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| The Thread's Must Read |
"The Secrets We Kept"
by Lara Prescott
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One of the biggest books of 2019 is a novel about Russian writer Boris Pasternak, his famous novel "Doctor Zhivago," and the undercover efforts of the CIA to ensure that the book was published worldwide.
Writer Lara Prescott was actually named for the tempestuous and tragic character in “Doctor Zhivago," and she unspools this complex novel about Pasternak’s great work like she’s been publishing fiction for years. She hasn’t. “The Secrets We Kept” is her debut.
The story is set in the newish, gray days of the Cold War. It moves between Washington, D.C., and a cadre of CIA secretaries — some of whom are typists by day and spies by night — and Khrushchev’s Russia, where Pasternak is writing his masterpiece, a novel that Soviet leaders will deem dangerously subversive. It's considered so subversive, in fact, that they would send Pasternak’s mistress, Olga, to the gulag for refusing to tell them the plot of the novel as it was being written.
The audiobook is read by the author, Mikita Brottman, and her voice adds a layer of intimacy to the tale.
Prescott’s story is luxurious and romantic. I loved the descriptions of the '50s-era clothes and cosmetics that the young secretaries wear and the cocktail bars and cafes they frequent, but the suspenseful tradecraft and the CIA’s commitment to literary espionage hooked me.
-Kerri Miller |
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| | | Talking Volumes 2019 season guide |
MPR and the Star Tribune are proud to announce the 20th season of Talking Volumes. This season will feature interviews with Alice Hoffman, Saeed Jones, Tim O’Brien, Karen Armstrong, Lindy West and Tracy K. Smith.
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| | | 'The Deep' sings with many voices | | "The Deep" by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes |
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Rivers Solomon's lyrical, wrenching new novella is based on a track from the experimental rap group "clipping." about a peaceful undersea race descended from slaves thrown overboard in the Atlantic.
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