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A Debut Novel Reimagines the C.I.A.’s Efforts to Promote ‘Doctor Zhivago’

By Janet Maslin

• Sept. 2, 2019
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The true stories within Lara Prescott’s first novel, “The Secrets We Kept,” are by far the best thing about it. That’s saying a lot, because the job of weaving together bombshell espionage material long kept secret by the C.I.A. with the creation story of a now-dusty Russian novel and tartly-observed “Mad Men”-era feminism and sexual bigotry was tough. Prescott has managed to shape all of this into an above-average entry in the I-Knew-Hemingway genre.

“The Secrets We Kept” centers on Boris Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago,” about which you may know nothing, everything, the movie’s theme music or only how ravishing Omar Sharif and Julie Christie looked in the snow. Very few people approaching Prescott’s book are likely to know much about the “we” in its title. It refers not only to Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya — the devoted lover who was the main muse for Lara in “Zhivago,” and went to excruciating lengths to protect Pasternak — but to the book’s Greek chorus, the C.I.A.’s female typing pool. As you can see, there’s a lot going on here.

In 2014, the C.I.A. revealed an astonishing story about Pasternak and “Doctor Zhivago”: Once the manuscript had been spirited out of the Soviet Union at the behest of an enterprising Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the agency launched an operation to translate it from Italian back to Russian, print it in the tiniest possible editions and send it into Pasternak’s native land. The Soviets had banned it, sight unseen.

Years later, Nikita Khrushchev finally read it and expressed regret for that decision. “Better late than never,” he wrote about this change of heart.

The pert-looking, sly-talking women of that C.I.A. typing pool, who narrate parts of this book with a very potent “we,” had more than a little to do with this operation. Some were tasked with replacing the “Zhivago” dust jackets with more innocuous ones and mailing them to targets overseas. Others were appraised by their all-powerful male bosses for espionage potential, because there turned out to be things that a beautifully dressed, role-playing woman could do better than a guy in a suit. A lot of the novel is about these women’s interactions and, in particular, a love affair that develops between two of them. It’s the ’50s. So-called transgressive behavior is very dangerous. Another element of peril.

[ This book was one of our most anticipated titles of September. See the full list . ]

There have been other books about the C.I.A. revelations, most notably “The Zhivago Affair,” by Peter Finn and Petra Couv é e, who petitioned for the documents’ release. But that was nonfiction. Prescott has the first whopper novel, and it set off a bidding war , more likely on the basis of its commercial potential than its caliber as a page-turner.

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THE SECRETS WE KEPT

by Lara Prescott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2019

An intriguing and little-known chapter of literary history is brought to life with brio.

Inspired by the true story of the role of Dr. Zhivago in the Cold War: a novel of espionage in the West, resistance in the East, and grand passions on both sides.

“We typed a hundred words a minute and never missed a syllable.…Our fingers flew across the keys. Our clacking was constant. We’d pause only to answer the phone or to take a drag of a cigarette; some of us managed to master both without missing a beat.” Prescott’s debut features three individual heroines and one collective one—the typing pool at the Agency (the then relatively new CIA), which acts as a smart, snappy Greek chorus as the action of the novel progresses, also providing delightful description and commentary on D.C. life in the 1950s. The other three are Irina, a young Russian American who is hired despite her slow typing because other tasks are planned for her; Sally, an experienced spy who is charged with training Irina and ends up falling madly in love with her; and Olga, the real-life mistress of Boris Pasternak, whose devotion to the married author sent her twice to the gulag and dwarfed everything else in her life, including her two children. Well-researched and cleverly constructed, the novel shifts back and forth between the Soviet Union and Washington, beginning with Olga’s first arrest in 1949—“When the men in the black suits came, my daughter offered them tea”—and moving through the smuggling of the Soviet-suppressed manuscript of Dr. Zhivago  out of Russia all the way up to the release of the film version in 1965. Despite the passionate avowals and heroics, the love affair of Olga and Boris never quite catches fire. But the Western portions of the book—the D.C. gossip, the details of spy training, and the lesbian affair—really sing.

Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-525-65615-9

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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SEEN & HEARD

THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring  passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the  Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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BOOK REVIEW

by Kristin Hannah

BOOK TO SCREEN

THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

LITERARY FICTION

More by Donna Tartt

by Donna Tartt

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The Secrets We Kept is a crackling, female-centered spy thriller rooted in real life

If biology is destiny, maybe biography is, too; Lara Prescott ’s parents named her for the heroine of Boris Pasternek’s Nobel-prize-winning 1957 novel Dr. Zhivago , and now she’s centered her crackling debut around the covert Cold War efforts to alternately halt (on the Soviet side) and help (on America’s) its publication.

Unlike her namesake, though, women live fully at the center of Secrets ; mistresses, secretaries, and aspiring agents who may have lived their lives in the margins, but saw everything. New hire Irina Drosdova is a cool, self-contained blonde with a Russian birth certificate but no real memories of the motherland; agency veteran Sally Forrester is a Jessica Rabbit sexpot with years of overseas experience in the field; how their (fictional) escapades converge with the true story of Pasternek’s struggle to get Zhivago out into the world — and more specifically, the considerable sacrifices that entailed from his longtime lover and muse, Olga Ivinskaya — form the narrative center of the novel.

At least as much as there can be said to be a center: In alternating chapters, the book toggles between East and West across more than a decade, dropping in on multiple pulse points of the so-called “soft-propaganda warfare” — a battle waged to win over the hearts and minds of Soviet citizens by giving them access to the rogue homegrown art and literature their government denied them.

Really, though, it’s about the women who fought alongside (but officially of course, largely below) the men on that fight’s front lines, scheming and strategizing and even finding the time to fall in love, sometimes with one another. The whirl of trench coats and cocktails and midnight meetings on park benches has the heady whiff of classic old-fashioned spy storytelling, but filtered, too, through Prescott’s thoroughly modern lens. And the result is something like a protofeminist Mad Men transposed to the world of international espionage — all excellent midcentury style and intrigue set against real, indelible history. A–

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BookBrowse Reviews The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

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The Secrets We Kept

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• First Published:
• Sep 3, 2019, 368 pages
• Jun 2020, 368 pages

• Historical Fiction
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• 1940s & '50s
• Adult-YA Crossover Fiction
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In this electrifying debut based on a true story, two CIA secretaries are tasked with smuggling Boris Pasternak's novel Dr. Zhivago out of the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

