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    Snowdrops
    Snowdrops
    Snowdrops
    Audiobook6 hours

    Snowdrops

    Written by A.D. Miller

    Narrated by Kevin Howard

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, A.D. Miller's much-heralded debut introduces readers to Nick Platt, a British lawyer working in Russia at the turn of the twenty-first century. The only thing more enticing to Nick than a culture rife with money, corruption, and decadence is the promise of women- particularly the beautiful Masha. But when Nick starts putting his lust for Masha ahead of his business sense, a cascade of increasingly shady deals threatens to unravel both his finances and his relationship.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 4, 2011
    ISBN9781464008412
    Snowdrops
    Author

    A.D. Miller

    A. D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane, and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the CWA Gold Dagger, and was translated into twenty-five languages. As the Moscow Correspondent of the Economist, Miller has traveled widely across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. He is now the Culture Editor at The Economist.

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    Reviews for Snowdrops

    3.5/5

    378 ratings48 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Surprisingly dull and tedious, with little feel for decent characters or even a tangible sense of place. The plot feels sketchy and utterly under developed. It actually feels like the author lost interest and was struggling with threads.
    • 3/5
      Nick Pratt is a British attorney in modern-day Moscow. He's been there long enough to be fairly fluent in Russian. One would think he had enough experience with the fraud and corruption in the business world to realize that the same tendencies might play out in the dating scene. The predictable plot of this Booker nominee didn't grab me, but I liked the glimpses into Russian life, especially the jaunt to the dacha in the forest in Christmas-card Russia. Miller knows Russia because he lived there from 2004-2007. He does an excellent job describing the cold beauty of the countryside and the even colder people who fought an "everyday war, the war of everyone against everyone else."This book is told in the unique form of a confession to his future wife. I predict that the marriage will be called off after she reads this ludicrous explanation of his moral decline. Actually, that might be a better book and one that I would be interested in reading.
    • 3/5
      Interesting read about a London banker living in the recently "opened" economy of Moscow. But I struggled with the book's treatment of women. First, the concept that the protagonist, back home in London, is telling his fiancée about his time in Moscow, including his love for Masha.....including details of their sex life. The arrogance of that man to expect her to deal with such details about another woman. And the Russian women in the novel were lying con artists in mini-skirts, gullible old ladies or strippers. So there wasn't much here I could identify with. On the bright side, the protagonist Nick does seem to come to question what is really happening in Moscow even as he fails to act on his knowledge. So, this one character has some nuance and depth.
    • 5/5
      I dreamed I was in Miller's savage Moscow after reading Snowdrops. The novel follows a London lawyer in Russia as he falls for a mysterious Russian girl, Masha, but Moscow is the main character in this novel. It's mysteries are disturbing and I cannot seem to get them out of my head.
    • 4/5
      Snowdrop was an interesting glimpse at post Soviet Russia when Western banks were trying to gain position in the country recently converted to Capitalism. It is a well written tale and feels authentic. One of the ladies at our book club is a lawyer who spent a lot of time in Moscow in the period when the story was set. She said it ties in exactly with her experience of the corruption when she was there. Being a story about corruption in a place where we are led to believe a low price is put on human life, the story is not about nice things and people behaving well. It is a good read but be prepared for some people to do not nice things.
    • 4/5
      Written in the first person we are introduced to Nick, an international lawyer based in Moscow. The novel is written by way of explanation to the authors new fiance when she has asked him about his time in Russia and reasons for leaving. He details his time in the city and explains how he became involved with a girl called Masha and her cousin via a chance meeting at a transport link. Eventually the two begin 'dating' but it is always on her terms and little by little she allows glimpses into her world even inviting him to meet her 'aunt' who is looking to move. Nick soon becomes entangled in their lives and eventually an accomplice to their crimes. Nick is a complex character with almost a superiority complex over the other lawyers in the same situation, mostly I find he comes across as fairly dislikeable, but that doesn't really matter as you keep wanting to find out more about this world he has enveloped himself it.As a glimpse into Russia this is really well written and the atmosphere builds into a page turner, it is easy to imagine you are walking those frozen streets. However it is more or less advertised as a thriller. I think this is pushing it more than a little, and any twists are really easy to see coming, but I think the prose and storyline more than make up. I'm not sure if it has made me want to seek out any more books by the author, but if one fell into my lap I would probably give it a go.
    • 4/5
      In terms of feeling the cut and thrust of Moscow in the early 2000's, there is no better book. The squalor, the deception, the cold, the compromises .. all expertly portrayed. There were, however, two things I did not like about the novel. First, the notional person to whom the tale is being told adds nothing to the book and sometimes comes across as silly. This type of framing device can work, but in "Snowdrops" Miller does not make it work. Second, there were rather arbitrary time shifts which again, added nothing to the plot. Why fast forward two hours in a narrative only to come back later to fill in? I start to suspect that Miller is having trouble staging the plot so he resorts to "devices" which come off as gimmicky. Apart from that, masterful description.
    • 4/5
      This novel takes the form of a reminiscence from the narrator to his fiancée, recounting his experiences some years previously when he had spent a few years working as a lawyer in Moscow. Following what appears to be a chance encounter on the Moscow Metro, Nick finds himself falling in love with Masha, a beautiful young Russian woman whom he rescues from an attempted mugging. At that point he had already lived in Moscow for a couple of years and had found himself subsiding into a cliched form of expat life, passed almost entirely in the company of other Brits, only meeting Russians directly through work contact. As he becomes closer to Masha, and starts to imagine that they might have a life together, he becomes more cynical about many of the aspects of his that had hitherto seemed most alluring. Once their relationship seems established, Masha introduces Nick to her aunt, a veteran of the Second World War siege of Leningrad, who needs a favour.Meanwhile the firm that he works for is overseeing the due diligence procedures required to support the financing by western banks of an oil development in northern Russia, near Murmansk. The Russian end of this deal is brokered by a disreputable character known only as ‘The Cossack’, who emerges as a mini oligarch. What could possibly go wrong?Well the answer to that is that various things … perhaps everything … can, and does go wrong. There is an inevitability about much of it, partially evident right from the start in the tone of the narration, but there are still enough surprises and twists to hold the reader’s attention. Miller clearly knows the subject matter well, and imparts a great familiarity with post-Soviet Russia. He also captures the extremities of the Moscow winter, and the sheer hardship of walking the icebound streets.Despite the first person narration, the lead protagonist is far from flawless, and far from omniscient. All together, this is a competent novel, although I struggle to understand why it received such heavy plaudits at the time of its publication (including being shortlisted for that year’s Booker Prize). While I enjoyed it, I found it did not match up to Miller’s more recent novel, Independence Square.
    • 3/5
      True to life fictional recreation of the inherent criminal society of Moscow in the early 2000s, everyone out to get for themselves. The protagonist in the story is a low level British lawyer. The writing meant to echo Russian novels with lavish descriptions of daily life.
    • 3/5
      3 stars is generous. Really more like 2 1/2. A disappointing beginning to my annual Bookerthon.

