Our Woman in Moscow

 Our Woman in Moscow

By Beatriz Williams

In the autumn of 1948, Iris Digby vanishes from her London home with her American diplomat husband and their two children. The world is shocked by the family’s sensational disappearance. Were they eliminated by the Soviet intelligence service? Or have the Digbys defected to Moscow with a trove of the West’s most vital secrets?

Four years later, Ruth Macallister receives a postcard from the twin sister she hasn’t seen since their catastrophic parting in Rome in the summer of 1940, as war engulfed the continent and Iris fell desperately in love with an enigmatic United States Embassy official named Sasha Digby. Within days, Ruth is on her way to Moscow, posing as the wife of counterintelligence agent Sumner Fox in a precarious plot to extract the Digbys from behind the Iron Curtain.

But the complex truth behind Iris’s marriage defies Ruth’s understanding, and as the sisters race toward safety, a dogged Soviet KGB officer forces them to make a heartbreaking choice between two irreconcilable loyalties.

I liked this, especially coming as it did when I was halfway through Left Hand of Darkness and the part where LeGuin muses that maybe with the removal of hormones we wouldn't have war or rape, and I'm rolling my eyes so hard. Sure, because both of those things are about sex and not power in any way... right.

So, Woman! I definitely have critiques, and there were a lot things that were either huge deus exs or me really not paying attention to the plot (and I'm pretty sure I followed the plot), but for a lightweight espionage thriller, it succeeds.  

First off, I would have ordered the book around completely differently.  We start at the end of the "extraction" and then go back in time, skipping from Ruth in '52, Iris in '40-'48, and Lyudmila in '52, getting in backstory and so on, but for real, the book is called Our Woman in Moscow and Lyudmila's first chapter concerns an agent passing information about Russian double agents back to the US/UK. It's not a stretch.  It's Iris!  Let's not be coy here.  I would have started with Sumner tracking down Ruth to extract Iris, up to the point that Ruth meets up with him again in Italy (or reorganized that whole section), then gone and spent the middle section with Iris, and actually spent time with her being a spy, and her fear when the other two (Philby and Maclean or whomever) showed up, and then backtracked to the extraction operation, so we really felt the stakes in the last section.  Here, it builds and loses steam in certain areas; and we skip over hugely important turning points (i.e., what the heck happened with Philip? Why did Sasha think he'd killed Philip but he clearly had not? I mean, were the Russians keeping that from Sasha, and if so, why? But also Iris apparently spent a bunch of time with him in the hospital, so where was Sasha for all this? And why was Iris in danger when Burgess and Maclean defected? Except that she managed to be safe for another year after they defected.  I just... did not follow that part.  You need to make it clear for stupid people!).

And there's a lot of semi-artificial stake-raising in the extraction chapters (Lyudmila knows the mole is the Digby family, but is foiled by her boss! Iris has to have a caesarean instead but it's all part of the plan! Lydumila's boss searches the apartment but finds nothing! Orlovsky's daughter is on vacation but then she spills everything! Everything is ruined! No, everything is proceeding!) and then we come to the biggest failure, in my opinion: the insertion of Lyudmila's daughter Marina as a vital plot point. First of all, if we're trying to achieve what weird coincidences turn fate (which I think ___ may have been going for, based on the afterword) I think we need to dwell a little bit more on than by Iris and Ruth after the rescue when they discover who Marina is. Second, it's fairly far fetched that this 15 year old, just happened to be good friends with the Digby/Dubinins, whose mother just happened  to be leading the counter-extraction, stole a motorcycle and drove to Riga and shot a guard (yeah, let that sink in) and it turns out to be the one person (the ONE) person whom Lyudmila wouldn't betray in an instant. 

And I don't think it needed to be there!  Let general paranoia and incompetence carry the day (as it did many times in the actual truth)! Let the stakes be the betrayal and choice of Sasha between his family leaving and the Communist party! Let's actually see the spouses confront each other on their covert activities and make Sasha face the prospect of going back to Russia having allowed his family to escape versus leaving the only happy life he's had.  

This makes it sound like I didn't enjoy the book.  Don't get me wrong: I did enjoy it! I just really wanted it to be ever so slightly different. 

