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Vodka

Vodka

List Price: $25.95
Your Price: $17.13
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 >>

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Forget Messiah, there won't ever be another...
Review: I considered it a tremendous find to see this book peeking out at me in Duty Free at Heathrow Airport on my way home from Europe recently. I've been such a fan of Boris Starling since Messiah, and have been hoping, nay, praying, for another page turner. Sadly, Vodka is not it.

At just over 500 pages, Starling takes too long to tell the story, or stories, as there are multiple here and sometimes you wonder if it is indeed worth the effort of keeping up with them. While the background on the vodka industry and the mechanics of business and mafia in Russia were interesting enough, only the last 75 pages or so had the type of suspense we would hope for from Starling and the ending was a bit too pat for me. The "killings" were too few and far between for a book 500 pages long...I just never felt there was much of a threat there, although the story behind them was a bit of a surprise.

Easily, this could've been told quicker and more effortlessly by Starling. I won't give up on him though, I'm already waiting for his next.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Forget Messiah, there won't ever be another...
Review: I considered it a tremendous find to see this book peeking out at me in Duty Free at Heathrow Airport on my way home from Europe recently. I've been such a fan of Boris Starling since Messiah, and have been hoping, nay, praying, for another page turner. Sadly, Vodka is not it.

At just over 500 pages, Starling takes too long to tell the story, or stories, as there are multiple here and sometimes you wonder if it is indeed worth the effort of keeping up with them. While the background on the vodka industry and the mechanics of business and mafia in Russia were interesting enough, only the last 75 pages or so had the type of suspense we would hope for from Starling and the ending was a bit too pat for me. The "killings" were too few and far between for a book 500 pages long...I just never felt there was much of a threat there, although the story behind them was a bit of a surprise.

Easily, this could've been told quicker and more effortlessly by Starling. I won't give up on him though, I'm already waiting for his next.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: exciting thriller
Review: 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. Children are murdered and kidnappings are a way of life while food shortages have become dangerously normal. Chaos is the order in Russia.

International Monetary Fund advisor Alice Liddell is in Moscow to privatize the Red October Distillery, makers of vodka. Alice naively thought a lack of time and selling the concept of privatization were the problems she would face. However, Alice soon learns that vodka flows in every Russian's blood and control of its production symbolic, which means the Russian mafia, is involved. Alice is tugged in two directions both involving the Red October Director and parliamentary deputy Lev, who some insist is the biggest crook in Moscow. As Alice fights her attraction to her boardroom opponent, she finds Red October corrupt and run by the Mafia. Lev also battles with his attraction to the visiting American while he wars with his Chechen archenemy.

This exciting thriller provides an insightful look at Russia during the aftermath of the fall of Communism. Alice is a terrific character who wonders how ruthless and crooked Lev is though she desires him. Lev is an intriguing protagonist, perhaps antagonist, who puts a human face to the power struggle. Though the stormy Chechen subplot is very exciting and adds insight to the overall tale, it seems as if it belongs in its own novel as so much is going on in Moscow. Distilled, the star character remains vodka that links all Russians.

Harriet Klausner


Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Interesting background but unlikeable characters
Review: Vodka is an average thriller set in a more interesting than average background - post-Communist Moscow, Russian mafia, KGB leftovers and all that. What lets it down most are implausible and unlikeable main characters.


Alice Liddell is an American who feels Russian in her heart, despite acting like a spoilt Western brat. She's a banker, financier, heavy drinker, smart & sexy & beautiful, a skilled investigator, an unfaithful wife to a boring respectable husband, a coy & pasionate mistress.

Lev is a 'vor', a member of an elite criminal brotherhood, the leader of a Slav criminal gang, and a Parliamentary Deputy, and a Gulag survivor, and the head of the largest state-run Vodka distillery, big, imposing, muscular, with a hard washboard stomach...you get the drift. It's nothing like this author's very good first book Messiah, which among other things had distinctive yet convincing characters.


Things get worse when this pair of course fall in love, as they always do in this kind of book. This tiresome situation is described in near Mills & Boon style - glances across the room, blushes, fingers brushing, heated abandon. In between all this there's murder, gang wars, revenge, and plenty of vodka consumed to get through the story. The plot even picks up near the end, but by then I disliked Alice so much it was a lost cause.