      I disliked the protagonist, and although the plot was interesting enough, I thought a lot of the foreshadowing was too heavyhanded. But the biggest problem I had was with the cliche-ridden portrait of Russia and the stereotypical treatment of the characters of Masha and Katya. (I will say that the protagonist proved to be somewhat more layered in the closing chapters of the book than he had seemed earlier, so there was some depth there.)

      Not sure why this made the Booker longlist. It's well-written, but nothing about it struck me as particularly special.
    • 3/5
      A page-turner set in a Russia where all the women are either six-foot-something models or squat babushkas. Is that actually what it's like over there? Worth reading for the hilariously depressing Russian proverbs meted out throughout, even if the plot promises so much and devolves, like Fifty Shades, into lots of blabber about contracts.
    • 2/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      Very readable from beginning to end. It starts out with the narrator recounting the discovery of a body in the thawed snow at the end of a long Moscow winter. The narrator then goes back, in the form of telling all to his soon-to-be-wife, to the beginning of the winter and tells a noirish story of getting entrapped deeper and deeper by two young, attractive Russian "sisters". Because of the framing device, the reader knows that nothing is on the level, that the narrator is being trapped in some scheme, but also that it will end OK for him because he's the one telling the story. And it is hard to believe that the narrator himself in real-time did not realize that nothing was on the level, although it increasingly does dawn on him.

