Red Plenty

By: Francis Spufford

Narrated by: Roger Clark

Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the 20th-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working.

Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending.

Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant, and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.

©2010 Francis Spufford (P)2017 Tantor

communism

turns out, difficult to feel happy while reading. like carrying around a stone, but worth the insights.

A Grey Fairy Tale

An intimate and personal collection of stories related to the USSR’s planned economy and the dream of utopia which kept it staggering along.

A wonderful, melancholic, and sometimes rather confusing journey through the USSR of the mid 20th century

What I wrote above largely says it all. I found myself very much invested in the story and characters of this book. it left me wanting to delve deeper into historical fiction involving the USSR. My only complaint with the book is that, possibly due to the Russian names, it was sometimes difficult to know when a character popped up later. This is probably less of an issue in the written version because the names are more distinct on paper.

Good narrator but for one word

The narrator is quite good at accents, but his pronunciation of “academician” is maddening. He keeps saying “acamedician.”

Simple review

Brilliant.

Apparently at least 15 words are required for a valid review. Here goes:

Brilliant.