It was difficult for some reason for me to get started writing a review of this book. I'm not very conflicted about it, so I was asking myself what was hard about collecting my opinions. At some point I realized that I was essentially so unconflicted that any "review" felt dishonest. Good things I'd say about it would feel too praiseworthy, and bad ones too much like I didn't like it. I did like it! And it's not even that it's "only good for some people" - I'm sure everyone could find something to like about this book. So what was it that made me feel so damn neutral?

This primarily suffered from Overblown Blurb Syndrome. Making the argument that this book is about literary espionage is a stretch - the CIA makes the occasional cameo, but their activities are hardly the focus of the book. The World's Fair where the CIA snuck in all those copies took barely any time at all and occurred right in the middle of the story, not he climax. That's not a bad thing but let's just call a spade a spade here - it's an in-depth history of the book Dr. Zhivago, which by its nature became a symbol of the Cold War.

It's a powerful enough story that I don't think it should have needed much other ramping up. It made me wonder what the place is for literature or art today (this could as easily apply to television as novels). It made me wonder what I'm saying in my own work, and if in a country that's not quite totalitarian yet if I have an obligation to "say" anything. These aren't questions the book needed to answer; the asking was impressive enough.

However, it still barely stuck in my mind once I closed the back cover, and that's just weird. I am a person with strong opinions. Finding myself at the end of a book for which I had no strong reaction is wholly unfamiliar to me. It's not the first time I've finished a nonfiction book just to find that my main reaction was "...ok," I suppose (one of the reasons I have a hard time with nonfiction in the first place). But I should have liked it! Right?

There are probably reasons why I felt so neutrally on this that I might never be able to identify. The likely culprit is nonfiction's inherent inability to flex a narrative and pull at emotional muscles, as I've talked about before in The Race Underground and The Wilderness of Ruin. Another possibility is that I pretty much can't stand Russian literature, so the stuff about Dr. Zhivago didn't hold my interest as much as the politics did. Maybe I'm simply too jaded to imagine a world where the government sends books to fight a war instead of drones. Is this a hopeful story therefore? A cautionary tale? An appreciation of Pasternak the man with no new judgment passed on the Cold War? So much depends on how I decide to read it, and I can't make up my mind.

So how do I sum up? I never had to make myself read it. I learned a lot and I questioned a lot. I'd certainly tell friends who otherwise like history that this is a good book, but probably tell friends who are otherwise uninterested in history or nonfiction to skip it. I found parallels in my own life while reading it. I wasn't upset when it was over and I doubt I'll read it again. I am opinionless, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.