There are worse books than Vodka, but if you like post-Soviet thrillers there are many better - re-read any of the Martin Cruz Smith 'Arkady Renko' or Donald James 'Vadim' books. If Soviet-era
police procedurals might be your thing, read the excellent and original (but hard to find) Stuart Kaminsky 'Porfiry Rostnikov' books.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Astouding quality
Review: Vodka is important in Russia. Very important. As a character puts it in one beautiful soliloquy: "It is our lifeblood; the defining symbol of Russian identity. It is our main entertainment, our main currency, our main scourge. Vodka effects every aspect of Russian life...it is the great equaliser. If there's one things which unites the President with the frozen drunk found dead on a street, it is Vodka... What's Vodka if not all things to all men? Every aspect of the human condition finds its reflection in Vodka, and its exaggeration, too. Russians drink from grief and from joy, to be warmed in the cold, and cooled in the heat, because we are tired and to get tired."

So, as with the Spice on Herbert's Dune, he who controls vodka controls Russia. This is why, in the immediate days after the fall of communism has left the economy in ruins, the rouble worthless and vodka as the only currency (people are healed with it; people are tortured with it; people's salaries are paid in it; peopled are bribed with it) the largest distillery in the country, Red October, is selected as the vehicle to lead the push for privatisation. The quick success of the venture, the selling of such a national symbol, is hoped to convince the Russian people that western capitalism is the only way forward. To organise the privatisation, American banker Alice Liddell is brought in. However, despite her experience the task will not be easy. The Russian people - who "enchant with their arts and inspire with their courage, but have horror, tragedy and drunkenness spiralling through their genes" - are sceptical and thus resistant, and rival mafiya gangs are busy vying for control of the city, leeching off the power vacuum. Lev, the charismatic leader of one of the gangs, currently owns Red October, and Alice - whose life, like that of Russia, I notice is also torn between new and old, comfort and danger, sanity and madness - must first get past him. The great bear, after the fall of the old regime, is stumbling blind, dangerously, into its future, and chaos and uncertainty are the only norms. So, little attention is paid when the body of a child is pulled from the icy Moscow River. And a second. And then a third.

The plot of Vodka is very hard to pin down, because it is a multi-stranded, multi-plotted Janus of a book. In a way, the plot itself is Russia; it exemplifies Russia in all ways. Starling's examination of a country lost in its own wilderness is absolutely astounding. I have never been so struck by wonderful lines such as, "like vodka, the onion is another perfect symbol of Russia. Onions have many layers; and the more you peel away, the more you weep."

Alice, an outsider who finds herself adrift in a huge confusing land, is a perfect internal reflection of the country itself, and the book is crammed full of other instances of symbolism and metaphor far too clever to be written about in this small space. Set during 100 days in the winter of 1991 (and with one chapter per day, that makes it a meaty tome), it is a tumbleweed of violence, emotion, politics and transition blowing down an icy, deserted street. It is big and complex, panoramic and epic.

The narrative structure too is incredible: it expands and contracts like a Chinese finger-trap as the focus is placed on the political big picture, the distillery and the politick, and then successively switched onto the developing relationship between Alice and Lev (which is less convincing in actuality than it is as a progressive metaphor), and the bleak investigation by a determined Estonian policeman into the child murders. The structure breathes and propels you along with the waves of pace created by the shifts of that focus. A big book it may be, but overlong it is definitely not, and fascinating it is to the final word.

Starling's vision is powerful and all-encompassing, and there are more than enough profound and striking ruminations on the nature of Russia (and vodka!) to fill a small notebook. One of my favourites is, "There is no such thing as Russian cuisine, only things that go well with vodka."

The portrait of the country he clearly adores is a remarkable achievement. It is a country where the only system of law that works is the rule of the mafiya. The politicians are corrupt, and the gang-leaders are the only people of any honour - and it is an honour they stick to with pride. Lev, portrayed as he is almost to be the "hero" of the piece, is incensed when a rival Chechen gang breaks the code and involves innocent members of the public, and his retribution is swift and deadly. It is a world turned on its head, and it is entirely convincing. In all honesty, I am awed by Starling's immense achievement. I ache for more.

