical work what we had in mind when opening the fat manila envelopes containing our college acceptance letters? Or where we thought we’d be headed as we sat in those white wooden chairs on the fifty-yard line, capped and gowned, receiving the rolled parchments that promised we were qualified to do so much more?

Most of us viewed the job in the typing pool as temporary. We wouldn’t admit it aloud—not even to each other—but many of us believed it would be a first rung toward achieving what the men got right out of college: positions as officers; our own offices with lamps that gave off a flattering light, plush rugs, wooden desks; our own typists taking down our dictation. We thought of it as a beginning, not an end, despite what we’d been told all our lives.

Other women came to the Agency not to start their careers but to round them out. Leftovers from the OSS, where they’d been legends during the war, they’d become relics relegated to the typing pool or the records department or some desk in some corner with nothing to do.

There was Betty. During the war, she ran black ops, striking blows at opposition morale by planting newspaper articles and dropping propaganda flyers from airplanes. We’d heard she once provided dynamite to a man who blew up a resource train as it passed over a bridge somewhere in Burma. We could never be sure what was true and what wasn’t; those old OSS records had a way of disappearing. But what we did know was that at the Agency, Betty sat at a desk along with the rest of us, the Ivy League men who were her peers during the war having become her bosses.

We think of Virginia, sitting at a similar desk—her thick yellow cardigan wrapped around her shoulders no matter the season, a pencil stuck in the bun atop her head. We think of her one fuzzy blue slipper underneath her desk—no need for the other, her left leg amputated after a childhood hunting accident. She’d named her prosthetic leg Cuthbert, and if she had too many drinks, she’d take it off and hand it to you. Virginia rarely spoke of her time in the OSS, and if you hadn’t heard the secondhand stories about her spy days you’d think she was just another aging government gal. But we’d heard the stories. Like the time she disguised herself as a milkmaid and led a herd of cows and two French Resistance fighters to the border. How the Gestapo had called her one of the most dangerous of the allied spies—Cuthbert and all. Sometimes Virginia would pass us in the hall, or we’d share an elevator with her, or we’d see her waiting for the number sixteen bus at the corner of E and Twenty-First. We’d want to stop and ask her about her days fighting the Nazis—about whether she still thought of those days while sitting at that desk waiting for the next war, or for someone to tell her to go home.

They’d tried to push the OSS gals out for years—they had no use for them in their new cold war. Those same fingers that once pulled triggers had become better suited for the typewriter, it seemed.

But who were we to complain? It was a good job, and we were lucky to have it. And it was certainly more exciting than most government gigs. Department of Agriculture? Interior? Could you imagine?

The Soviet Russia Division, or SR, became our home away from home. And just as the Agency was known as a boys’ club, we formed our own group. We began thinking of ourselves as the Pool, and we were stronger for it.

Plus, the commute wasn’t bad. We’d take buses or streetcars in bad weather and walk on nice days. Most of us lived in the neighborhoods bordering downtown: Georgetown, Dupont, Cleveland Park, Cathedral Heights. We lived alone in walk-up studios so small one could practically lie down and touch one wall with her head and the other with her toes. We lived in the last remaining boarding houses on Mass. Avenue, with lines of bunk beds and ten-thirty curfews. We often had roommates—other government gals with names like Agnes or Peg who were always leaving their pink foam curlers in the sink or peanut butter stuck to the back of the butter knife or used sanitary napkins improperly wrapped in the small wastebasket next to the sink.

Only Linda Murphy was married back then, and only just married. The marrieds never stayed long. Some stuck it out until they got pregnant, but usually as soon as an engagement ring was slipped on, they’d plan their departure. We’d eat Safeway sheet cake in the break room to see them off. The men would come in for a slice and say they were awfully sad to see them go; but we’d catch that glimmer in their eye as they thought about whichever newer, younger girl might take their place. We’d promise to keep in touch, but after the wedding and the baby, they’d settle down in the farthest corners of the District—places one would have to take a taxi or two buses to reach, like Bethesda or Fairfax or Alexandria. Maybe we’d make the journey out there for the baby’s first birthday, but anything after that was unlikely.

