Vodka

by Boris Starling

Book Overview

A taut and shocking story of vengeance, bloodshed and love, set over 100 days of bitter Russian winter... from the bestselling author of Messiah. Moscow, December 1991. Chaos reigns after the fall of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451412060
• ISBN13: 9780451412065
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Onyx Books
• Length: 638 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 4.3" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant rendition of late 1990s Russia

Readers looking for a past-faced, page-turner sort of thriller may be disappointed with the long length and slow, thoughtful sections. However, any reader interested in the mysterious machinations of Russian political and criminal society will find this fictional tale to reveal more truth about the reality of Russian life than any history book. The dynamic between Starling's American and Russian characters bitingly reveals Western biases- and deftly pulls the carpet out from under readers who will find their own assumptions about life suddenly challenged. It is not an uplifting story, but it is refreshing in that it describes Russia as it is, not as the West would wish it to be. This book is highly recommended for anyone wishing to both learn about the real Russia and enjoy a wild ride of twists and turns down back alleys with spies, deceit, romance, global business deals, the KGB, and of course, Russian society itself.

Poor Beautiful Alice has Her Work Cut Out for Her

Russia is just starting to get back on her feet. It's 1991, the USSR has fallen and beautiful banker Alice Liddell has come to Moscow to head up Red October, Moscow's largest distillery, and everybody knows how important Vodka is to Russians. She knew the job wasn't going to be easy, after all the Russians were used to the old system, privatization is a new and a strange animal, but one she is determined to make work. However, she didn't know the job was going to be so difficult. There is dissention in the plant and it's not clear who is going to run the factory, Alice or a Mafia boss named Lev, who is nobody to mess with, let me tell you. Then there is a brutal gang of Chechens for Alice to worry about and if that isn't enough she has to deal with an honest cop, but wait, there is still more, Alice is a recovering alcoholic who finds herself more than a bit intimidated, to say the least, with all that vodka. In the beginning Alice and Lev seem to be at each other's throats, but sparks fly. Did I forget to mention that Lev is a seven foot tall hunk of a weightlifter who is covered in tattoos? But even as those sparks begin to dance an Estonion detective named Juku Irk is investigating a series of child murders. Yes, there is a serial killer in the story too. So poor, beautiful Alice really, really has her work cut out for her, but you won't find reading this book work at all. This is an exciting read. And it's informative as well. You'll be drawn into the many plots and subplots even as you learn a whole bunch about Russian culture and the culture of Vodka. You don't want to miss this one.

One Helluva Tale!

Boris Starling's sprawling narrative is set in Moscow over a period of only four and one half months, yet the novel is epic in nature. From December 23, 1991, to May 9, 1992, the reader is taken on a wild roller coaster ride through a landscape reeling in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the inception of privatization. I should put "privatization" in quotations because no one could have envisioned exactly how chaotic the conversion of industries and businesses from governmental ownership to private enterprise would be. This is the anarchic period of Boris Yeltsin's takeover of power from Mikhail Gorbachev, and, if you don't mind a plot, and an extraordinary number of subplots, which go off on a multitude of tangents, then you just might be caught up in "Vodka," as I certainly was. What a ride (!) - frequently wild and improbable...but so much fun!! If you prefer your prose tight and your storyline well organized, needless to say, this is not the book for you! By December 1991, all of the former republics had declared independence. In the world of nonfiction, Vladimir Putin, Russia's current president, called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century." It resulted in economic crisis in Russia which continued for at least five years. Into this pandemonium steps the beauteous and brilliant Alice Liddell, an International Monetary Fund advisor responsible for overseeing the privatization of Red October, Russia's foremost vodka distillery. The annual consumption of vodka in Russia, which has a population of approximately 146 million, is 4 billion liters a year. "The Russian Health Ministry estimated consumption in 1996 was 18 liters of pure alcohol per adult which is equivalent of 38 liters of 100 proof vodka. However, as the reader will discover, vodka is much more than the national drink. And as Ms. Liddell will discover, despite her entire history of professional banking and trading accomplishments, her ability to bring logic and order to her work environment just won't hack it in Moscow. And when she and her team meet Lev, "parliamentary deputy, distillery director, criminal godfather, champion weight lifter, his shoulders as wide as two men's, the crown of his head seven feet above the floor," and her new adversary, all bets for successfully transforming Red October into a private corporation, as defined outside of Russia, and introducing capitalism, American-style, are off. The multiple subplots - well...there's a doozy of a serial killer on the loose in the big city and his/her victims are children; brutal Mafia wars between Chechen and Slavic crime syndicates bring a level of creative violence to this tale which makes our own Godfather's activities seem like shenanigans; ghosts of the Soviet-Afghani War haunt the novel's pages; an outrageously sentimental romance flourishes (and it works - although Anna Karenina it's not); alcoholism is painfully confronted by a mai

The underbelly of Moscow

Very readable and suspenseful, 'VODKA' will open your eyes to a lifestyle that you will not find on 'Rich and Famous'. Moscow sparkles and comes alive with beutifully detailed and appealing personalities whom you grow to love, despite the fact that they are flawed in triplicate. But, as most readers know, Russian novels seldom have happy endings, and this one is no exception. I loved the book without reservations.

Astouding quality

Vodka is important in Russia. Very important. As a character puts it in one beautiful soliloquy: "It is our lifeblood; the defining symbol of Russian identity. It is our main entertainment, our main currency, our main scourge. Vodka effects every aspect of Russian life...it is the great equaliser. If there's one things which unites the President with the frozen drunk found dead on a street, it is Vodka... What's Vodka if not all things to all men? Every aspect of the human condition finds its reflection in Vodka, and its exaggeration, too. Russians drink from grief and from joy, to be warmed in the cold, and cooled in the heat, because we are tired and to get tired."So, as with the Spice on Herbert's Dune, he who controls vodka controls Russia. This is why, in the immediate days after the fall of communism has left the economy in ruins, the rouble worthless and vodka as the only currency (people are healed with it; people are tortured with it; people's salaries are paid in it; peopled are bribed with it) the largest distillery in the country, Red October, is selected as the vehicle to lead the push for privatisation. The quick success of the venture, the selling of such a national symbol, is hoped to convince the Russian people that western capitalism is the only way forward. To organise the privatisation, American banker Alice Liddell is brought in. However, despite her experience the task will not be easy. The Russian people - who "enchant with their arts and inspire with their courage, but have horror, tragedy and drunkenness spiralling through their genes" - are sceptical and thus resistant, and rival mafiya gangs are busy vying for control of the city, leeching off the power vacuum. Lev, the charismatic leader of one of the gangs, currently owns Red October, and Alice - whose life, like that of Russia, I notice is also torn between new and old, comfort and danger, sanity and madness - must first get past him. The great bear, after the fall of the old regime, is stumbling blind, dangerously, into its future, and chaos and uncertainty are the only norms. So, little attention is paid when the body of a child is pulled from the icy Moscow River. And a second. And then a third.The plot of Vodka is very hard to pin down, because it is a multi-stranded, multi-plotted Janus of a book. In a way, the plot itself is Russia; it exemplifies Russia in all ways. Starling's examination of a country lost in its own wilderness is absolutely astounding. I have never been so struck by wonderful lines such as, "like vodka, the onion is another perfect symbol of Russia. Onions have many layers; and the more you peel away, the more you weep." Alice, an outsider who finds herself adrift in a huge confusing land, is a perfect internal reflection of the country itself, and the book is crammed full of other instances of symbolism and metaphor far too clever to be written about in this small space. Set during 100 days in the winter of 1991 (and with one chapter per da