The Secrets We Kept: A Novel by Lara Prescott

The Secrets We Kept: A Novel. Lara Prescott. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.  September 2019. pb, 368 pp.; ISBN: 9780525656159.

Secrets are held to protect individuals, groups, and nations.  Our story begins with a group of typists working for the CIA who are told to type but not think about what they are typing and to forget what they are typing.  Slowly but surely, however, they realize that certain typists are being pulled from their work to do more for the CIA, then known as the OSS.  They are actually spies trained to deliver messages, packages and sensitive material.  Irina Drozdova is the daughter of a Russian seamstress and a man who died under interrogation as they were leaving Russia.  She is now a typist and she now has a reason to serve America in order to punish Russia for the loss of her father.

The novel alternates between these ladies and spies and the world of the famous Boris Pasternak, his wife and his mistress Olga Ivinskiya.  Olga supports her lover while he is inspired by the Muse to create Dr. Zhivago for which he will one day be awarded the Novel Prize in Literature.  Olga serves three years in a Russian Gulag and knows she has sacrificed her children and life for Boris; she has lived as the Lara in her lover’s novel.

The spies become messengers to deliver the Pasternak novel which is banned in Russia. They evolve into women and men with alternative lives.  Sally Forrester and Irina become lovers in a very intense but brief affair, given that homosexuality is illegal in these times.  Their separation becomes like a crushing loss like that of death.  Because of their work they will never know love or solid relationships as all who marry are dismissed by the CIA.

Espionage and literature are forces that change the world, often with a very heavy cost to those carrying out the spying or writing.  They are ready to kill or be killed to see it accomplished.  This story is also about repression and exposure, a celebration of true liberty achieved through agony and ecstasy.  Divided into alternate sections of “East” and “West,” the publication of the famous novel is charted from its original publication to its gradual spread throughout Europe and Russia itself.  Olga suffers the result after the death of her love.

The Secrets We Kept… is an exciting, reflective, poetic and adventuresome read – marvelous, memorable historical fiction – highly recommended reading! Finely crafted, Lara Prescott!!!

Everything Belongs to Us: A Novel by Yoojin Grace Wuertz

Everything Belongs to Us: A Novel.  Yoojin Grace Wuertz. Random House Publishing Group. February 2017. 368 pp. ISBN #: 9780812998542.

Two girls and two boys experience personal and national change in 1978 Seoul, South Korea.  Jisun and Namin couldn’t possibly be more different.  Jisun comes from an important family in business and she has easy access to money and all the privilege that comes with her father’s power.  Namin comes from a poor family, is studying to become a doctor so that her family will eventually be free from poverty.  The country is now in a campaign to work hard and make the country prosper economically.  That means all must conform to the long hours of work for meager wages; the novel opens with a group of women protesting these conditions.  However, in a random moment of rebellious action, they strip themselves of blouses and bras, not realizing their act removes them from the role of honest protest and instead earns them a scandalous repetition.  Jisun’s father attempts to have guards watch her every moment but that attempt fails to stop her doing what she wants.  What she’s not prepared for is how other protestors now scorn her for her privileged status after she was removed from jail while others had to undergo penalties and social ostracism.  Namin at first is delighted to become a friend of Jisun but their relationship evolves with Namin’s realization about status and the personal cost of privilege.

Jisun and Namin then meet Samin and his mentor, Juno.  We first meet Samin being forced to carry out ridiculous actions for Juno who has a sadistic streak.  Juno knows everyone who is important in the elite group called The Club and initially Samin would do anything to gain entry to this esteemed circle.  However, Samin gradually also evolves, through his encounters with Namin, to an independent thinker. 

The plot is simple but the way Wuertz depicts the emerging personalities of these four characters is exquisite and mesmerizing.  Their lives clearly parallel the changes South Korea is experiencing as it moves from a dictatorship to a form of social democracy.  These characters experience questions about personal desires and independence that must find a place within a society that clearly prizes working together for the common good.  At the same time, wealth is not a guarantee of security and these characters as well must find a vision and place within that same society to live a meaningful life per the new standards and vision.

Everything Belongs to Us… is compelling historical fiction that this reviewer highly recommends!