Most of us were single, putting our career first, a choice we’d repeatedly have to tell our parents was not a political statement. Sure, they were proud when we graduated from college, but with each passing year spent making careers instead of babies, they grew increasingly confused about our state of husbandlessness and our rather odd decision to live in a city built on a swamp.

And sure, in summer, Washington’s humidity was thick as a wet blanket, the mosquitoes tiger-striped and fierce. In the morning, our curls, done up the night before, would deflate as soon as we’d step outside. And the streetcars and buses felt like saunas but smelled like rotten sponges. Apart from a cold shower, there was never a moment when one felt less than sweaty and disheveled.

Winter didn’t offer much reprieve. We’d bundle up and rush from our bus stop with our head down to avoid the winds that blew off the icy Potomac.

But in the fall, the city came alive. The trees along Connecticut Avenue looked like falling orange and red fireworks. And the temperature was lovely, no need to worry about our blouses being soaked through at the armpits. The hot dog vendors would serve fire-roasted chestnuts in small paper bags—the perfect amount for an evening walk home.

And each spring brought cherry blossoms and busloads of tourists who would walk the monuments and, not heeding the many signs, pluck the pink-and-white flowers and tuck them behind an ear or into a suit pocket.

Fall and spring in the District were times to linger, and in those moments we’d stop and sit on a bench or take a detour around the Reflecting Pool. Sure, inside the Agency’s E Street complex the fluorescent lights cast everything in a harsh glow, exaggerating the shine on our forehead and the pores on our nose. But when we’d leave for the day and the cool air would hit our bare arms, when we’d choose to take the long walk home through the Mall, it was in those moments that the city on a swamp became a postcard.

But we also remember the sore fingers and the aching wrists and the endless memos and reports and dictations. We typed so much, some of us even dreamed of typing. Even years later, men we shared our beds with would remark that our fingers would sometimes twitch in our sleep. We remember looking at the clock every five minutes on Friday afternoons. We remember the paper cuts, the scratchy toilet paper, the way the lobby’s hardwood floors smelled of Murphy Oil Soap on Monday mornings and how our heels would skid across them for days after they were waxed.

We remember the one strip of windows lining the far end of SR—how they were too high to see out of, how all we could see anyway was the gray State Department building across the street, which looked exactly like our gray building. We’d speculate about their typing pool. What did they look like? What were their lives like? Did they ever look out their windows at our gray building and wonder about us?

At the time, those days felt so long and specific; but thinking back, they all blend. We can’t tell you whether the Christmas party when Walter Anderson spilled red wine all over the front of his shirt and passed out at reception with a note pinned to his lapel that read do not resuscitate happened in ’51 or ’55. Nor do we remember if Holly Falcon was fired because she let a visiting officer take nude photos of her in the second-floor conference room, or if she was promoted because of those very photos and fired shortly after for some other reason.

But there are other things we do remember.

If you were to come to Headquarters and see a woman in a smart green tweed suit following a man into his office or a woman wearing red heels and a matching angora sweater at reception, you might’ve assumed these women were typists or secretaries; and you would’ve been right. But you would have also been wrong. Secretary: a person entrusted with a secret. From the Latin secretus, secretum. We all typed, but some of us did more. We spoke no word of the work we did after we covered our typewriters each day. Unlike some of the men, we could keep our secrets.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MD3B4F1
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (September 3, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 3, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2252 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 325 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0525656154

Best Sellers Rank: #73,742 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #306 in 20th Century Historical Romance (Books)
- #321 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
- #322 in Romance Literary Fiction

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Lara Prescott

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Lara Prescott is the author of The Secrets We Kept, an instant New York Times bestseller and a Hello Sunshine x Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. The Secrets We Kept is Lara’s debut novel and has been published in 30 countries. It is being adapted for television by The Ink Factory and Marc Platt Productions.

