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

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Every third person in the gulag is an academic,’ he said, slowly, because it was bizarre to stumble across someone who didn’t know that. He had thought the whole world knew. It had all come out after Stalin died, which was why Valery had almost laughed when he found himself being arrested a good three years after that. You could have papier-mâchéd Siberia with the reams of newsprint written about the arrests and the trials, but under no cover but a penitent air, the Kremlin had kept it going all the same. ‘People aren’t sent because of what they’ve done, they’re sent because of what they might do under the right conditions.’ Pulley indicates in her afterword that much of what happens in the novel is based on true events, though Valery and his comrades are fictional. This aura of realism casts the story in a frightening light, particularly with the current war in Ukraine. To think of what could’ve happened years ago or of what might yet happen – it’s scary times we live in.

The Half Life of Valery K is based on real events in the Soviet Union, though the characters are fictional.There's a power outage at the Lighthouse. The only reasonable thing to do was cuddle for warmth. Language: English Words: 1,304 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 11 Kudos: 37 Bookmarks: 3 Hits: 190 I did a year abroad as part of my degree, I went to Berlin. It went on record somewhere, and I was arrested in … fifty-six.’ Ugh, but now I've just remembered Albert and I KINDA want to lower it a star. I mean, I know that octopuses are intelligent, but... REALLY??! I won't be that petty though... As for the novel, it’s very good. I adored Valery and was very invested in his plight. Pulley has an easy way of storytelling – her prose flows nicely and the plot is compelling. She even manages to make the science in the novel interesting and understandable. The novel opens in a prison camp, where our central character, the Valery K of the title, suddenly finds he's being transferred to who-knows-where. Is he being sent to a different camp? Is he simply going to be taken out into the woods and shot? Is he being set up for a second set of accusations and punishment? Is he about to be tortured to try to force out any information he didn't provide when originally arrested?

Valery can think of all these possibilities and more in just seconds, and the novel continues in this way. Every character is attempting to read dangerous situations with insufficient evidence. Every character has to both speak in and decode the double-speak that is necessitated under the authoritarian government. However, it felt like the writing was just a band aid for the larger issues this book had, both in plotting and in subject matter As Valery uncovers the truth about City 40, things become ever more precarious for him. He knows if he speaks up to try to save lives he will probably be killed and so it's a constant inner battle of what to do and say. He befriends Shenkov, the head of the KGB in City 40 whose character I found unbelievable. Yes, people can hide their true essence but really! This big teddy bear of a man with a heart of gold who only wants to help other people has managed to pretend to be a cold-hearted, evil KGB agent for twenty-five years? Not one person suspecting he's secretly helping people? Sorry, not buying it.Valery took care not to laugh. ‘If you spend any time in a capitalist country you’ll be sent to the gulag, whatever you did there.’ Human radiation studies sound odd, but I guarantee that every nation in the world with nuclear capacity is conducting them in one form or other. Germany was running human studies in the thirties and I know because I worked on them.’ He had to screw his eyes shut. ‘I worked on them. If I were German, I’d have been condemned in the Nuremberg trials for what happened in those studies. I’d be in prison now for war crimes. It isn’t ridiculous.’ If anyone had told me I’d be mesmerized by a book about radiation and biochemistry and terms like curies, millicuries, plutonium and polonium, I’d have told them they were crazy. And yet, here I am, gushing about such a book!

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; Somehow, Valery and the Shenkovs escape Chelyabinsk and wind up in the middle of nowhere, Kazakhstan. With Anna and Shenkov resuming their marriage, Valery will have to figure out where his place is in this relationship. Language: English Words: 2,157 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 6 Kudos: 34 Bookmarks: 1 Hits: 160Provocative, unsettling…Pulley, extrapolating out from the records of a historic Soviet research center, raises questions about scientific experimentation and the ways in which it can be manipulated for less than honorable purposes. Her dark humor, which turns on the blind faith given to Soviet authority figures despite their outlandish claims, combines with complex characters and a clear understanding of radiation science to yield an explosive blend. The chilling result feels all too plausible”— Publishers Weekly, starred review