This novel was certainly worth persevering with. I found it a bit slow to engage me, but then the two strands of Russia and the US began interweave more closely and I was hooked. The action moved swiftly between Boris Pasternak and the repercussions of his controversial novel and the murky word of espionage as the US attempted to get it published and into Russia. An illuminating insight into two different cultures of the 1950's and 60's.

Lara Prescott: The Secrets we kept, 9781786331670, Cornerstone, Penguin Random House UK, C format paperback, pub date September 5, 2019
I can barely believe that “The Secrets we kept” is Lara Prescott’s first novel, a superbly reimagined story, based on facts, around the publication of one of the most well-known books in literature, Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago” for which he won the Nobel Prize. Prescott’s prose and storytelling is brilliant.
Alternating between the seemingly invisible women in the CIA’s typing pool, two female agents, Iriana and Sally, and Pasternak and his family in Russia, the gripping story around this literary masterpiece kept me firmly in its grip. The parts set in Russia around Boris Pasternak and his mistress Olga Iwinskaja is masterfully reimagined and touched me the most.
I was oblivious to the fact of the CIA’s involvement during the Cold War in using the publication of “Doktor Schivago” (as is the title in German) and literature as a weapon, something only recently brought to life when documents were declassified. As someone who has worked in publishing almost her entire life, I was absolutely fascinated by this marvelous tale and was equally ignorant that Olga, Pasternak’s agent and lifelong mistress, spent several years of her life in Gulags as a punishment paying the price for loving Pasternak and helping the novel come to life.
Feltrinelli, the great Italian publisher, mastered the ultimate coup in getting the censored book out of Russia publishing it despite the danger it posed to the lives of the author and his loved ones, believing in the power of this masterpiece.
I do not want to go too deeply into details surrounding the publication of “Doctor Zhivago” as it would spoil the entire pleasure of reading this vividly constructed story around one of literature’s great classics, a book Stalin and his successors were so deeply afraid of banning it from publication in Russia. I urge you to buy a copy of “The Secrets we kept” and promise you a page turning read once it comes out September 5th.

This is a beautifully written novel quite unlike anything I’ve read for a long while. I’m so glad I decided to try this as it’s not my usual type of book I would gravitate to. Sometimes us readers need to go outside the box.

Female spies. The Cold War. Communism. Secrets. Double Agents. Forbidden Books. Forbidden Love.

Brilliantly put together, despite being fiction, a lot of this is based on actual facts of how the book Doctor Zhivago made it to being published when the Soviet Union had such issues with it that lives were at risk. This is the time that the country controlled its people, their minds and what freedom they had.

Some fantastic characters interweave in this incredible story. I fell in love with all of them. Lived vicariously as a female American spy on the Russians, the lover of a married author the world came to know, two women who found a friendship amidst state and personal secrets. It’s addictive and engaging.

The pace is steady from start to finish. The plot and the fact so much is history fascinated me, so much that I’m now looking up facts around the secret and dangerous publication of Doctor Zhivago. Imagine being willing to be called a traitor because you had to write a story stuck inside you?

The author is an exceptional talent and by the end of the novel I had a world of thoughts and emotions were stirred up. Once all the pieces of the larger puzzle fit, it’s an incredible story, told so well.

I picked up the book to read every moment I had and was truly enthralled. If you think this is not your thing, think again. A stunning, powerful and important novel. Now I must read Doctor Zhivago of course! Five stars.

Thank you to the publisher for my advance copy to review. All opinions and ratings are my own and unbiased.

In 2014, newly declassified documents revealed that in the 1950s the CIA had published and distributed a Russian-language edition of Boris Pasternak's epic novel Dr Zhivago. The novel was considered subversive by the Russian state, and the CIA sought to foment unrest among citizens.

This is a fictional account of those events., told from different perspectives. One story is that of Pasternak's mistress Olga, who is sent to the gulags. We also meet members of the agency typing pool, including Irina an American with Russian parents.

The story is beautifully told and has a 1950's American cadence.

To me this is both a history book and a novel. I saw Dr Zhivago at the cinema when I was ten years old. It was a Russian love story. I am much older now but although I know Boris Pasternak was a Russian writer I could not have named him as the author.
His story with his wife and mistress, their lives in Russia,were far from the life I lived even through some of the same years. They were also considerably better than most Russians (except for the gulag years).
The typing pool is another story that deserves a book to itself but I fear only women will believe it. As for the treatment of LBGTQs in America - pick up any newspaper to see the same happening today.
After reading this beautifully crafted book that must've have been a painstaking labour of love for the author I find myself struggling to do it justice in a review. It made me cry in many places so I stand by my original thoughts Dr Zhivago is a Russian love story.

Fictional account of the CIA 'plot' to publish 'Dr Zhivago', considered in its homeland to be subversive propaganda. A brilliant 'novel' from several people's point of view, including Pasternak's mistress, of the events surrounding this. I would thoroughly recommend it to any reader - it's part thriller, part history, part literary fiction, and totally readable. Very well written, and keeps one's interest to the very end. One is tempted to return to Pasternak and re-read Dr Zhivago, albeit in English!!

What a book and what a massive hit this will be to be sure. It’s starts at a slow pace and I was unsure at the beginning if I was actually going to enjoy the book but I stuck with it and was then totally drawn into the wonderful writing and story, a story based on truth and something I knew nothing about which made the read so much more enjoyable.
The book is full of historical detail and its a story that has everything, love, undercover missions, excitement, heartache and loyalty it’s takes you to different places and times and is crafted so well it paints pictures in your mind that are hard to forget.
So an enthralling read and I cant believe I hovered at first as to whether I would continue but I am so glad I did because this is a wonderful book that deserves all the praise I am sure it will get. Don’t miss this it’s a story and half and a 5 star read.
My thanks the wonderful Lara Prescott for a stunning novel.
My thanks also to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone & Hutchinson for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is the story of how Boris Pasternak's novel, Dr Zhivago, was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published in the West with the help of the CIA and MI5. I had no previous knowledge of this story (apart from seeing the film!) and did not know how Russian authors were treated. Olga, Pasternak's lover and muse, was detained for six years in a Gulag for her involvement, and later again after his death when she refused to reveal where the money from the royalties was. The story is told with four voices - Olga's; Irina's who was born in the US from Russian parents and recruited as a messenger from the typing pool; Sally's, who becomes Irina's trainer and friend. and the typing pool itself which performs as one voice like a Greek chorus, commenting on events and people.
I was intrigued and shocked in turns as events rolled on through the thawing and eventually perestroika. So this was gripping and educational.

"They had their satellites, but we had their books. Back then, we believed books could be weapons - that literature could change the course of history."

This is a fictionalised telling of a fascinating true story that pitched the CIA in a battle against the Soviet authorities over Pasternak's Dr Zhivago. Sadly, as I'd read some of the same sources as the author ('The Zhivago Affair', 'The Pasternak Affair', Anna Pasternak's 'Lara' about Olga Ivinskaya) there was little new here and the fiction is inevitably less detailed, precise and specific than the original sources.

What Prescott adds is a picture of the women who worked for the CIA in its early post-war days: they're mostly in the typing pool and speak with a collective voice ('we' - ironically, as they're representing the individualist west against the collective eastern bloc...) though some get selected for more dangerous, special work.

If you don't know about this episode of cultural wars, this would be a very good introduction.