This thrilling historical novel by Lara Prescott received a stellar rating of 4.7 stars from our First Impressions reviewers. What it's about: Spanning the Cold War period of 1949-1961, in Russia, the United States and Europe, this novel sheds light on Boris Pasternak, his mistress Olga Ivinskaya and the novel Dr. Zhivago , for which Olga served as a muse, influencing the character of Lara. At the same time we gain insights into the CIA of the 1950s (referred to as "the agency") through the eyes of its female typists and two female spies. Lara Prescott uses a variety of narrators to reveal an unfolding story of love, desperation, government repression and the undermining of the Soviet Union through Dr. Zhivago . Ultimately it is truly about secrets kept. Well researched and beautifully written (Mary L). Many readers enjoyed learning the details of this fascinating historical event: I confess, I stayed up nights reading this one! It delved into one aspect of the Cold War I was never aware of before – and what an interesting piece of history it is. Who would have thought that the CIA would find Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago to be a great propaganda tool (Kathrin C).  Lara Prescott's research and access to historical documents make this a fascinating book (Jeanne W). What a delicious, refreshing historical fiction novel from a debut author, who obviously put her heart and soul into the research and writing. A combination of love story and espionage set during the Cold War makes for a fascinating story (Vicky R). While I have enjoyed everything I have read through BookBrowse, this was definitely my favorite...a must read for any historical fiction buff, especially those with an interest in Russian-US relations (Mark S). Prescott's characters were appreciated for their complexity and nuance: The women of this story are far and above the masterminds, the moving forces and the backbone of everything that transpires. It was absolutely a stunning page-turner of historical fiction, meticulously researched, with characters so masterfully fleshed out that you forget the "fiction" aspect entirely. When I closed the final pages, I was not ready to leave Olga, Sally, Irina and the typists behind, despite the satisfying endings (Tiffany V). Lara Prescott does a wonderful job making these three women come alive (Jeanne W). For some reviewers, the book brought back fond memories of reading Dr. Zhivago or watching the film adaptation: In 1965 when Doctor Zhivago the movie was released I was a teenager, newly in love with my future husband. I saw the beautiful Lara and her love for Zhivago and never knew the story behind its publication or of Boris Pasternak and his love Olga. I probably would not have believed the CIA's involvement! (Esther L). A novel comes along every once in a while where one regrets reaching the end. This is truly one of those. This historic background to one of the most famous modern love stories in literature is extremely convincing and heartbreaking. Doctor Zhivago enlightened many generations in the movie theater, and The Secrets We Kept will take us back again to view the classic film (Ann B). I highly recommend this book! I'm looking forward to rereading Dr. Zhivago soon (Lynn D). Readers can't wait to see what this debut author does next, and plan to reread The Secrets We Kept with their book club in the meantime: Lara Prescott is a talent and I, for one, will look eagerly to her next venture (Ann B). I was duly impressed with this author and look forward to reading more by her (Kristin H). I am eager to introduce The Secrets We Kept to my book club after it is published, and know we will have a very interesting discussion. I predict this will be one of the best books of 2019 (Betty B).

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Beyond the Book:    Dr. Zhivago , the Movie

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the secrets we kept.

Following the end of World War II, the world has changed. Allies become deadly, feared and hated enemies. Berlin and Germany are divided not only geographically but also ideologically and economically. The clandestine world of spies and spycraft changes as well, leading up to the Cold War. And the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) becomes the CIA.

Mostly staffed by men, there are the occasional females in the Agency. Recent graduates of Ivy League colleges, hoping to serve their country, are relegated to the typing pool. Other women who had run black ops during the war or smuggled dynamite to allies, regarded by the Nazis as the most dangerous of spies, now sit at typewriters or take dictation. Still, in 1950s America, there are worse jobs. And at least they get to work in the CIA’s Soviet Russia Division, which is certainly more exciting than some of the other government typing positions.

"It’s a fascinating snapshot of danger, life and love, and an exploration of what service to one’s country means to both citizens and governments."

On the other side of the world, in the USSR, Stalin continues to rule the combined Soviet nations. Boris Pasternak, the beloved Soviet poet, is writing what would become his masterwork: DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. This story isn’t just fiction, though; like his titular character, he is married yet also is having an affair. Stalin and his government are worried about the ideas that Pasternak is including in the novel, concerned that it will be anti-socialist. But no one is talking about the contents of the book --- not Pasternak, or his wife, or his lover and muse, Olga Ivinskaya.

So when the government can’t determine what Pasternak is writing about, Olga is arrested and taken to the Lubyanka, the most terrifying government prison in Moscow. Her interrogator asks her repeatedly what the book contains: “What is the novel about? Why is he writing it? Why are you protecting him?” Their greatest fear is that Pasternak is writing anti-Soviet propaganda, and the Soviet people might read it. In actuality, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is a love story, and Olga will not confess that Pasternak is doing, or writing, anything wrong. Her steadfast devotion to him earns her a sentence: five years in the Gulag.

In Washington, D.C., the CIA has decided that the way to the Soviet people’s hearts, to draw them toward democracy and away from communism, will be most effectively traveled via literature. In fact, the Russians are a highly literate people; Russia is, after all, the nation that produced the captivating written words of Chekhov, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The CIA selects several women, one from their typing pool, to aid in this work. Irina Drozdova is a first-generation American whose mother fled the Soviet Union before she was born (her father wasn’t so fortunate as to make it out alive). Irina’s trainer is the glamorous Sally Forrester, who has used her beauty and intelligence to fascinate America’s enemies all over the world, and finds herself captivated by Irina.

Olga, released from the Gulag, returns to her family and her lover, who still hasn’t completed DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Once he has finished it, though, who in his native country will publish it? Everyone in the Russian writing community and publishing world knows that Pasternak and his book are dangerous property. But perhaps someone outside the Soviet Union will take a chance on it.

THE SECRETS WE KEPT carries the reader through the tumultuous years spanning the beginning of the Cold War, from 1949 to 1961. Debut novelist Lara Prescott beautifully pens the story of three women whose choices and actions affect individuals, nations, even the world. She vividly recreates post-war Washington, Europe and Soviet Russia, and the mores and culture of the ’50s and ’60s. It’s a fascinating snapshot of danger, life and love, and an exploration of what service to one’s country means to both citizens and governments.

Reviewed by Melanie Reynolds on September 20, 2019

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

• Publication Date: June 30, 2020
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction , Historical Thriller , Suspense , Thriller
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Vintage
• ISBN-10: 0525566104
• ISBN-13: 9780525566106

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott review – an impressive debut

A t the height of the cold war, the CIA ran an initiative known as “cultural diplomacy”. Following the premise that “great art comes from true freedom”, the agency seized on painting, music and literature as effective tools for promoting the western world’s values, and funded abstract expressionism exhibitions and jazz tours. But when it came to the country that produced Tolstoy, Pushkin and Gogol – a nation that, according to a character in Lara Prescott’s impressive debut novel, “values literature like the Americans value freedom” – the focus was always going to be on the written word. And her subject, the part the CIA played in bringing Boris Pasternak’s masterpiece Doctor Zhivago to worldwide recognition, was the jewel in cultural diplomacy’s crown.