      The story itself is simple with no major or unexpected revelations. The interest is in the noirish narration, the depicition of Moscow in the 2000s, the interesting characters of the two young Russian women Masha and Katya, and the narrator himself.
    • 4/5
      "Snowdrops" is Moscow slang for corpses that reveal themselves as the snow melts away in spring. This Booker Prize finalist is full of figurative and even a literal “snowdrops.”Nick is a London financial lawyer, slightly cynical and very naive and patently ineffective, who lives in Moscow uneventfully until he meets sisters Masha, a salesgirl, and Katya, a student, in the subway. He’s sexually attracted to Masha and she reciprocates. The first time they have sex, Katya stays in the room and watches. Our first hint that things are not normal.Under Masha's spell, Nick finds himself doing a legal favor for the girls “aunt,” Tatiana, a sweet old Soviet leftover who owns a desirable apartment in the heart of the city. Masha and Katya have devised a scheme to get her to a new apartment in the country, having a customer for “auntie’s” city flat. All they need is someone to do the legal paperwork on behalf of Tatiana and her dream move can come true.In the meantime, Nick’s neighbor across the hall is worried because his best friend has disappeared. He wants Nick’s help to find him, but Nick does nothing. Also meanwhile, Paolo, Nick’s supervisor, has him working to put together a business deal to bring oil from an offshore tanker into a refining facility. Their client is the Cossack, a shady customer. But the firm believes if they place their own inspector in place, they will have performed due diligence.Miller’s foreboding tale unwinds as the corruption that is universal to Russian life overtakes Nick, his firm’s deal, and even his neighbor’s friend. The prose is inexorable, the form is perfect, the pitch is true, and the reader is transported and immersed in the cold snows and cold hearts of this novel’s characters: Moscow, the city and its people.
    • 4/5
      Great Book and a real insight into Moscow during the early 21st Century
    • 3/5
      This is set in Moscow, main character is Nick an Englishman who falls for Masha he meets on the Metro. Masha and her pretend sister/cousin slowly rip Nick off. Nick kind of sees it coming but he is so loved up with Masha. This is a good book and describing what Moscow is really like and how cold it can be. Well written easy to read book.
    • 3/5
      I assumed from the explanation of the meaning of the term 'Snowdrops' that this would be a crime story with bodies turning up everywhere. Actually, it is more about a socially and morally corrupt Russia with a rather ordinary story of a duped Englishman set against it. A reasonably well written book that keeps the reader interested on the basis that you assume something exciting will happen - unfortunately, it doesn't!
    • 4/5
      Mostly I enjoyed this book. It was a real page-turner because of the way Miller deftly plants the seeds of general foreboding and I just wanted to figure out what happened to our man in Moscow.

      That said, I found the narrative conceit that the narrator is writing some sort of 'coming clean' story for his fiancee to be a bit of a cheap trick that didn't support the way the narrative is actually written. Who would write a confessional with so many clear hooks to keep the reader guessing right up to the end?

    • 4/5
      I first heard about this novel on The Review Show on BBC2 and was intrigued enough by the discussion to break my resolution about not buying any more books until (a) they were available for Sony eReader; and (b) I was ready to read them.

      But right from the exquisite jacket design, I was so gripped with this book that I decided a physical copy was in order. I picked up Sunday evening, and would have happily read it in one sitting if only life hadn’t been so tortuously in the way.

      As first time novels go, this is an enormous achievement. The prose is dazzling and Moscow is evoked in a way that makes this the Gorky Park of the new millennium. The plot is entirely linear, and is essentially the inevitable forward motion of one man’s failure to swerve any of the moral hazards he encounters while working as an expat lawyer in Russia. The narrator is very clear about what a flawed and cowardly creature he is, and yet it is a joy to read on because of the insights he offers into Russian culture and society.

      As someone who has lived and worked as an expat in two European countries, I felt this book really nailed that heady sense of possibility that comes with the early stages of living abroad; the feeling that you can be who you want to be, run risks you never would normally take because you’ve stepped out of time for a bit.

      To me, this was neatly underlined by the notion that the text was effectively a long, confessional letter from the narrator to his fiancée. During discussion on The Review Show there were those who felt this narrative conceit didn’t quite work, but personally I found it added real resonance to the novel. By quietly reminding us now and then that the narrator did actually want his wife-to-be to have a good opinion of him, and to accept him depraved past and all, we were reminded that the real stakes here are moral jeopardy. Depravity is only interesting if those engaging in it have their doubts, and so find their own behaviour wanting.

      All in all, this a novel to thoroughly enjoy and admire, and I would have given this five stars if not for two things which began to grate by the end. Firstly, I’d have been happier if the two parallel strands of the plot had amplified each other more in some way, rather than simply being two different examples of the same character’s moral indifference. Secondly, I found the prose relied a bit too heavily on unwarranted foreshadowing, which then tended not to deliver as big a bang as promised somehow.

      But overall, there is no shortage of things for the reader to be gripped by, and to admire. I only hope A.D. Miller is out there somewhere right now putting the finishing touches on his next novel.
    • 3/5
      Not so long ago I asked a friend from Moscow if he preferred living in Hong Kong (our home at the time) or if he missed Moscow. He laughed and said that if I had ever visited Moscow, I would not even have to ask that question.

