Vodka

Book Description

Critics

• Things go better with vodka

  Vodka by Boris Starling 503pp, HarperCollins, £12 As late as 1987, Soviet language primers presented English conversation as an arcane form of repetition few English people would recognise, mainly about weather and approximating some lost version of ... (read full critics)

  guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

• The Best Reviews: Boris Starling, Vodka

  "Exciting Russian thriller" In 1991 Moscow, Russia struggles with the transition from Communism to Democracy as economic reform means increasingly difficult hardships in the short run and an increase in influence by the already powerful Mafia. Childr ... (read full critics)

  thebestreviews published on Thu, 16 Sep 2010

1 Review

• 

  I enjoyed the book. I read a few bad reviews on Amazon, but I disagree with most of them. Although the plot is not as eventful you would expect from your average best-seller, there's never a feeling of the author wasting pages. Every chapter screams to be read, and what might seem slow to a Ken Foll ... (continue)

  I enjoyed the book. I read a few bad reviews on Amazon, but I disagree with most of them. Although the plot is not as eventful you would expect from your average best-seller, there's never a feeling of the author wasting pages. Every chapter screams to be read, and what might seem slow to a Ken Follett reader is in fact the deep texture this book provides. I do not know Russia, and I can't judge how realistic the book actually is. It did sound believable to me, with just that much exaggeration as you expect from a work of fiction.

  After a while the story does tend to give a feeling of too much happening to too few people - something I often get when I enjoy a new episode of the brilliant TV-series "24"... I thought another similarity with the Kiefer Sutherland starrer is the fact "Vodka" has characters that have to sometimes do bad stuff in order to get things done.

  All in all, the book made me want to learn a little more on the fall of Soviet Union and on what happened during the transition to capitalism. Coincidentally, a few days after I finished the book I read a twin interview to Gorbachev and to the guy who organized the coup that erased him from the political scene. I was grateful to Boris Starling for giving me a fictional background to give some context to the period.

  http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/4304874

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  Alberto Farina said on Jul 4, 2007 | Add your feedback

Book Details

• Rating:
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• English Books
• Paperback 656 Pages
• Edition: Reprint
• ISBN-10: 0451412060
• ISBN-13: 9780451412065
• Publisher: Onyx
• Pub date: Feb 07, 2006
• Dimensions: 1097 mm x 710 mm x 258 mm Just how big is that?
• Also available as: Mass Market Paperback, Hardcover, Audio CD and Audio Cassette

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