In 1955 rumours began to circulate that Pasternak, hitherto known largely as a poet, having survived a heart attack and Stalin’s purges, was ailing and politically compromised but had nonetheless managed to finish his magnum opus. The sweeping, complex historical epic – and simple love story – that is Doctor Zhivago had been a decade in the writing under the most adverse circumstances imaginable: the imprisonment of Pasternak’s lover, Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya ; the death in the gulag of his friend and fellow writer Osip Mandelstam and the suicides of two others in his circle, Paolo Iashvili and Marina Tsvetaeva ; constant surveillance and his own ill health. Because of its subversive emphasis on the individual and its critical stance on the October Revolution, no publishing house in the Eastern bloc would touch it. When an enterprising Italian publisher sent a secret emissary to Pasternak’s dacha, in miserable desperation the writer handed it over, with the inscription “This is Doctor Zhivago . May it make its way around the world.” The manuscript was smuggled out to West Berlin – and the CIA made their move. Their aim was clandestinely to publish a Russian edition and return it to its homeland.

This is remarkable raw material for a novel. Prescott’s book, the subject of a legal row after Pasternak’s great-niece Anna Pasternak accused her of plagiarising her own biography of Olga, has all the ingredients for a spy thriller. It has a great cast of characters and a wealth of historical detail to be mined, plus the potential for insight into a bizarre and compelling point in our history and, of course, a love story. Prescott’s first achievement is her identification of these qualities: weaving them into a complex and involving narrative is altogether more of a challenge, but she works hard and with considerable ambition to meet it, and entwines a surprising love story of her own invention.

Like Doctor Zhivago , her novel follows a number of characters’ viewpoints. There is Pasternak himself and Olga, whom we first encounter as she is arrested, pregnant with his child, and imprisoned for refusing to divulge what she knows of the book. Irina Prozdhova, the Washington-based émigré daughter of a man murdered by the Russian regime, has been newly recruited by the agency; Sally Forrester is an experienced spy and honeytrap or “swallow”. Both these women have secrets of their own. And, most engagingly, we hear from the communal voice of the typing pool of the CIA’s Soviet Russia division.

There are a couple of male walk-on parts, including, in the novel’s only properly bum note, CIA agent Teddy Helms, who courts Irina and whose brief section on a mission to Britain is so full of missteps (his MI6 contact referring to “the little Mrs”, English fish and chips being breaded rather than battered) that one begins to wonder if the author intends it as a riff on his obtuseness. And indeed there is a sly joke against the patriarchy woven into the plot: at a time when women were at their most invisible, expected to confine themselves to traditional roles, they made the best spies. It is the female characters who carry this adventure, from the pragmatic, loyal, indestructible Olga to the marvellous typists. With their Virginia Slims and Thermoses of turkey noodle soup, they make up a kind of smart, gossipy Greek chorus whose commentary begins and ends the novel.

Prescott may not be an accomplished prose stylist, but her characterisation is often deft. Her Pasternak is vividly flawed: histrionic, lachrymose but stubbornly lovable. Her research is thorough if occasionally a little too visible, and the portrayal of the love between Olga and Pasternak is poignant and convincing. Sold in 25 countries, with film rights optioned, The Secrets We Kept is set to be a publishing phenomenon; but more importantly, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

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The Secrets We Kept

Quick recap & summary by chapter.

The Full Book Recap and Section-by-Section Summary for The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott are below.

Quick(-ish) Recap

The book jumps back and forth from the U.S. to Russian perspectives.

In the U.S., Irina Drozdov gets a job as a typist for the CIA. The CIA knows that her father died while being interrogated by the Russians and hopes that it will inspire loyalty in her, and Irina is made an undercover Carrier of information. She and her CIA handler Teddy Helms pretend to be dating so others don't know, but turn into a real couple.

In Russia, Olga Ivinskaya is sent to prison due to her affair with Boris Pasternak , Russia's most famous living poet who is writing a novel entitled Doctor Zhivago . She is questioned about the book, which they worry is anti-Soviet, and is sent to a re-education camp. She is released a few years later. He completes his book and hands it over to an agent to be published outside Russia, but Olga worries that even that will anger the Soviets.

In the U.S., the CIA is planning a Soviet propaganda operation, with Sally Forester leading and Irina brought in as well. Sally tells Irina about her dream of owning a bookstore. They plan to distribute banned materials to convince the Russian populace that the Red State prevents free thought, setting their sights on Doctor Zhivago .

At the Italian release party for Doctor Zhivago, Sally also finds a business card in her pocket, an invitation to become a double agent. Meanwhile, Irina and Sally's relationship becomes sexual. Sally also suspects Teddy's best friend, Henry , is a mole. When Sally start asking around, Henry rapes her. Another CIA man notices, but does nothing, and Sally feels disillusioned. Sally breaks things off with Irina. Irina breaks things off with Teddy. Soon, Irina is sent to Russia to pick up a copy of Doctor Zhivago. They are bound and distributed to Russian attendees at the World's Fair.

In Russia, Olga's children comment on Boris's unwillingness to marry her. Boris's only concern seems to be getting his book translated into more languages. He wins the Nobel Prize for Doctor Zhivago. However, the Kremlin forces Boris to decline it. The film rights to the book are sold in Hollywood, but in Russia, Boris is denounced and is not allowed to receive mail. After much time, Olga convinces him to write an apology letter to the people.

In the U.S., Sally gives Henry's name to the people on the business card, and they capture Henry. Sally soon approaches them for work. Irina stays with the CIA, but thinks of Sally.

In the end, after Boris's death, Olga is sent to prison again along with her daughter. The film adaptation of Doctor Zhivago is released in 1965. Boris is posthumously re-awarded the Nobel. Many years later, an 89-year-old woman has been arrested for leaking secrets to the Soviets and is awaiting extradition to the United States. It’s Sally. She’d been running a rare books shop for the last fifty years along with an unnamed woman.

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Section-by-Section Summary

The Typists. The book introduces the Typists, women who work in the Soviet Russia Division of the CIA as typists and secretaries, typing up memos, reports, dictations and the like.

Chapter 1 (East, 1949 – 1950)

The Muse. Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya is arrested and taken to Lubyanka , a Moscow prison, due to her affair with Boris “Borya” Leonidovich Pasternak , Russia’s most famous living poet who is currently writing a novel entitled Doctor Zhivago . Olga has two children, Ira and Mitya , and is also pregnant with Boris’s child. Boris is married to another woman, Zinaida . He lives in the writers colony of Peredelkino, which Stalin set up to support the arts but also to monitor Russia’s writers.

In prison, she is often interrogated at night by Anatoli Sergeyevich Semionov about Doctor Zhivago , which they are concerned is anti-Soviet. Doctor Zhivago is a fictional love story between characters, Yuri and Lara . Boris calls Olga his muse and has partially modeled Lara after her.

Months later, someone Olga knows ( Sergei Nikolayevich Nikiforov ) has been tortured into giving a confession, stating that he has overheard Olga and Boris having anti-Soviet conversations and that they are planning to escape abroad. Olga miscarries, and soon she is sentenced to 5 years in a reeducation camp in Potma .