      This novel, Snowdrops, gives me a good idea of what he meant. The city itself is a character in this dark narrative about a British expat attorney whose desire for a beautiful Russian woman propels him into particularly shady territory. It is hard to believe that the protagonist would be quite that stupid, but I guess this particular story of willful blindness is one of the oldest in the world. Overall, I would say that the real reason to read this book is because the author knows Moscow so well that his writing comes fully alive when describing the place, the quirks of language, and the people who live there. My guess is that this visceral sense of place must have been the reason that the novel was on the Booker prize shortlist in 2011.

    • 2/5
      This the last book from the booker short list and it left me cold. I could see that it had merit. But, it did little to move me. It covers a westerners view of modern day Russia. I could see that the main character was having a rough time but did not care for him. The other characters seem to be stereotypes; the corrupt, party oligarch come tycoon and the gold digging Russian women. I know these people exist but there must be more to them than this. Russia itself comes across as a stereotype, full of corruption and stupid western business.
    • 2/5
      This is the synopsis of a book that judges of this year’s Man Booker Prize for fiction selected for the Prize’s shortlist

      “… a riveting psychological drama that unfolds over the course of one Moscow winter, as a young Englishman’s moral compass is spun by the seductive opportunities revealed to him by a new Russia: a land of hedonism and desperation, corruption and kindness, magical dachas and debauched nightclubs; a place where secrets – and corpses – come to light only when the deep snows start to thaw… Snowdrops is a chilling story of love and moral freefall: of the corruption, by a corrupt society, of a corruptible man. It is taut, intense and has a momentum as irresistible to the reader as the moral danger that first enchants, then threatens to overwhelm, its narrator.”

      Here’s a synopsis of the book I read

      …a predictable drama that appears to have been borrowed from the set of whatever local version of Neighbours they have in Russia that unfolds over the course of one Moscow winter (they got that bit right), as a nearly middle-aged Englishman sets his moral compass aside with nary a thought because a pretty girl offered to sleep with him. There are quite a few train rides, and a visit to a strip club (or maybe two, I forget) and lots of snow. Old people do not fare well. Snowdrops is a bland story of mild lust in a moral vacuum. It is dull, languorous and has the momentum of a somnambulant tortoise which threatens to bore the reader into a coma.