Lara lives in Portsmouth, NH. Learn more at LaraPrescott.com.

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vandyman99

Russia's House of Cads or Typing for Fun and Profit

Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2022

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Somewhere, my love, is a literary and political thriller more compelling than The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott, but I haven’t seen a competitor in a long, long time. The plot revolves around efforts in the 1950s by the CIA to smuggle Boris Pasternak’s novel, Dr. Zhivago, into Russia, where the agency hoped its central theme of individualism and the desire for freedom from oppression, government interference, etc. would inspire transformational change in the hearts and minds of everyday Russian citizens. Or something like that. We still live in hope.

There is some evidence that the CIA covert actions behind the dissemination of the novel were, in fact, true. Having read many years ago Bob Woodward’s book, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, not much about the CIA actions during William Casey’s tenure (and that of Bill “Wild Bill” Donovan and others before him) surprises me. I distinctly remember events like the illegal mining of harbors in Nicaragua while Reagan nodded off in staff meetings. But I digress….

The construction of the novel is like a medieval passion play, with vignette after vignette passing before you, all contributing to the plot and pacing, and all from multiple perspectives. (Sometimes this was a little confusing as you ciphered out sudden shifts in voice.) There are even multiple scenes from the viewpoint of the CIA Typing Pool, whose members were clacking away in the postwar years on top-secret minutes and reports. Not to give too much away, but one of the CIA Directors raped a typist in one scene, egregious enough, even in fiction. (The CIA sponsorship of the overthrow of the government of Chile and the related death of Allende, was, alas, all too true. Happily, the buzzer sounded on most of this cowboy stuff with the Iran Contra hearings….)

The novel includes scenes of the private lives of Pasternak and his family, featuring prominently his muse and mistress, Olga Ivinskaya, in so far as these scenes related to the ultimate theme of publishing Dr. Zhivago. A leitmotif of the novel was the effort to get the novel published in Russia against a backdrop of fusty, often invisible, impenetrable government censors and bureaucrats. The gulag and exile were very much real and imagined presences. The novel was actually published first in Italy, after being smuggled out of Russia in manuscript form with the complicity of Pasternak himself. Fortunately for the world of letters, the Italian publisher recognized its value to the world of ideas, validated by the eventual awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Pasternak. (Not to complicate the story any more than is necessary, but he originally refused the prize, bowing to Communist Party pressure and threats against the artist and his family and associates.)

If you like literature and stories of bringing a work to publication, this is the best tale since Guttenberg. Entertainment Weekly said, “Prescott combines Mad Men-esque period style with a spy story worthy of John le Carre.” Publisher’s Weekly wrote, “Through lucid images and vibrant storytelling, Prescott creates an edgy postfeminist vision of the Cold War, encompassing Sputnik to glasnost, typing pool to Gulag, for a smart, lively page-turner. This debut shines as spy story, publication thriller, and historical romance with a twist.”

This novel was indeed Precott’s first book. The author, 37 when the novel was published in 2019, spent much of her pre-writing career working on Democratic political campaigns, assisting with the campaigns of Rahm Emanuel in Chicago and Jerry Brown in California and others, helping with speechwriting and position papers, etc. (She has a Master’s degree in Political Science from American University). But ultimately the urge to write led her to drop these endeavors to enroll in the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, where, in the course of her studies there, conceived the nuclear idea for this novel. I found two things about this period of particular interest. First, she was rejected the first time she applied for graduate admission to the University of Texas but re-applied successfully a year later. And early on in the writing of the book, a high- profile literary agent told her, “No one is interested in Russia anymore.” She ultimately sold the book for $2 million, and it has been optioned for a movie. I guess the agent was wrong.

She’s now exploring a new novel related to the Depression-era Federal Writer’s Project. The New York Times said Prescott is also “fascinated by the world of fake news—who writes it, and why and how it spreads. She’d love to chronicle her dream candidate Elizabeth Warren on the campaign trail…” (Read Warren’s book, A Fighting Chance, as I did and you’ll see why.)