Chapters 2 – 4 (West, Fall 1956)

The Applicant. Irina “Irene” Drozdov applies for a typist position with the CIA. Her mother is a Russian immigrant. Her father was a professor. Irina believes he died in a Russian gulag, but the CIA informs her that he died before that while being interrogated. Irina gets a second interview despite performing poorly on her typing test.

The Typists. The typists are overseen by Walter Anderson . Irina gets brought in as the new hire and immediately is told to meet with Frank Wisner , the “big boss under the big boss.”

The Swallow. Sally Forrester was a intelligence officer during WWII. She was known as a Swallow , pretty women tasked with getting information. She attends a reunion with officers she worked with along with their former boss, Frank Wisner. Frank approaches her about working with him again on an operation involving a book.

Chapters 5 – 7 (East, 1950 – 1955)

The Rehabilitated Woman. Olga describes her time in the gulag, digging holes and working fields and the difficult conditions. When Stalin dies, Olga’s sentence is reduced to three years. When she is released, Olga is reunited with Borya.

The Cloud Dweller. Boris writes at his desk which once belonged to his friend who was taken away during the Purges that took place under Stalin a decade ago. Upon news of Olga’s release, he decides to break things off with Olga, but when he goes to tell her, he changes his mind.

The Emissary. With Olga back, they resume their affair and Boris writes feverishly. Olga starts to take on the role of his agent, taking meetings and managing contracts on behalf. Olga moves into a house close to the dacha Boris shares with his wife in Peredelkino. This requires her to be separated from her children, whose school is in Moscow, on weekdays. Boris completes his book, though they have trouble finding a publisher due to its subversive content.

Chapters 8 – 9 (West, February – Fall 1957)

The Carrier. Irina is not just a typist at the CIA, but also a Carrier. She goes undercover to pick up or deliver things. She’s later told that her father’s death made her a good candidate because that sort of anger “ensures a type of loyalty to the Agency that patriotism never can.” Irina meets with Theodore “Teddy” Helms for her assignments. Teddy suggests pretending they’re dating so others don’t suspect anything when they’re seen together.

The Typists. Tensions are high at the Agency after the Russians launch Sputnik into space. Sputnik II later launches. Part of the Agency’s plan to combat the Soviet threat involves soft propaganda to capture the hearts and minds of the Russian people. By finding ways to distribute banned books and other cultural materials, they hope to convince them that the Red State prevents free thought. Publishing companies and literary magazines are founded to serve as fronts. When Doctor Zhivago comes along, the CIA thinks it will be a game-changer and is determined to smuggle it into Russia and distribute it.

Chapters 10 – 11 (East, 1955 – 1956)

The Agent. Sergio D’Angelo is an Italian literary agent who has been sent to Russia by his employer, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli , to find the next literary classic. He meets with Pasternak about Doctor Zhivago . Under Khruschev, there’s been a “thawing” of restrictions, but Pasternak is sure publication of his book will not be allowed in Russia. It has been pending approval for months. Still, Pasternak hands over his book to be translated into Italian, which Sergio then delivers to Feltrinelli.

The Emissary. When Olga finds out that Pasternak handed over the book, Olga is worried the government will come for them if the book is published, even outside the USSR, without Soviet approval. She demands the return of the manuscript, but Sergio says it’s too late. Boris later signs a contract with Sergio. Boris is told to ask for the manuscript back or be arrested, which he does at Olga’s request, but it is ignored by Feltrinelli (who has previously been told to ignore anything not written in French).

Chapters 12 – 18 (West, Fall 1957 – August 1958)

The Carrier. Teddy and Irina gradually become a real couple. Sally Forrester is brought in as a “receptionist” and takes over overseeing Irina’s spy work, furthering Irina’s spy training and befriending her.

The Swallow. They want to bring Irina in on the book project. Sally and Irina grow even closer. Sally tells Irina of her dream of running a bookstore. Sally is gay and feels a connection with Irina. When the Italian version of Doctor Zhivago ( Il dottor Živago ) is to be released, Sally attends the release party to gather intel and a copy of the book. Sally meets a strange man there and later discovers a business card for Sara’s Dry Cleaners tucked into her book.

The Company Man. Teddy is in charge of securing books with anti-Soviet, pro-U.S. messages. He travels to London to discuss a copy of Doctor Zhivago in its original Russian that MI6 (British Intelligence) has gotten ahold of. They agree to hand it over soon.

The Swallow. Sally and Irina’s relationship turns sexual, but Irina has also accepted Teddy’s marriage proposal. Sally also suspects that Henry Rennet , Teddy’s best friend, is a mole. At a New Year’s Party, Henry confronts Sally about her suspicions and then rapes her in a closet. Walter sees her disheveled state, but says nothing. Sally feels used and that she was never part of their Boy’s club. She memorizes the address of Sara’s Dry Cleaners, recognizing it as an invitation to be a double agent.

The Typists. The typists recall realizing Irina was being trained for espionage work and reflect on how they saw Sally, hinting that she will later be exposed.

The Carrier. Irina is sent to pick up the Russian Doctor Zhivago. Afterwards, she meets up with Sally who breaks things off with her. Irina finds herself losing her appetite for food and life in general following her conversation with Sally. Based on the gossip floating around, she suspects Sally is now interested in Henry. Irina’s mother gets sick and passes away.

Chapter 19 (East, May 1958)

The Mother. It’s been six months since Doctor Zhivago’s Italian publication, and Olga’s children are certain they are being watched, as is she. Meanwhile, Borya is only concerned with his book and seeing it translated into more languages. Olga’s children comment on Borya’s unwillingness to marry her.

Chapters 20 – 21 (West, August – September 1958)

The Typists. Soon, the CIA has printed up 365 copies of the book in Russian bound in blue linen, preparing to distribute them to Russian attendees of the World’s Fair. As the typists socialize with Teddy and Henry, Henry mentions that Sally is about to be fired for homosexuality. Soon, Irina breaks off her engagement with Teddy. Teddy disappears for a week, and when he returns, he punches Henry in the face. Henry leaves and never returns.

The Nun. Irina meets with Ivanna in a chapel in Brussels. Ivanna has experience distributing forbidden materials in Russia. The hope is to incite an uproar in the USSR about why Doctor Zhivago was banned. At the World’s Fair, blue linen covers litter the floor as the recipients attempt to hide the books.

Chapter 22 (East, September – October 1958)

The Prizewinner. Boris is awarded the Nobel Prize for Doctor Zhivago . Boris and Olga hope they will be safe with the world’s eyes on him. Boris’s friends warn him that he must renounce the prize or be punished, but he accepts it.

Chapter 23 (West, October – December 1958)

The Informant. Sally follows Henry to Paris and sends his name and location to Sara’s Dry Cleaners. A dozen white roses are sent to her, to acknowledge receipt of the information. Soon, she gets word that they’ve taken him.

