When we discuss the Good Life and all the elements that constitute it, a loving partner, an engaging job and healthy children are often cited as its most vital components. But while these are undoubtedly stabilizing influences which sustain the Good Life, the bulk of the credit for maintaining true north on our moral compasses should go to the roots that we put down in our chosen communities. After all, these attachments to family, to friends, and to country and its laws, are what shackle our worst excesses, keeping our temptations from transitioning from fantasy to reality. Uproot a man from these normalizing influences and he is morally adrift, willing, with time, to sample any desire. And as Snowdrops so vividly demonstrates, there are parts of the world brimming with destructive delicacies.
Upon the occasion of his engagement to his future wife, Nicholas Platt, a British lawyer, pens a long letter to his fiance, full of confessions and revelations, concerning his years spent in hedonistic, tempestuous Moscow during the first decade of the 21st century. A contracts man for a European bank doing business in the new Russia, Platt recounts how, over a calendar year, his relationship with a young, seductive Russian woman drew him down into the amoral embrace of a country which, since its birth from the ashes of the Soviet Union, has been shaped and run by a cabal of oligarchs and autocrats intent upon turning Russia into a Mafia state. I'll equipped to handle these neon-soaked, vodka-laden, gangster-infused streets with which his British upbringing has not familiarized him, Platt describes how, with the passing of only seasons, he lost focus on his work, his future, and his scruples, forsaking all for sweat-soaked nights with Masha and a world she knows intimately well.
Shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, Snowdrops is a gripping work of philosophical fiction which was unlucky to have not taken out the award. Mr. Miller, an author and a Moscow-based correspondent for the Economist, skillfully portrays one man's quiet descent into the temptations of life in powerful, corrupted states. Russia, which thanks to its history has never had a strong, pervasive respect for the rule of law, has discarded even the veneer of communist equality to welcome in the unrestrained, unregulated vices of extraordinary wealth. In this, it has created the perfect playground for entitled oligarchs and opportunistic peasants to succeed in a world which has enthusiastically embraced the fast-paced lawlessness that characterized the Wild West. All of this is too much for Nicholas Platt, a decent, British bloke who, here, feels hopelessly overmatched by the hard-bitten reality of the rapidly developing, non-western world.
Though Snowdrops succeeds in depicting the menace of new Russia and the hedonism it espouses, the novel's greatest virtue is the extent to which it portrays this world without resorting to a single gunshot, fist-fight, or act of brutality. Platt's descent is neither characterized by Hollywood violence nor soviet-era blackmail. Instead, Platt's morality is killed by that human desire which is unleashed any time opportunity intersects with a man unconstrained by the obligations of family life. In this, the author has published a work which feels as authentic in spirit as it is in detail.
However, Snowdrops is not without flaws, foremost of these being that the author fails to convince us of Platt's original innocence. Snowdrops rests on the notion that the new Russia is a seductive place that tempts ex-pats to sample its many vices. But if Platt is an ass to begin with, then it becomes difficult to make the novel's central argument, that his descent is caused by Russia and not by his own flimsy character. That the author failed to sell us on Platt's prima facie goodness robs the novel's conclusion of some of its formidable power.
Nonetheless, this is wonderful and thoughtful work which is no less potent for its gradual development and its quiet but pervasive melancholy. (4/5 Stars)
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