Read The Secrets We Kept at least once. You’ll be glad you did.

5 people found this helpful

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Constant Reader

Fascinating, Not Quite Great, But Worth Reading

Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2019

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Words are powerful. This novel tells an interwoven story of Boris Pasternak, his mistress, his novel Dr. Zhivago, and the intelligence services of the United States. The story shifts in time between Russia at the time when Pasternak is writing Dr. Zhivago and a bit later to after the novel has been written. It also shifts between characters from the Russian cast and the predominately American characters. The reader’s view of the intelligence services is primarily through the eyes of the women who were largely confined to the typing pool. It is obvious that a lot of talent (including seasoned talent with significant war-time OSS experience) is being wasted on the sidelines. Pasternak was not given permission to publish his novel in Russian since it deem to have anti-Soviet views. That ban made the novel attractive to the American intelligence service as a potential asset/weapon in the Cold War. That ban may have also influenced the Noble Prize committee to award its literary prize to Pasternak for his body of work including his poems and this novel. The story is as fascinating as it was unknown to me. Visions of Omar Shariff, Julie Christie, and ice from the movie version of Dr. Zhivago were ever present in my thoughts as I read. (That’s a good thing!) There are subplots in both the Russian portion and the American that are not closely related to Dr. Zhivago. The subplots serve to flesh out the novel and to give more dimension to the secret world of spies in the Cold War era and the oppressive police state of Pasternak. I recently read the Noise of Time by Julien Barnes about Russia’s treatment of Shostakovich during the Stalin era. This is a nation that takes its art and artists very seriously, and, in an oppressive society, that is not a good thing for artists. Toxic. The two books are vastly different, but consistent in their portrayal of the political atmosphere and the burdens placed on the artists to denounce each other upon request. Unlike The Noise of Time, this is not a literary novel. It is historical fiction that sometimes feels contrived. I did appreciate some of the historical details, like the reactions to the launch of Sputnik. The characters are often flat which leaves the reader less connected to the dramatic story. Things that should have touched my heart, often did not. There are lots of secrets kept by the characters, and there are secrets betrayed. Ultimately secrets are isolating and they make you vulnerable to betrayal no matter how close you might hold them. It may not be a novel that is written well enough to lead to a Nobel Prize for its author, but it was written well enough to hold my interest and keep the pages turning quickly.

3 people found this helpful

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Mindo'ermatter

Awkward, Yet Interesting!

Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2019

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The author tells two loosely linked stories, one heartwrenching, soul searching, while the other more superficial and almost stereotypical. Jumping between the two plotlines felt a bit like channel surfing, where one showed strong characters living with dignity amid never ending challenges, while the other recounted the trite, trivial, and redundant stories of the 1950s.

Lara Prescott's strength as a writer is clearly demonstrated with her many different first-person accounts, mostly of women's stories of lives as each person experienced it. Writing a 1950's storyline can be difficult, but the author avoids anachronisms and includes many accurate period descriptions to enliven the story.

Historical novels are always problematic from mixing truth, half truth, and fiction into the same chapters. Although partially inspired by true events, I was glad the author's acknowledgement at the end included more accurate source materials for those interested in more authoritative souces.

This new author has exceptional writing skills, which I hope to see in future fictional works.

The Audible narrations of the multiple accounts using different readers enhanced recognizing the various first-person accounts.

I admit that downloading the preview chapter excited my interest with the well-written prose that caught my attention; however, the imbalanced qualities the two primary storylines was disappointing and more than once along the way made me question my investments in money and time. The strong finish, especially of the better story, saved the book and made it more worthwhile.

9 people found this helpful

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Graciano Bello

Historia y Ficción

Reviewed in Mexico on November 4, 2020

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Me gusto la mezcla de lo histórico con la ficción, así como también, lo bien que están caracterizados los personajes y la forma en que suceden los hechos en el presente y el pasado.

