The Half Life of Valery K: THE TIMES HISTORICAL FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH

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I do not believe at all in the happy ending for the village, or that the embassies would not have people watching them all the time and that they could put 70 people into the british embassy just like that, in Moscow in the 1960s. Or how they got them all out. Sorry, I do not believe that could have happened; Listen, I have a very limited understanding of Russian grammar, but it is not a genderless language? Especially when you'd have a distinction between Shenkov (the husband) and then Anna Shenkova... For a story set in the USSR, and very much steeped in and dependent on the bureaucracy and fear of that regime, to see random things like someone "taking the piss" or referring to a carpet that had just been "hoovered" or someone being assigned to do the "washing up" of test tubes, etc... these things just caught me up and took me out of the story and made me remember that I'm reading a British woman's book and not experiencing the situation along with the characters. One, however, had the unfortunate life choice of being married to the protagonist's love interest. The other had the unfortunate life choice of being the major female character of the story.

one lonely middle-aged man (46 M) meets another lonely middle-aged man (51 M) and together find peace for the first time in their lives Svetlana sends Valery a gift, a priceless memory Language: English Words: 1,377 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 4 Kudos: 23 Bookmarks: 1 Hits: 106 It’s one of those awkward ones where I did still like the book, but it has parts which I disliked on a spectrum ranging from slightly to intensely. And I never thought this would be something I’d say about a Natasha Pulley book, but here we are. I really loved Valery as a protagonist and thought Pulley did a great job of creating a character with a troubled past trying to work through his own issues while also working through a rather large main plot. I was also a big fan of Shenkov and enjoyed watching the relationship between the two characters change and grow. There's also a great cast of side characters throughout the book. The everyday conversations, and the important ones. Language: English Words: 3,897 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 5 Kudos: 23 Bookmarks: 3 Hits: 158Another historical novel written with panache is Rebecca Stott's Dark Earth (4th Estate), the gripping tale of two women who flee to Londinium in 500 AD. It is a novel that puts a female perspective right at the centre of a time period usually dominated by men's stories. I also enjoyed Natasha Pulley's The Half Life of Valery K (Bloomsbury), an engrossing novel set in Siberia in 1963. The story was inspired by some chilling real events after the cover-up of a radiation leak.”— Independent

So... all in all... I felt a bit let down here... but it wasn't BAD. I never felt annoyed enough to just give up on the book and DNF it. It was easily readable and I did like the premise... But I did expect a bit more from it than I got, so we'll go middle of the road 3 stars.thank you to bloomsbury for sending me an arc of the half life of valery k in exchange for an honest review