Valery was sent to the gulag six years ago. As an academic under Stalin's regime, it was to be expected. Now, he is removed from the camp, given a suit of civilian clothes, and taken to City 40, a mysterious closed city near the Ural mountains. There, he is Dr. Kolkhanov once again, working on research into the effects of radiation on local wildlife -- oh, because City 40 and the surrounding region was irradiated in an unreported disaster a few years ago. Valery is pretty sure that local levels of radiation are a good deal higher than his supervisors are saying, but if he starts asking questions, he may not live to discover the answers...

So, before I read this book, I could have told you about the two disasters ranked 7, the highest number on the International Nuclear and Radiological Events Scale -- Chernobyl and Fukushima, of course. But I'd never heard of the third most serious, the only nuclear event to rate a 6 on that scale: the Kyshtym Disaster, which happened in the Soviet Union in 1957, but was virtually unknown both inside and outside of Russia until 1990. An improperly maintained storage tank of nuclear waste ruptured, irradiating thousands of square miles in what is now known as the Eastern Ural Radioactive Trace, and contributing to nearby Lake Karachay's status as "the most contaminated place on Earth---

Oh, the book? You want me to review the book? It's gripping and compelling. There's an octopus, and a very delicately handled romance, and a lot of people who mean one thing and say something else. Pulley really gets the mentality of that time and place, when you know you can't even trust the people you like, and you have to watch every word out of your mouth and theirs. If any of this intrigues you, I recommend it. ( )

This is the fifth [a:Natasha Pulley|8446650|Natasha Pulley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1490274030p2/8446650.jpg] novel I’ve read and I’ve noticed that all her fiction has a distinctive atmosphere and particular characteristics. Although this latest novel, unlike the previous four, is ostensibly historical rather than fantastical, it felt the very similar to me. In the afterword Pulley comments that the (vivid, unsettling) setting is a fictionalised real place. That works well, but the dialogue, characterisation, and material details still seemed anachronistic and fantastical to me. This is not a complaint – I keep reading Pulley’s novels because I enjoy her particular style. However, I wonder how a reader who had not read any of her previous books would find [b:The Half Life of Valery K|58532153|The Half Life of Valery K|Natasha Pulley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1649657367l/58532153._SY75_.jpg|87458643], with its Serious Historical Fiction cover and blurb. The most succinct description I can come up with for Pulley’s fiction is a blend of whimsy and dread. All her novels also feature gay male protagonists that yearn, an octopus of some description, pragmatic and unsentimental female characters, spatially specific weirdness, hot beverages, light-hearted chat with or between murderers, and uncanny scientific experiments.

This latest is heavier on the dread, as it’s set in a secret USSR town where the titular protagonist is studying the effects of radiation on living organisms. He finds the reassurances that inhabitants are exposed to only minimal radiation increasingly unconvincing. Radiation sickness is of course terrifying, as it is poisoning by a means that human senses have no way to detect, which creates considerable tension. Pulley paces the narrative well as Valery investigates the secrets of the town. The place itself feels suitably uncanny and threatening. I found Valery’s backstory in the gulag less effective, because I’ve read Russian fiction that evoked it much more convincingly (e.g. [b:One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich|17125|One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1574794164l/17125._SY75_.jpg|838042]). While Pulley’s writing creates an involving and vivid world, it does not ring with historical veracity. This is of course a matter of taste – it’s not like I’ve ever been in a Soviet gulag! Similarly, maybe in 1963 Soviet radiation researchers did have televisions in their flats; I found such material comforts implausible. The moral and political quandaries faced by the main characters could also have been handled more substantially. Nonetheless, as a whimsical alternate-history mystery about grim Soviet radiation experiments, I thought it worked well and enjoyed it a good deal. ( )

The Half Life of Valery K is a book I came across shortly after a friend mentioned a woman, a scientist, who discovered radioactive contamination revealing a secret nuclear contamination. She didn’t mention the woman’s name, so when I saw this book’s title, I thought it might be about her. It’s not. Valery is a man.

Valery Kolkhanov was a political prisoner in a Siberian labor camp whose early action at the camp gave him much-needed privileges that kept him alive, barely. Suddenly, he is shipped elsewhere without any explanation. However, even before his arrival, he deduced there had been a nuclear event of some kind just based on the dying trees and vegetation. Perhaps he was going to be a test subject contaminated by radiation and observed while his organs melt.

Good news, though. He was requested by Elena Resovskaya, his former mentor, in order to assist her in her research, as a scientist, not a subject. She explains they are studying the effect of radiation on species to see if there are some adaptive species who resist radiation better than others and why that might be.

He also has a distrustful encounter with Konstantin Shenkov, the KGB security chief in charge of the facility, one that results in his arm getting broken by Shenkov who seems truly remorseful, if that is possible. Valery soon learns that his every word and deed is monitored as are those of everybody else. People learn what can and cannot be said and how to say what cannot be said by saying something else. If that sounds complicated, no one said living in a secret Soviet research facility at the height of the Cold War was easy.

Complicating the matter are things that Valery discovers that lead him to revise his thoughts about his mentor and about Shenkov, especially about Shenkov. They and the writer Pulley dance around the feelings they have as though Soviet spies are watching over her shoulder as she types. It’s extremely effective and a smart decision as a writer. It enhances that feeling of claustrophobia that people in that situation must have felt.

Having just read one of the best books of 2023 before this and considering I began The Half Life of Valery K under a mistaken assumption, it came through as another of the best books I have read this year. I loved how Valery slowly went from gratitude to appalled horror with Resovskaya and from fear to deep regard for Shenkov.

Valery is brilliant and regards himself as deeply pragmatic, but he doesn’t know himself as well as he thinks he does. He is an idealist and there is no place for an idealist in Brezhnev’s U.S.S.R. The triangle between Resovskaya, Valery, and Shenkov rises to a crisis and the resolution has a bit of a madcap implausibility to it, but then an entire secret city where there has been a secret nuclear contamination is implausible and it happened.

The Half Life of Valery K at Bloomsbury
Natasha Pulley

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/the-half-life-of-valery-k... ( )

This is beautifully written, and I loved the characterization of Valery and Shenkov. The facts about radiation were just about graspable, even for me.

Highly recommended. ( )

Although based on the story of this little reported irradiated city in the former Soviet Union, Pulley delivers another fabulous character driven novel that gets better and better as you get into it. Through Valery’s difficult experiences and inner voice we get a vibrant picture of the fears, suspicions and bravery of scientists ( but others too) who cared for truth and basic humanity in that era. Despite the sometimes brutal reality of his story, Valery brings a wry humor to observations about the system and the people he encounters, so the book offers some glimpses of lightness and inspiration with its picture of mixed morality. ( )