A. D. Miller

This is a short but very powerful novel, taking the form of alternating narratives. The first of these is set in 2004, in the immediate aftermath of the Ukrainian presidential elections of 2004, which led to widespread condemnation from Western countries, and sustained demonstrations within the country. The second narrative is from twelve years later, and follows disgraced diplomat Simon Davey, whose life had fallen apart as a consequence of the fallout what had happened following that show more election.

In 2004, Simon Davey had been a senior figure within the British Embassy in Kiev, and was looking ahead to greater career success, culminating in his own ambassadorial post shortly in the future. During the period of uncertainty and unrest following the election he becomes acquainted with two local figures. Olyesa is a beautiful young student, and one of the more articulate of the demonstrators, moved by genuine outage over the corrupt mismanagement of the ballet rather than more political opportunism. Misha Kovrin is a businessman … well, oligarch, really, I suppose … who had acquired immense wealth during the period immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the early days of Ukrainian independence. He is a political opportunist, with far more to lose, and he seems to have thrown his hand in with the Russian back candidate.

Despite the brevity of the novel, the characters are finely and authentically drawn, and immensely plausible. The relationship between the three central characters is intense, though subject to tunnel vision from all the participants. Twelve years later, with his once successful life now a fading memory, Davey suddenly encounters Olyesa again, and resolves to explore what had happened to him, and why.

Miller writes with an austere elegance, with not a single word wasted, and dissects the protagonists’ personalities with rapier sharpness. show less

To avoid disappointment it is probably best not to expect a thriller or even a mystery with Snowdrops, which is odd because the setting (Shady goings-on in post-Soviet Russia) and the style (first person confessional) all seem to point in that direction. Instead it is more like a psychological sketch of a hollow, unloveable man, living in a hollow, unloveable age. It has some wonderfully observed descriptions of the harshness of a russian winter, and the story is full of frosty exchanges show more between people who seem to have forgotten how to care. There are only three warm characters in the book (three people who you would like to talk to and get to know) and interestingly they are all over sixty. But Miller doesn't let you get that close to these characters, because the story isn't really about them. show less

Thank god the font was big and the lines were almost double-spaced.

This story is really about Moscow. The people-characters are just props; the real characters are the city and the weather and the lawless society.
“The characters are flat, stereotypical creatures, but I havent figured out if this is an intended character flaw of the narrator, or if it is the author's intention as an auteur to convey something deeper or so far hidden, or if it just simply represents workmanlike craft, and show more is what it is.” Thats what I wrote about this book after reading the first few pages. I’ve figured out now that there’s nothing complicated here. It’s not even workmanlike craft, it’s more like the craft of an awkward apprentice.
It’s as if the author, A.D. Miller, who lived in Moscow himself for a few years as a correspondent for The Economist, wanted to think of a story, any kind of story, that he could drop into the set of Russia. This is understandable, since he had lived there and likely wanted to share his experiences. Russia the place is the main character -- the most developed and well described, compared with the people characters. The narrative arc wearily stumbles through the Moscow cold, numbing the reader’s interest, perked up only by energetic bursts of descriptions (most often yet another way to describe how cold it was).
The Moscow cold, the Moscow criminals, the Moscow daily life, the Moscow way of doing things. These are clearly the real main interest of the author, but it seems he felt he needed to create a conventional story that would give him license to provide that backdrop. The girls Masha and Katya are set props, dressing.
Why did the narrator Nick, an ex-pat lawyer, fall so hard for Masha? There is nothing in the story, not a smidgin, to explain it, to make it plausible. Did he fall for her because of her exquisite other-world beauty? She has hard red fingernails, dresses like a prostitute. That’s it? Is it because of the incredibly hot sex and the fiery passion she ignites in him? Don’t know, there are just some vague tepid references to a bit of carnal activity, occasionally slightly exhibitionist. There’s certainly no hint of any intellectual vigour, not in Masha or any of the other characters for that matter, including the narrator. There’s no hint of any meeting-of-the-souls kind of chemistry. And without any of that, the story just isn’t plausible.
The book is ostensibly the narrator relating to his fiancee the story of what happened to him in Moscow, but it is a clumsy artificial device. It is employed half-heartedly and sporadically, and so is all the more intrusive and annoying when it does appear.