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Loreen

Great Story

Reviewed in Canada on November 4, 2019

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This was a different perspective on the old story: Doctor Zhivago. It traces, the writer and his mistress as well as the beginnings of the CIA and their involvement with getting Zhivago published around the world and in the USSR. Soviet doctrine at the time was severe and did not support his kind of story. At first, the perspectives from different groups and people is hard to follow, but eventually, you really start to identify with the characters. This book also delves into LGBTQ issues during the late 50s.

2 people found this helpful

J. v. Kirchbach

Sadly below expectations ...

Reviewed in Germany on October 20, 2019

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The premise of the plot of "The Secrets We Kept" was intriguing, but the writing and structure never delivered the punch I anticipated. Honestly, the characters (and there are many!) were never developed or nuanced to a degree that made me care what happened to them, one way or the other. The chapters seemed choppy and the beginning of each one was spent figuring out who the narrator was. The Cold War atmosphere was well portrayed. The back story to Doctor Zhivago was very interesting, but the style in which it was presented was hard to read. This will not be a book I recommend to people who are interested in literature or the Cold War or a compelling narrative.

One person found this helpful

takako

literature can change the world

Reviewed in Japan on May 16, 2020

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1950年代、アメリカとソヴィエトは冷戦のさなかだった。
本書は EASTと WEST がほぼ交互に描かれる章立てになっており、EAST では、この時代、ソヴィエトでは高名な詩人だったボリス・パステルナークの生涯が中心となっている。彼はモスクワから少し離れた田舎でドクトル・ジバゴにとりくんでいた。妻ジナイダと愛人オリガの間を行き来しつつ。時にジバゴ、トーニャ、ラーラとオーバーラップする。しかし小説ドクトル・ジバゴは愛の物語であると同時に、ロシア革命、二つの大戦、スターリンの大粛清とソヴィエト権力の時代を背景としているために、反革命的文学として母国に拒否され、イタリアで最初に出版されることになる。ノーベル賞受賞も辞退させられる。このあたりの経緯を事実をもとに、フィクションとして、愛人オリガの視点から、その苛酷な状況が綴られていく。オリガの矯正収容所での日々、常につきまとう脅迫観念、そしてボリスへの変わらぬ愛と勇気など。

一方、 WEST では、設立されてまだ10年足らずのアメリカのCIA の世界が舞台となっている。1950年代から1960年代にかけて、スプートニク打ち上げ成功に沸くソヴィエトへの対抗措置として、アメリカCIAは様々な作戦を講じる。その一つが Zhivago-mission と称されるもので、ソヴィエトで出版禁止となっている『ドクトル・ジバゴ』をソ連国内に潜入させ、ソ連国民に彼らの国家体制の言論統制や検閲の実態を知らせ、自由を求めさせようとするのである。本書では CIA で働く若い女性タイピストたちの日常が前面に描かれていて(各章ごとの語り手が誰であるのか不明確な部分があるが)、彼女たちの一人がスパイとしての素質を認められ、他の CIA のスタッフとともに、任務を遂行していく様子が描かれる。
CIA の中の人間模様が、スパイ活動特有の危険や秘密性のもと、愛や友情と確執も伴って、興味深く描かれている。『ドクトル・ジバゴ』を入手し、1958年のブリュッセル万国博覧会で配布する作戦など臨場感にあふれて、そして何より当時の彼らは、文学が世界を変えることが出来るという信念に基づいて暗躍しているのだ。

昔、映画ドクトル・ジバゴを観たときの記憶が甦るとともに、本書のEASTとWESTの世界はそれぞれ、どこまで事実に即しているのかわからないが、様々に余韻の残る本だった。

　

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Tinabird

Interesting story

Reviewed in Canada on May 14, 2023

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Read this for my book club and everyone loved it . We all learnt things we did not know about the cold War . Loved all the woman characters

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