Give me a book set during the Cold War, with secret wars and women special agents, and you have me quiet for the rest of the afternoon. My fascination with this historical period comes from my remote memories where I spent a little but hard to forget, time of my life, but also due to the omni presence of the mentalities, even more decades after the official end of the Cold War. The current war in Ukraine brought up ghosts of the past, reinventing a Russia aimed to belittle and subvert the democratic world, no matter the price.
Our American Friend by Anna Pitoniak is a well researched work of historical fiction able to epitomize a whole era through the character of a fictional First Lady with a mysterious past. Set between Paris, Moscow, Washington DC and New York, it brings back the politically emotional zest of an era of confrontation reflected through the life and secrets of a woman, First Lady Lara Caine. Lara, born in the Soviet Union, with a past of model in Paris, hires a woman journalist to write her biography. But what exactly is she aiming at when requesting this service? What about trying to influence the narrative and offer the variant that convenes her the most, still keeping her secrets unscattered?
The writing is very engaging and hard to resist, with twists worth a good Cold War spy novel. It maintains a certain entertainment side, that may appeal the very young readers, not too much into intricated political intrigues, while keeping straight to facts of the serious historical fiction.
Our American Friend shows how rich the Cold War related literature still is and how important it is to keep exploring it literarily, although from the very historical point of view, is long gone. Hope to discover more such books in the near future, because it is still so much left to be said and written about it, both as fiction and nonfiction.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own
Thanks for the blog tour support x
ReplyDelete