The book is a decent start for a first novel, but I am absolutely stymied as to how it came even close for consideration to be on the Booker longlist, let alone the shortlist. show less

A.D. Miller’s first novel, Snowdrops, has been shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, one of the British Commonwealth’s most prestigious writing awards. It’s a fine novel, telling a story that hasn’t been told elsewhere: what Moscow looked like, felt like, how it did business and how it was criminal in the days just after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The first person narrator, Nick Platt, is a British lawyer who has lived in Moscow for four years at the time the story starts. show more The book is his explanation to his fiancée about his time in Russia:

"You’re always saying that I never talk about my time in Moscow or about why I left. You’re right, I’ve always made excuses, and soon you’ll understand why. But you’ve gone on asking me, and for some reason lately I keep thinking about it – I can’t stop myself. Perhaps it’s because we’re only three months away from “the big day,” and that somehow seems a sort of reckoning. I feel like I need to tell someone about Russia, even if it hurts. Also that probably you should know, since we’re going to make these promises to each other, and maybe even keep them. I think you have a right to know all of it. I thought it would be easier if I wrote it down. You won’t have to make an effort to put a brave face on things, and I won’t have to watch you."

Combined with the appearance of a corpse as the book opens – a “snowdrop,” a body hidden by the snow that becomes obvious only in the spring thaw – this is perfect foreshadowing for what follows. The reader cannot read a single page without a sense of foreboding, wondering what happened and when, who the corpse is, what Nick did (is he a murderer?), until one is in the middle of a brutally cold Moscow winter with Nick, almost helplessly acting as an accomplice to a crime or two. Nick is not a nice man, it seems, but neither is he evil; he is simply weak.

The source of his weakness is Maria Kovalenko – Masha, as she is called by her friends. In a chance meeting in the subway, Nick rescues Masha and her sister, Katya, from a purse snatcher. Nick is immediately attracted to Masha, even though their meeting is brief. He begins wondering whether she is “the one” from his first sight of her. Why? That he can’t seem to explain, though he admires her irony, he says: “She had an air that suggested she already knew how it would end, and almost wanted me to know that too.” The fact that she is beautiful certainly helps.

Masha and Katya introduce Nick to their aunt, Tatiana Vladimirovna, an old widow who is a relic of the Soviet system down to her bowl-cut hair – and especially to her lovely apartment, given to her for services to the Fatherland. Tatiana is soon to retire, and is considering moving to a smaller apartment in the country. Masha and Katya ask Nick to help Tatiana with the papers necessary to the apartment swap; and that’s where things start to get ugly.

There is a subplot involving a Cossack who seeks financing from Nick’s banking and investment clients. Just as we can tell from the beginning that Nick’s romance with Masha is doomed, we can see from the outset that the Cossack is basically a crime lord. Does Nick see this from the beginning, or is this so obvious only in retrospect? Does Nick really care? He refers to those days in Russia as a “gold rush,” a time when Russia was wide open to both capitalism and crime and the two were indistinguishable. Everything is about money. Indeed, an acquaintance of Nick’s, a reporter who fell in love with Russia and has never left, says to him, “In Russia, there are no business stories. And there are no politics stories. There are no love stories. There are only crime stories.”

The frigid Moscow winter, as Miller describes it, is an analogy to the frigid principal characters in Snowdrops. This is a dark and depressing novel, a snapshot of a time and place so foreign that it is almost past understanding. The hapless Nick is in love not only with Masha, but with the energy of this new, lawless Russia. Nick can only partake of this energy passively, sadly; he has lost who he is with the melting snow. Nick is himself a “snowdrop.”

One doesn’t exactly enjoy Snowdrops; it is too dark for that. It combines the Russian bleakness of Anton Chekhov with the English bleakness of Thomas Hardy. But one must admire Miller’s writing. The sights and especially the smells; the bite of the cold and the heat of the sauna; the food and the sex are all described sparingly, yet vividly. The plotting is strong, with the story opening up to meet the foreshadowing with precision. It is more assured than one expects a writer’s first novel to be. show less