Chapter 24 (East, October – December 1958)

The Emissary. The blowback for the Nobel is intense, with the Kremlin issuing a response and newspapers labeling him a traitor. Student are required to attend “demonstrations” against the book. Boris is expelled from the Soviet Writers’ Union. Boris fears they will come for him, contemplates suicide and tries to convince Olga to do the same, though she refuses. Finally, Boris rescinds his acceptance and refuses the Nobel.

Chapter 25 (West, December 1958)

The Defector. Sally is broke and her revenge is not fulfilling. She meets with the strange man she met at the party, who believes she can be an asset to them and is willing to compensate her accordingly.

Chapter 26 (East, January 1959)

The Postmistress. The book has now been republished 12 times in Italian, and the film rights have been sold in Hollywood. Meanwhile in Russia, Boris is denigrated publicly and no longer permitted to receive mail. Still, Boris refuses to even try to leave Russia, which he considers his home. Olga, instead, receives mail on his behalf. Finally, Olga convinces Boris to write a letter to Khrushchev, begging for forgiveness, and then to the public to be printed in the newspaper, apologizing to the people.

Chapter 27 (West, Summer 1959)

The Student. Irina remains abroad in her work distributing Doctor Zhivago and stays with the CIA long after her work on the Zhivago affair is long over. She thinks of Sally.

Chapter 28 (East, 1960 – 1961)

The Almost Widow. Boris is now having health troubles. He pens a play and gives it to Olga to help support her after his death. His funeral is well-attended but ended abruptly by authorities. Olga never sees Zinaida, his wife, again after the funeral. Two months after Boris’s death, they come for Olga. She is sentenced to eight years, and her daughter Ira is sentenced to three years.

The Typists. Teddy ends up marrying another one of the typists, Norma . The film adaptation of Doctor Zhivago is released in 1965. In 1988, Boris is posthumously re-awarded the Nobel, and his son accepts on his behalf. Many years later, an 89-year-old woman has been arrested for leaking secrets to the Soviets and is awaiting extradition to the United States. It’s Sally. She’d been running a rare books shop for the last fifty years along with an unnamed woman.

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The Secrets We Kept: A novel by Lara Prescott

Introduction

A HELLO SUNSHINE x REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK A thrilling tale of secretaries turned spies, of love and duty, and of sacrifice--inspired by the true story of the CIA plot to infiltrate the hearts and minds of Soviet Russia, not with propaganda, but with the greatest love story of the twentieth century: Doctor Zhivago . At the height of the Cold War, two secretaries are pulled out of the typing pool at the CIA and given the assignment of a lifetime. Their mission: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one dare publish it, and help Pasternak's magnum opus make its way into print around the world. Glamorous and sophisticated Sally Forrester is a seasoned spy who has honed her gift for deceit all over the world--using her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Irina is a complete novice, and under Sally's tutelage quickly learns how to blend in, make drops, and invisibly ferry classified documents. The Secrets We Kept combines a legendary literary love story--the decades-long affair between Pasternak and his mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya, who was sent to the Gulag and inspired Zhivago's heroine, Lara--with a narrative about two women empowered to lead lives of extraordinary intrigue and risk. From Pasternak's country estate outside Moscow to the brutalities of the Gulag, from Washington, D.C. to Paris and Milan, The Secrets We Kept captures a watershed moment in the history of literature--told with soaring emotional intensity and captivating historical detail. And at the center of this unforgettable debut is the powerful belief that a piece of art can change the world.

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Discussion questions, notes from the author to the bookclub, book club recommendations.

Recommended to book clubs by 2 of 3 members.

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I enjoyed the story and found it disturbing that the propaganda tactics and censorship in the Cold War are still in play 2021 ie Facebook and Twitter

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Life In The Making

The Secrets We Kept – Book Review

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott Published by: Vintage Publish Date: 2020 Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction, Fiction About Fiction; Russian; LGBT HB&W Rating: 3.5 View on Goodreads Buy on Amazon : Barnes & Noble , Book Depository

At the height of the Cold War, Irina, a young Russian-American secretary, is plucked from the CIA typing pool and given the assignment of a lifetime. Her mission: to help smuggle  Doctor Zhivago  into the USSR, where it is banned, and enable Boris Pasternak’s magnum opus to make its way into print around the world. 

Mentoring Irina is the glamorous Sally Forrester: a seasoned spy who has honed her gift for deceit, using her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Under Sally’s tutelage, Irina learns how to invisibly ferry classified documents—and discovers deeply buried truths about herself. 

The Secrets We Kept  combines a legendary literary love story—the decades-long affair between Pasternak and his mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya, who inspired Zhivago’s heroine, Lara—with a narrative about two women empowered to lead lives of extraordinary intrigue and risk. 

Told with soaring emotional intensity and captivating historical detail, this is an unforgettable debut: a celebration of the powerful belief that a work of art can change the world.

Synopsis source: Goodreads

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. Prescott, 2020, p. 195, cited 1981 The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Translated by Andrew H. MacAndrew, Translation Copyright 1970, Book V: Pro and Contra, Chapter 5: The Grand Inquisitor, Quote Page 306 and 307, Bantam Books, New York. 

Female spies, forbidden love, and a Soviet traitor….this should be good.

Have you read Dr. Zhivago ? I haven’t, but I confess that I would like to now. Go figure, I’m always wanting to do the things people tell me I’m not allowed to do. You see, if you’re like me, you may not know that Dr. Zhivago was a banned book in the USSR, a book so against the Soviet propaganda that even whispers of the contents while it was being written was enough to get author Boris Pasternak’s mistress, the muse for his story, sent away to a “rehabilitation camp,” aka the gulags. The book references this story, staging part of the book there in the gulags and told from the mistress’ point of view. While reading about it, I had to Google it later to discover that this in fact actually happened.

This story is told in all different narratives: first, second, and third persons. I confess that this was perplexing to me at first until the aha moment when I realized that the chapter “titles” weren’t actually titles, but a device the author used to let us know who was talking. Yes, I know, that should have been obvious. I blame my exhaustion from a new puppy for not picking up on that very quickly. Anyhow, there were a lot of POVs and that can be kind of dicey as a reader, particularly when you maybe only hear about them one chapter or two, then no more. In some cases, I found this to be a useful tool, and others it felt a bit forced. That said, I think that the author did a great job bringing the real-life character of Olga to life. Equally well-drawn were the other two female protagonists, Irina and Sally.

Our ages hit me as if jumping into a freezing river, and I wondered if we had anything left in us to sustain all that was to come. Prescott, 2020, p.290

There was a lot going on after WWII ended…the war was over, but a new one had just begun, the Cold War. On top of that, WWII saw the first real surge of women in the workplace, and having been granted that opportunity, many felt displaced once the men returned and suddenly there was no place for these amazing and talented women, except as secretaries and other menial jobs deemed appropriate for the delicate female nature. The author had a wonderful way of illustrating this displacement in a very real way, and I found myself sympathizing with what those women must have felt about it.