      On the bright side the book I read was mercifully short, the writing itself was rather good (the problem being more that there was nothing of much interest written about) and it did deliver an atmospheric sense of place (though my cynical self says this bordered on the caricature at some points but having never been I’ll give the author the benefit of the doubt).
    • 2/5
      Another dud from my reading group. This was a really depressing book. None of the characters has any redeeming features and nothing much happens. Its only redeeming feature is its style which is easy to read.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book, but I think most of my love comes from the fact that I have always been intrigued by Russia and studied abroad there while in college. Many of the words, places and events were already familiar to me, and the overall feel (which captured 90s Russia perfectly) really took me back. Another reviewer favorably compared the feel to Tom Rob Smith's [Child 44], and I agree with that assessment -- Snowdrops is even better, even more compelling, even more able to capture what Russia felt like for a foreigner during the 90s. I loved that about the book.All this said, I don't think readers who aren't as enamored with Russia (or even with reading about it) will be nearly so engaged. There are parts of the story that kind of meander, and none of the characters are ever drawn clearly enough to understand their motivations. (I think this is on purpose, since our narrator doesn't understand who Masha, Katya, or even Tatiana really are, but readers hoping for clearly drawn characters won't care for them.) Similarly, mystery readers expecting everything to be tied up neatly at the end, with no unknown details remaining, will hate the ending. I myself was hoping for more. But readers who enjoy intriguing literary fiction with mysterious characters and perhaps the most enigmatic setting of all -- Russia! -- will thoroughly enjoy this novel.
    • 5/5
      Dieses Buch gab es von Vorablesen als Ersatz für den Kriminalroman „Der Sturm“, um dessen Autor es bei Veröffentlichung einigen Aufruhr gegeben hatte. Zum Glück! Denn sonst wäre ich auf diesen wundervollen Roman wohl nie aufmerksam geworden und mir wäre ein großes Lesevergnügen entgangen.Nick ist ein britischer Anwalt, der seit vier Jahren in Moskau lebt und arbeitet. Er meint, er kennt „die Russen“ und deren Hauptstadt mittlerweile sehr gut. Doch eines Tages trifft er zwei junge Frauen in der Metro: Mascha und Katja. Schon bald werden Mascha und er ein Paar. Mit ihr gemeinsam lernt er ganz neue Seiten seine Wahlheimat kennen, die nicht immer erfreulich sind. Der Protagonist erzählt seiner Braut in der Ichform seine Erlebnisse in Russland. Dadurch konnte ich mich gut in diese Figur hineinversetzen. Obwohl er bereits Mitte Dreißig ist, kam Nick mir manchmal sehr naiv vor. Die junge und hübsche Mascha wickelt ihn um den Finger. Obwohl er von verschiedenen Leuten gewarnt wird, schlittert er unaufhaltsam ins Verderben. Auch geschäftlich entwickelt sich eine Transaktion nicht so, wie die Anwälte es sich vorgestellt haben. Der Autor hat als Korrespondent drei Jahre in Moskau gearbeitet. Ich war leider noch nie dort, konnte mir anhand der Beschreibungen aber alles sehr gut vorstellen. Die Schilderungen waren sprachlich sehr ausgefeilt und so kam es, dass ich das Lesen oft unterbrechen musste, weil ich die Sätze genießen wollte. Bei einigen Darstellungen musste ich schmunzeln, andere dagegen haben mich schockiert. So war der Roman für mich ein Wechselbad der Gefühle. Und wie Nick war ich zu Anfang noch so naiv und habe geglaubt, dass alles noch ein gutes Ende nehmen könnte. Aber der Autor hat schön langsam den Untergang vorbereitet und zum Schluss fiel es mir wie Schuppen von den Augen. Fazit:Ein großartiges Debüt, das mich vor allem durch seine Sprache und seine bildhaften Beschreibungen begeistern konnte.
    • 2/5
      the story was okay but it tended to be more of a continual description of old russian buildings, roads, parks and side streets bit of a shame really
    • 5/5
      Effective psychological thriller about a British lawyer who becomes unwittingly involved in a long con in Putin-era Moscow.
    • 5/5
      This was brilliant. A narrative laden with chilling overtones yet full of humour in its sardonic descriptions of everyone and everything. It’s a look at modern Russia from the point of view of an expat, an education in its customs, corruption, weather, the lot. What a great piece of writing, my best read of 2012 so far.
    • 3/5
      Snowdrops would probably have raised several establishment eyebrows if it had won the Man Booker prize. I wouldn't class it as literary fiction, but it's a very readable crime thriller.Nick Platt is a lawyer working in Moscow on a large oil deal. At 38, he's not sure of the direction he wants his life to take, and jumps at the chance to move from the monotony of his life in London, where all of his university friends were having children or adopting cats.At first glance, Nick appears to have adapted well to life as a Muscovite. He speaks Russian, handles four sub-zero winters and drinks vodka shots with the best of them. The masculine business world is very different to that in London (I hope!), and bribery and corruption are rife, as is random violence.The book is written from Nick's perspective as a guilt-ridden confessional to his soon-to-be wife in London. For in Russia he met Masha and Katya, sisters who draw him into helping their aunt Tatiana move flat - an enterprise that isn't all that it seems.Nick's neighbour Oleg gets the best lines. Although sad and lonely, he seems to have Nick's best interests at heart - though Nick has little time for Oleg - and his words of wisdom are wonderful. For instance: "only an idiot smiles all the time" and "the only place with free cheese is a mousetrap". Aunt Tatiana is also a sympathetic character, having survived the war and the loss of her husband.So here are my issues with Nick Platt. Firstly, are we really expected to believe that an educated Englishman is so damn gullible when it comes to women? I could be mischievous here and say that it's just typical of men to take it for granted that a beautiful 24 year-old would fall in love with them. He does acknowledge early in the book that he probably doesn't have as much money as he thinks Masha would like, but why then fall in love with someone you know to be a gold digger?Platt is also portrayed as curiously amoralistic, which I found to be strange. He doesn't bat at an eye at the widespread bribery in the city, except for when he refuses to pay a policeman to look into the disappearance of Oleg's friend, which doesn't interest him much anyway. He goes along with the way business deals are done in Russia, usually involving strip bars, prostitutes and lots of vodka (I know, I'm sounding naive here), and expresses no opinion either way on how the culture in Moscow must jar with his experience and upbringing in London. He presented to me as a weak and deluded man, willing to go along with the desires and manipulations of a young woman who would never love him so long as he could be with her.I wonder if the wife-to-be goes through with the wedding? I wouldn't.
    • 5/5
      A simple story of an ex-pat lawyer who becomes unintentionally involved in two cons, one corporate, one personal. It's brilliance is in how you get such a total feel for modern day Moscow and all the people there. A book that quickly and totally draws you in, strongly recommended.