Note: what follows is slightly spoiler-y: I don't give away anything specific, but I talk about the structure of the plot, so it tells you something about what will happen (though I suspect many will guess long before they reach the end).
I was just reminding you all recently how much I hate it when a novel does that thing where multiple unrelated seemingly stories turn out to be connected... Thinking about it more, I was reflecting that it's one of the most blatantly fictional devices out there — not that it's unrealistic, exactly, because this is certainly a thing that happens in the world, but that it always feels overdetermined (because, of course, it is!). Whenever it happens in 18th century (or earlier) texts I'm teaching, my students roll their eyes and see it as ridiculous, but they seem to love it in contemporary stuff. Whereas I generally find it charming in those earlier works, but the present-day version annoys the hell out of me. I think the difference is that in modern-day works, the revelation in laced with dramatic irony: we, the readers, know, but the characters don't. So the point is a kind of wonder at how the world works, that the characters don't get to share in, or respond to, and I suppose the deeper point is to also signal to us that perhaps, we are experiencing such things as well, without being aware of them (in fact, we almost certainly are), wow, isn't the world amazing! I mean, it is, and that is an effective way that fiction can illuminate this aspect, but it's just really, really overused.
It especially bugged me in this book because it really wasn't necessary! There was already a perfectly reasonable connection between the characters — they were all experiencing the Euromaidan protests in Kiev in 2013, and interacting with each other as a result. That was sufficient! I didn't need more! I think I felt particularly cheated because I enjoyed the book SO much for the first 2/3 of it, and I didn't realize that it was heading in that direction, though of course in retrospect, I totally should have.
But the beginning is great, it totally sucks you in, the characters are complex and absorbing, and it's telling a story about an event that I care about (I was actually in Kiev a few weeks before the protests started, to celebrate my birthday with my good friend who was living there and working on a dissertation, and who was also at the Maidan, and whose book ended up being about the revolution as a result). It was a really big deal, and I suspect that in our fast-moving new cycle, globalized world, etc, etc, not enough people really know about it. Anyhow, this is a very good book, and one that most people without my grumpy pet peeves will absolutely relish — an excellent holiday gift.
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