This book is part historical spy novel and part love story. Hired as a typist at the Agency (the precursor of the CIA), Irina wasn’t hired for her typing skills, but the ability she possessed of receding to the background, unnoticeable. The mission, should she choose to accept it, was for Irina to help smuggle Dr. Zhivago , the banned book that had been published in Italy without the consent of the Soviet Republic, into Russia as anti-communist propaganda, an Agency effort to sew the seeds of discord in the minds and hearts of the Russian people (this, too actually happened).

The love stories of this novel all appear to have that forbidden quality to them. There’s the love Boris has for his novel, a novel that no one in the USSR would publish, his life’s work that he risked everything to have published at any cost. The novel was inspired by another forbidden love, the love Boris and Olga had for each other, even though Boris was married. And one more forbidden love, but I don’t want to spoil it, just know that at this time, it was quite the taboo.

And each time, I’d feel that same inner gasp, that exquisite anticipation–that moment the lights go down and the film begins, that moment when, for just a few seconds, the whole world feels on the verge of awakening. Prescott, 2020, p.326

This book was pretty good, better than okay. I think that it was an excellent portrayal of women in a post-WWII world and the obstacles that they faced both personally and in the workplace, in a mostly general way, and I liked that the main characters were women, but the three of them weren’t equally well-written. I felt that Olga was fleshed out so well, and by the end of the novel, I felt like I really knew her. Sadly, I don’t know that I can really say the same for the other two women. Still, it was a diverting read and enjoyable enough. If you like historical fiction and women’s untold stories, then you would probably enjoy this novel.

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The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

• Publication Date: June 30, 2020
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction , Historical Thriller , Suspense , Thriller
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Vintage
• ISBN-10: 0525566104
• ISBN-13: 9780525566106
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Book review: ‘the secrets we kept’.

A fictionalized account of how 'Dr. Zhivago' was published in Russia

Good news and better news. Good news? “The Secrets We Kept” is one of fall’s big books; and the better news is that it deserves to be. 

Bought — at auction — by the highly-respected Knopf for a reported $2 million, the book’s author, also reportedly, turned down a higher offer from a house she liked less. Now that’s class. Most novelists would like to do that; few actually would.

But Lara Prescott, whose MFA is from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, and who has previously written about animal protection and politics (aren’t they the same?) is made of sterner stuff. Two weeks before her agent set up the auction, she was told by what The New York Times referred to as “a famous older male writer, “‘You’re not going to get anything for this. You need to edit it like Hemingway. We can talk about it over beers.’”

Well, beers or no beers, in mid-September, the novel ranked No. 3 on The Times’ bestseller list for fiction. How do you like them apples, Mr. Famous Male Writer?

The “secrets” of the book’s title are the classified information that passed through the eyes to the fingers of the women in the typing pool of the CIA’s post-Office of Strategic Services (OSS).    

“We typed a hundred words a minute and never missed a syllable. Our identical desks were each equipped with a mint-shelled Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter, a black Western Electric rotary phone, and a stack of yellow steno pads. Our fingers flew across the keys … 

“The men would arrive around ten. One by one they’d pull us into their offices. We’d sit in small chairs pushed into the corners while they’d sit behind their large mahogany desks or pace the carpet … Sometimes they’d forget we were there and we’d learn much more …

“They would call us girls, but we were not. We came to the Agency by way of Radcliffe, Vassar, Smith. We were the first daughters of our families to earn degrees. Some of us spoke Mandarin. Some flew planes. Some could handle a Colt 1873 better than John Wayne. But we were all asked when interviewed, ‘Can you type?’”

Those lines from the prologue give you the book’s general story, but it’s intertwined with an actual, “true fact,” event from CIA files, the agency’s successful attempt to make Russian language editions of Boris Pasternak’s magisterial pro-Western novel “Doctor Zhivago” available in the Motherland where it had been banned — and Lara, the author’s mistress, sent to the gulag for, in effect, having been his muse.

(No surprise that Ms. Prescott’s first name is Lara; her mother loved the novel.)

As “The Secrets We Kept” progresses, we enter the CIA’s post-WWII world at a time when its offices were still in the old State Department building at 21st and C Streets Northwest and “tempos” on the mall (before moving to Langley, Virginia in 1961). The Washington verisimilitude is well done: The old Georgetown Theater on Wisconsin Avenue and the original Old Ebbitt on F, not 15th, Street. Suprise, no mention of a trolley ride out to Great Falls and the famous old amusement park. 

Not all the typists came from Ivy League schools. One who didn’t was Irina, probably hired because her mother was born in Russia. Irina’s eventual transformation from typist into U.S. spy is monitored by the lovely and mysterious Sally Forrester, who comes to love her plain-Jane charge, literally. But that’s not central to the story. 

Ms. Prescott’s fictionalized telling of the story sticks closely to the facts of what the CIA did to get “Dr. Zhivago” published in Russian in Russia. (See “The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, The CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book” by Peter Finn and Petra Couvee.) As for Irina and Sally, chalk that up to the author’s imagination — I think.

The characterization and setting are, as said, first rate, but so also are the plotting and its development:

“The Agency moved fast … In the time it took winter to thaw, the cherry blossoms to bloom and droop, the dome of Washington’s humidity to descend, ‘Doctor Zhivago’s Russian proofs were prepped in New York, printed in The Netherlands, and shuttled to a safe house in the back of a wood-paneled station wagon. Three hundred sixty-five copies of the novel had been printed and bound in blue linen covers — just in time for the World’s Fair, where we’d distribute the banned book to visiting Soviets.”      

“The Secrets We Kept” is a fine book, well deserving of its out-of-the-box success for all the reasons stated and implied above, but mainly for the undeniable fact that it is a very good story very well told.

• John Greenya, a Washington writer and critic, is the author of “Gorsuch: The Judge Who Speaks For Himself” (Simon and Schuster, 2018).

THE SECRETS WE KEPT

By Lara Prescott

Knopf, $26.95, 349 pages

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The Secrets We Kept: A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick Kindle Edition

• Print length 325 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Vintage
• Publication date September 3, 2019
• File size 2252 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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Amazon.com review, about the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MD3B4F1
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (September 3, 2019)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 3, 2019
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 2252 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 325 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0525656154
• #238 in 20th Century Historical Romance (Books)
• #250 in Romance Literary Fiction
• #288 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction

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About the author

Lara prescott.

Lara Prescott is the author of The Secrets We Kept, an instant New York Times bestseller and a Hello Sunshine x Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. The Secrets We Kept is Lara’s debut novel and has been published in 30 countries. It is being adapted for television by The Ink Factory and Marc Platt Productions.

Lara lives in Portsmouth, NH. Learn more at LaraPrescott.com.

