book review, Volume 1 number 7, July 1999 Satisfyingly Loathesome Siberian Light When I read a thriller, I expect to be taken somewhere else. Siberian Light not only accom-plished that purpose, it made the trip downright enjoyable. Not that all is pleasant and easy in this tightly written novel. It opens with a vicious multiple murder in the rich capitalists’ section of the Siberian town of Markovo. Soon it seems that in the whole town—perhaps in the whole of Siberia—the only person who cares about finding the killers is the town’s mayor, Gregori Nowek. Nowek, a geologist and musician, entered politics out of hope but little more: his campaign slogan had been, "Be Honest: Can I Do Any Worse?" But now, with his town and district ever more in the control of the heartless and amoral, he doubts even that. Nowek is a splendidly drawn character, and good company. It’s impossible not to root for him as he tries to deal with bureaucratic inertia and misfeasance, a rebellious daughter, a mysterious tiger biologist, an opinionated elderly father, and the omnipresent grief of his wife’s death—in short, you believe his everyday life keeps streaming on, distracting and challenging him even while he struggles to unravel the knotty clues explaining the murders. Most of the other important characters in the book are believable and fully developed as well. It’s a fair sign of the author’s skill that he can take you inside the head of a psycho-pathic killer or a restless adolescent as convincingly as into the mind of a decent middle-aged man. Well done, too, is the overall sense of the season of breakup in Siberia—we fellow Northerners would be alert to a wrong word here, but author White knows his territory; he has heard the sound of footsteps on snow and can convey the taken-for-granted mix of the primitive and the high-tech that pervade our isolation. We also might be either more or less willing than the general ruck of readers to find big American oil companies intrinsically villainous (the "Siberian Light" of the book’s title refers to the light, low-sulfur crude oil in nearby oil fields), but I admit I found the specifics of the villainy one of the least satisfying aspects of the book. (The villains themselves, on the other hand, were satisfyingly loathesome. No trouble there.) The overall effect of the book is one that pulls you in and along—that is, while reading it I did not stop and say, "My, isn’t that a well-drawn character," or "Goodness, doesn’t he do a proper job of sketching how frozen mud feels and looks on a riverbank." Nope. I hurtled through the book, wanting to know what would happen next, what stand Mayor Nowek would have to take, how he would survive this gawdawful scrape or that tight corner, how it would all come out…while meantime being very glad that Alaska is not Siberia, and that America got the right revolution the first time around, while evidently Russia has a few more to go before they get it right. All in all, I think Siberian Light is a successful bit of escapist fiction. Read it if you want to get away for a bit—and expect to be glad that you don’t have to stay there. | ||
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