The ending, too, is perfect. As the novel ends, with the same lines as it began, as Starling seals tight this vast echo-chamber of a novel and sends resonances eddying through the body of it, the serpent eats its own tail; the monster consumes itself and the book, and Russia, seems to come full circle. As it is put by one Moscow official, "every Russian crime is cannibalistic to some extent; no people feed on and off each other more than the Russians."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Astouding quality
Review: Vodka is important in Russia. Very important. As a character puts it in one beautiful soliloquy: "It is our lifeblood; the defining symbol of Russian identity. It is our main entertainment, our main currency, our main scourge. Vodka effects every aspect of Russian life...it is the great equaliser. If there's one things which unites the President with the frozen drunk found dead on a street, it is Vodka... What's Vodka if not all things to all men? Every aspect of the human condition finds its reflection in Vodka, and its exaggeration, too. Russians drink from grief and from joy, to be warmed in the cold, and cooled in the heat, because we are tired and to get tired."

So, as with the Spice on Herbert's Dune, he who controls vodka controls Russia. This is why, in the immediate days after the fall of communism has left the economy in ruins, the rouble worthless and vodka as the only currency (people are healed with it; people are tortured with it; people's salaries are paid in it; peopled are bribed with it) the largest distillery in the country, Red October, is selected as the vehicle to lead the push for privatisation. The quick success of the venture, the selling of such a national symbol, is hoped to convince the Russian people that western capitalism is the only way forward. To organise the privatisation, American banker Alice Liddell is brought in. However, despite her experience the task will not be easy. The Russian people - who "enchant with their arts and inspire with their courage, but have horror, tragedy and drunkenness spiralling through their genes" - are sceptical and thus resistant, and rival mafiya gangs are busy vying for control of the city, leeching off the power vacuum. Lev, the charismatic leader of one of the gangs, currently owns Red October, and Alice - whose life, like that of Russia, I notice is also torn between new and old, comfort and danger, sanity and madness - must first get past him. The great bear, after the fall of the old regime, is stumbling blind, dangerously, into its future, and chaos and uncertainty are the only norms. So, little attention is paid when the body of a child is pulled from the icy Moscow River. And a second. And then a third.

The plot of Vodka is very hard to pin down, because it is a multi-stranded, multi-plotted Janus of a book. In a way, the plot itself is Russia; it exemplifies Russia in all ways. Starling's examination of a country lost in its own wilderness is absolutely astounding. I have never been so struck by wonderful lines such as, "like vodka, the onion is another perfect symbol of Russia. Onions have many layers; and the more you peel away, the more you weep."

Alice, an outsider who finds herself adrift in a huge confusing land, is a perfect internal reflection of the country itself, and the book is crammed full of other instances of symbolism and metaphor far too clever to be written about in this small space. Set during 100 days in the winter of 1991 (and with one chapter per day, that makes it a meaty tome), it is a tumbleweed of violence, emotion, politics and transition blowing down an icy, deserted street. It is big and complex, panoramic and epic.

The narrative structure too is incredible: it expands and contracts like a Chinese finger-trap as the focus is placed on the political big picture, the distillery and the politick, and then successively switched onto the developing relationship between Alice and Lev (which is less convincing in actuality than it is as a progressive metaphor), and the bleak investigation by a determined Estonian policeman into the child murders. The structure breathes and propels you along with the waves of pace created by the shifts of that focus. A big book it may be, but overlong it is definitely not, and fascinating it is to the final word.

Starling's vision is powerful and all-encompassing, and there are more than enough profound and striking ruminations on the nature of Russia (and vodka!) to fill a small notebook. One of my favourites is, "There is no such thing as Russian cuisine, only things that go well with vodka."

The portrait of the country he clearly adores is a remarkable achievement. It is a country where the only system of law that works is the rule of the mafiya. The politicians are corrupt, and the gang-leaders are the only people of any honour - and it is an honour they stick to with pride. Lev, portrayed as he is almost to be the "hero" of the piece, is incensed when a rival Chechen gang breaks the code and involves innocent members of the public, and his retribution is swift and deadly. It is a world turned on its head, and it is entirely convincing. In all honesty, I am awed by Starling's immense achievement. I ache for more.

The ending, too, is perfect. As the novel ends, with the same lines as it began, as Starling seals tight this vast echo-chamber of a novel and sends resonances eddying through the body of it, the serpent eats its own tail; the monster consumes itself and the book, and Russia, seems to come full circle. As it is put by one Moscow official, "every Russian crime is cannibalistic to some extent; no people feed on and off each other more than the Russians."


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