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Customers find the book interesting and refreshing. They praise the writing quality as well-written, beautiful, and easy to read. Opinions differ on the character development, with some finding them well-developed and strong, while others say they're one-dimensional.

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Customers find the book interesting and powerful. They appreciate the laced structure of two diverse stories. Readers mention the plot is complicated but the characters are not. They also appreciate the accurate period descriptions.

"...Publisher’s Weekly wrote, “Through lucid images and vibrant storytelling , Prescott creates an edgy postfeminist vision of the Cold War, encompassing..." Read more

"...but it was written well enough to hold my interest and keep the pages turning quickly ." Read more

"...be difficult, but the author avoids anachronisms and includes many accurate period descriptions to enliven the story...." Read more

"...Truth be told, the synopsis above tells it best. This is a powerful novel , and I highly suggest you move it up the reading pile so it’s next on your..." Read more

Customers find the writing quality of the book to be well-written enough to hold their interest and keep the pages turning. They appreciate the beautiful use of the English language, great descriptions throughout, and the flow of the novel. Readers also love the narrative style and depth of the author.

"...War, encompassing Sputnik to glasnost, typing pool to Gulag, for a smart , lively page-turner...." Read more

"...to lead to a Nobel Prize for its author, but it was written well enough to hold my interest and keep the pages turning quickly." Read more

"...downloading the preview chapter excited my interest with the well-written prose that caught my attention; however, the imbalanced qualities the two..." Read more

"...Sadly, it’s dull and the writing is mediocre . I hate not to finish a book, so I will try to push on, but it will be tough...." Read more

Customers find the timeline detail in the book great. They say it captures the nuances of time, place, and sensibility respectfully. Readers also say the book takes them back in time and evokes great memories.

"...The story was a good one and evoked great memories of seeing the film version of Dr. Zhivago when it came out...." Read more

"This book took me back to my childhood . It reminded me of fear of the Soviet Union that was an ever present concern...." Read more

"...the story of how it was released to Russians was poorly told and anticlimactic ...." Read more

"... Full of period detail , the movie will play on in your head." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the character development in the book. Some mention the characters are well-developed and unique, while others say they are one-dimensional and hard to keep track of.

"...Author Lara Prescott does an excellent job portraying not only her characters , but the times and conditions in which they lived...." Read more

"...The characters are often flat which leaves the reader less connected to the dramatic story. Things that should have touched my heart, often did not...." Read more

"...stories that ultimately linked weaving together wonderful, vivid characters ...." Read more

"... Each narrator had their own unique voice and I loved moving to a new voice as much as I hated leaving a different one...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some mention it's easy to put down, while others say it'd be awkward, disjointed, and confusing.

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" Disjointed and hard to get a handle on the story. It took most of the book to get at THE SECRET. At the end I began to appreciate the premise" Read more

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Reading guide: The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes – and the legacy of one of the 20th century’s greatest tragedies

Whether you’re new to The Safekeep or have read it and would like to explore it more deeply, here is our comprehensive guide, featuring insights from critics, our judges and the book’s author, as well as discussion points and suggestions for further reading.   

Fifteen years from the end of the Second World War and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the conflict is well and truly over. Isabel lives alone in her late mother’s country home, and her life is led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, there to stay for the season…

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house her suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel’s desperate desire for order transforms into infatuation – leading to a discovery that unravels all she has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house – are what they seem.

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The main characters

Isabel lives a lonely, isolated life in her late mother’s country home in a rural Dutch province. Lacking companionship, she focuses her full attention on the house and its possessions, ensuring everything is kept in its rightful place. When her brother Louis introduces his new girlfriend – Isabel’s polar opposite – her world is turned upside down.

Eva is Louis’s new girlfriend, who is invited by Louis to stay in the family home while he is away for work, much to Isabel’s dismay. Charismatic and laid-back with a mysterious background and a curious nature, she immediately puts Isabel on edge. 

Louis is the oldest brother of Isabel and Hendrik, a serial dater who falls in love quickly. He’s the rightful owner of their family home, but lets Isabel stay there until he marries.

About the author

Yael van der Wouden lectures in creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, ‘On (Not) Reading Anne Frank’, received a notable mention in The Best American Essays 2018. Her writing has appeared in LitHub, Electric Literature, The Offing and Elle.com, among other places. She has also written an online advice column, Dear David, in which she answers people problems as a fictional Sir David Attenborough.  The Safekeep is her first novel.

Yael van der Wouden

What the critics said

Lori Soderlind,  The New York Times Book Review

‘What a quietly remarkable book … Nothing in this book is gratuitous. Van der Wouden’s writing is fine and taut. She lasers in on details, and presents unsentimental and intrinsically powerful metaphors … The story is resolved in such a bold and tender way that it becomes not merely clever, but indelible.’

Taylor Horner,  Booklist

‘Van der Wouden’s debut novel is rife with intrigue and Isabel’s unease about everything from the missing items to her newly explored sexuality. For readers who appreciate introspective historical fiction and LGBTQ+ coming out stories.’

‘This is a beautifully realized book, nearly perfect, as van der Wouden quietly explores the intricate nuances of resentment-hued sibling dynamics, the discovery of desire (and the simultaneous discovery of self), queer relationships at a time when they went unspoken, and the legacy of war and what it might mean to have been complicit in its horrors.’

Rachel Seiffert,  The Guardian

‘This is an impressive debut; I already look forward to Van der Wouden’s next. She can draw characters with nuance, without fear too; she creates and sustains atmospheres deftly, and ultimately delivers a thrilling story.’

Jim Motavalli,  New York Journal of Books

‘This is van der Wouden’s first novel, and it’s an accomplished debut. Writers as diverse as E.M. Forster and Nick Hornby are cited as influences, though it’s hard to get the Hornby—this book is not rom-com material. It could be quite a good movie, though, a psychological thriller with a slow build and a few jump scares. A double bill with films like  Adore, Desert Hearts or  Blue is the Warmest Color would work.’

What the Booker Prize judges said

‘Set in the Netherlands after the war, The Safekeep is a compelling story of obsession and secrets, exploring the stories that are kept from us as children, and the stories that we tell to ourselves about our own hidden desires. 

‘We loved how atmospheric this book is. The austerity of these years is powerfully evoked, the particularity of where each teaspoon and coffee cup belongs is beautifully calibrated. But we adored the dynamic of the relationship between Isabel and Eva, the way they inhabit this charged space, always aware of each other and their bodies.’

The Booker Prize 2024 judges with the longlist

What the author said

[The inspirations behind the book include] ‘A short story I once wrote about three siblings out for dinner and the additional girlfriend everyone hates; a fascination with how the Dutch narrativise national histories; my obsession with homes and the fantasy of owning a home; wanting to explore desire as the flipside of repulsion. The way it happened was like this: I was in the car on the way back from a funeral, looking out over flat Dutch fields, and somewhere between grief and a need to escape the idea bloomed, of a house, a woman and a stranger.’

