Review: Snowdrops

Snowdrops, the debut novel by A.D. Miller (current editor for The Economist) shortlisted earlier this year for the Man Booker award, is a superb character study that simultaneously paints a vibrant picture of the oil-rich and over-banked Moscow of the mid-2000’s. For someone about to embark in career of corporate law it’s also harrowing.

Snowdrops’ protagonist, Nick Platt, is a mid-30’s ex-pat corporate attorney in the “Wild West” years of Moscow. It’s the heyday of 2000 boom and money is flowing into Moscow as fast as oil wells are drilled. Nick’s law firm facilitates loans to quasi-gangster/quasi-corporate companies popping up throughout the country, and during his stint overseas, Nick becomes romantically involved with a beautiful Russian, Masha, and her sister. The sisters slowly involve Nick (or Kolya, as they call him) in a scheme which evolves as the novel pushes along, with Miller skillfully conveying the frozen Moscow wasteland, debauched nightlife, and moral ambiguity of the period throughout.

I recently read a negative review of Snowdrops which claims that the “twist” comes too soon; because the reader knows what Nick does not so early in the novel, Snowdrops, as a “thriller”, fails. Perhaps as a “thriller” Snowdrops is a failure. But the reviewer misses the point. Snowdrops is not a “thriller”, not really. The schemes involved are not particularly elaborate, and as the reviewer notes, are telegraphed early in the novel. Instead the real question the reader grapples with throughout is how an educated British corporate lawyer became so easily duped. In answering the question we circle back to why I found Snowdrops so harrowing.

Nick is not a particularly engaging character and maybe that’s why his decisions throughout the novel are so fascinating. There is no indication of much in the way of a personality; while the book reads as a manifesto of his descent in moral ambiguity (written to his current wife (finance?)) we get no sense of character behind Nick’s words. He has no true friends (sans an alcoholic reporter and a superior at his firm), and has a strange and awkward relationship with his family. Akin to his Russian surroundings he is cold and passionless. This is what I think the book is largely getting at – Nick is a man going through the motions; no purpose, and no love. There is one moment in novel when he mentions he may not make partner in his law firm, but it is a throwaway. His relationship with Masha, no matter how fabricated, gives his life a spark worth writing about; she takes him to clubs, involves him in threesomes - she makes him feel needed and loved. Far from the life of a mid-30’s corporate attorney, Masha makes Nick feel young, with a life ahead really worth living. His relationship with Masha, coupled with the allure of Moscow, are an oasis which Nick, as shell of man (no matter how educated), is willing to to keep alive, even if it means jettisoning reality and rationality.

Snowdrops left me sympathetic with Nick’s decisions, at least in some respects. That alone is troubling. You pity Nick. You wonder how many lives play out in this world along the same lines. Ninety hour weeks of diligence for a transaction that may never happen. That shot at partnership for ten years of silence. Moscow, in all its fake glitter, fake wealth, and fake smiles, gave Nick two years more truly alive then London could give him in a lifetime as a corporate attorney. Even in the face Nick’s moral’s decisions, when Masha’s ploy has long been laid out in front of him, when the time for willful blindness has ended, Nick yearns for Moscow, for Masha.

What does it say when you’d knowingly accept a forged life in place of your own? Snowdrops is no thriller. At least not for me.