I'm not even going to get into how everyone keeps harping on how Iris would never betray someone, only to turn right around and betray her husband (in several different ways). 

Comic Bonanza

Here's a round-up of a couple of kid-friendly(ish) comic books I've been reading:

Courtney Crumrin, Vol. 1: Courtney Crumrin & The Night Things

By Ted Naifeh

Courtney's parents have dragged her out to a high-to-do suburb to live with her creepy Great Uncle Aloysius in his spooky old house. She's not only the new kid in school, but she also discovers strange things lurking under her bed.

This one is why I'm calling these "kid-friendly (ish)" emphasis on the "ish".  Courtney is a somewhat darker take on the beginning witchcraft dabbler tale, both figuratively and literally.  I mean, everything is kid-appropriate, but at one point a changeling takes away a baby that Courtney is watching, and although she tries to get it back (being captured and sold herself) her uncle basically tells her in the end, "Forget about trying to get the baby back, these things happen, his parents won't even notice." And they don't!  That was a more chilling story than I expected it to be.  Anyway, these are set up as four short stories, all in black and white.  I would have loved to have them in color, but I suppose it sets the mood.  Courtney herself is an entertaining little curmudgeon.  The last story finds her losing energy, only to realize she's been replaced by a doppelganger who is living her life (and doing much better at it apparently).  In the final confrontation, you think that Courtney will let the doppelganger just take over since everyone seems to prefer it to her, but she comes out swinging hard with a "fuck everyone else, I'm a difficult and unpleasant person, and that's exactly how I want to be!" that completely saps the doppelganger.  Good on you, Courtney.  I would never want to meet you in real life, but bless your confidence. 

Goldie Vance Vol. 1

By Hope Larson and Brittney Williams

Sixteen-year-old Marigold “Goldie” Vance lives at a Florida resort with her dad, who manages the place. Her mom, who divorced her dad years ago, works as a live mermaid at a club downtown. Goldie has an insatiable curiosity, which explains her dream to one day become the hotel’s in-house detective. When Charles, the current detective, encounters a case he can’t crack, he agrees to mentor Goldie in exchange for her help solving the mystery.

This one is a lot of fun to read, colorful, bouncy, basically Nancy Drew in 60s Florida, if Nancy weren't so lily white.   Whereas Courtney was a loner and preferred it that way, Goldie has a colorful cast of supporting characters, including friends, enemies, potential ladyfriends, adults who seem to exist mainly for spoiling fun, and also: aliens!  Yes, I was really getting into the story when it took an abrupt right turn into Martian colony weirdness.  This was set up so the mini-stories merged into a longer connected story, so we'll have to see if all of the mysteries end like that.  It was a little off-putting, but I (a) enjoyed the rest of it enough to keep reading and (b) can kind of see where they're going with the 60s cold war and space-focus (one of Goldie's friends wants to be an astronaut) so I will allow it for now.

The Lost Path

By Amélie Fléchais

Three young boys set off from Camp Happiness, map in hand, determined to be the first to find the treasure before anyone else. But the shortcut they take leads to something far more spectacular and sinister! All manner of magical beasties live in these woods, and the kids find themselves caught between warring Forest Spirits. Will the three boys find their way out of trouble? Get your map and ready, set, go!

This was something I picked up and bought during my sojourn on Free Comic Book Day solely because of how beautiful it was, and that definitely panned out.  It is gorgeous, done in multiple color and drawing styles.  I would have liked something 100% in color, just because the coloring that was there was so beautiful, but, I acknowledge that (like Courtney) the black and white was an appropriate style choice for those sections - when the three boys are simply wandering in the woods.   I agree with a lot of other reviewers that felt the story-line was lacking in comparison to the illustration.  The story is good, but it felt oddly incomplete and only half explained.  We wind up in the middle of fighting forest spirits, but it was hard to tell who was on what side and why.  A crown/hat becomes a Chekov's Gun that never goes off, and when I got done, I went to look if this was intended to be a stand-alone story or not.  So far it is, which is a let-down.  Overall, a beautiful, but otherwise somewhat empty, little book.