Read the full interview  here.

Questions and discussion points

Isabel meticulously catalogues and preserves all of the possessions in her family home, constantly counting and checking that each item is in its rightful place and hasn’t been tampered with, moved or stolen. As you read the book, what did you think were the reasons behind Isabel’s obsessive behaviour?

Isabel’s intense dislike towards Eva was immediate, even though Eva remained friendly during their first interaction. Why do you think Isabel acted the way she did without attempting to get to know Eva?

The book highlights some of the societal expectations that were placed on women throughout the 1960s. Yet other aspects of the book – the queer relationship at its centre and its reckoning with the horrors of the past – could be regarded as very modern elements. How successfully do you think the author balances aspects of historical fiction with contemporary concerns?

Isabel’s brother Hendrik has a male partner, Sebastian, with whom he lives. Why do you think van der Wouden decided to add in this fact about Hendrik, and how might this have affected Isabel’s view on queer relationships? 

In the final part of the book, Isabel reads Eva’s closely guarded diary, the entries from which allow us to see events from Eva’s perspective – and placing her real identity front and centre. How did the diary entries affect your view of Eva and your empathy towards her as a character?

Some reviewers have praised the way van der Wouden slowly builds tension and atmosphere, especially in the book’s first third, while others felt that the pace was too slow and uneven in places. What was your view?

In an interview with the Booker Prizes , van der Wouden has said that part of her inspiration behind writing  The Safekeep was ‘wanting to explore desire as the flipside of repulsion.’ Do you think she successfully achieved this with her portrayal of Isabel and Eva’s complex, hate/love relationship?

Gabrielle Schwarz, writing in the  Telegraph , felt that ‘it takes Isabel longer than the reader to work out what’s going on’. What was your opinion on the effectiveness of the twist and, with the benefit of hindsight, were there any particular moments in the book that foreshadowed the revelations towards the end of the book?

Did you think the distrust, tension and growing attraction between Isabel and Eva was realistically portrayed. Was their love story convincing?

Resources and further reading

The Millions :  Yael van der Wouden Wants to Touch Everything

Elle :   Yael van der Wouden on Displacement, Complicity, and Obsession in The Safekeep

Waterstones:  Shelfie with Yael van der Wouden

The Guardian :  The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden review – secrets and sex in postwar Europe

If you enjoyed this book, why not try

Fingersmith   by Sarah Waters

Boulder   by Eva Baltasar , translated by Julia Sanches

Possession by A.S. Byatt

The Line of Beauty   by Alan Hollinghurst

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

The Safekeep

Read more on the booker prize 2024 shortlist, six things you need to know about the booker prize 2024 shortlist.

As the Booker Prize 2024 shortlist is announced, we’ve picked out the most interesting facts, trends and themes that have emerged in this year’s selection

Read extracts from the Booker Prize 2024 shortlist

Discover our reading guides for the booker prize 2024 shortlist, meet the authors: read our q&as with the booker prize 2024 shortlistees, what our judges said about the booker prize 2024 shortlist.

Book recommendations

What the judges said about the Booker Prize 2024 shortlist

The 2024 longlistees on the book that inspired them to become a writer, yael van der wouden interview: ‘for a long time, my relationship to literature was pretty flat’, quiz: which book from the booker prize 2024 longlist should you read first.

Book extract

An extract from The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

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The Iconic ‘Book Of Mormon’ Leaves Manchester Audience In Stitches During Short 2024 Run

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the creators of South Park, so you can imagine the type of humour that runs through the script.

Broadway’s smash-hit musical The Book of Mormon has made its return to Manchester, and it’s just as raucous as always. Written by Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Robert Lopez, The Book of Mormon returned to the Palace Theatre Manchester on Wednesday 11 September and runs until Saturday 5 October , with hilarious consequences.

A hilarious romp exploring the structures surrounding Mormonism and religion, The Book of Mormon tells the story of Elder Price and Elder Cunningham , both played excellently by Adam Bailey and Sam Glen, and their mission to Uganda to spread to word of the Mormon church. Through meeting the locals and mingling with the existing Mormon brotherhood in Uganda, the Elders test their own relationship, eventually understanding what their purpose is.

Of course, the musical is famous for its outrageous humour, often hitting below the belt , but if you can take it, it’s well worth the watch. The likes of Nyah Nish and Kirk Patterson hold the show together terrifically as Nabulungi (AKA several names through according to Elder Cunningham) and her dad Mafala Hatimbi , alongside the ensemble cast who seamlessly create the atmosphere that makes The Book of Mormon what it is.

Rodney Earl Clarke terrifies and excites as the General – we won’t reveal his full name, as a raucous surprise for when you see it – and his character ark is pretty satisfying for everyone. The songs and choreography are so well done, even if plenty of it is making fun of the musical as a genre – which makes it all the more hilarious.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the creators of the Emmy and Peabody award-winning television show, South Park , and the feature films South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and Team America: World Police , so you can imagine the type of humour that runs through the Book of Mormon script.

Since making its world premiere in March 2011 at New York’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre, where it won nine Tony Awards , The Book of Mormon has been performed on three continents and won over thirty international awards.

The London production opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre in February 2013 when it set the record for the highest single day of sales in West End history and went on to win four Olivier Awards including Best New Musical.

There are also 15 tickets for each performance available at £15 each , from 12pm the day of the performance, alongside full price tickets here .

The Book of Mormon will be running at the Palace Theatre Manchester until Saturday 5 October, 2024 .

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We Kept Her In the Cellar

By w. r. gorman, narrated by ej lavery, you must sign in to see if this title is available for request. sign in or register now, send netgalley books directly to your kindle or kindle app, to read on a kindle or kindle app, please add [email protected] as an approved email address to receive files in your amazon account. click here for step-by-step instructions., also find your kindle email address within your amazon account, and enter it here., listen to an audio excerpt, pub date sep 24 2024 | archive date oct 01 2024, highbridge audio, general fiction (adult) | horror.

W. R. Gorman

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Description

Eunice lives her life by three simple rules: One, always refer to Cinderella as family. Two, never let Cinderella gain access to rats or mice. Three, never look upon Cinderella between the hours of...

Advance Praise

“This masterful and horrific interpretation of Cinderella follows the well-known plot in entirely unexpected ways, a welcome addition to the retold-fairy-tale genre.” — Booklist “Delightfully dark and enchanting, this is a Cinderella tale like no other. Gorman lures us into a magical world where nothing is as it seems. Wild, wicked and fay, this is a fairy tale retelling of horror and bewitchment at its best. Gorman is an author to watch!” — Leanbh Pearson , author of Three Curses and Other Dark Tales

“This masterful and horrific interpretation of Cinderella follows the well-known plot in entirely unexpected ways, a welcome addition to the retold-fairy-tale genre.” — Booklist “Delightfully dark and...

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