The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

Some members were not happy with the way which Lara Prescott has written her first novel. They found the plot disjointed and difficult to follow. They were not sure which character was speaking at times and didn’t like the way the action jumped around from the east (the Soviet Union) to the west (the United States). (This was not such a problem for those who listened to the audio book because different actors’ voices were used for the various parts.)

Nevertheless some of us were impressed with the true story behind the book and Prescott’s obvious research and ambitious attempt to bring together the complex threads of a Cold War story which plays out on both sides of the Atlantic.

At the heart of the book is the true history of how Russian poet and writer, Boris Pasternak secretly wrote the novel, Dr Zhivago, in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, against a backdrop of surveillance and harassment from the communist authorities. He wrote the book over a period of ten years, through bouts of ill health and the agony of seeing some of his writer friends sent to the Gulag to die, and others suicide. His devoted lover, Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya, was also imprisoned for four years because of her unconventional relationship with this married man whom she refused to betray to the authorities.

Pasternak finishes the manuscript but cannot get it published in the Soviet Union because of the fear of its subversive slant on the history of the Russian Revolution and the civil war years afterwards. In desperation he agrees to let an Italian publisher smuggle it out of Russia and publish it in West Berlin. The American CIA then steps in, obtains a copy of it, translates it into Russian and prints thousands of miniature copies which they then smuggle back into Russia as a propaganda tool. They do this because of the “cultural diplomacy” in operation at the time - the use of books, music and art as tools to promote the western world’s values, in an attempt to win hearts and minds against communism. (Those of us who have read Dr Zhivago may wonder what the fuss was about, but this was clearly a very different era.) Lara Prescott was so intrigued by this story when the CIA told the world about it in 2014 she was prompted to write the novel.

The book she has written begins with a description of the women in the typing pool at the “Agency” of 1950s Washington: “We typed 100 words per 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 dial phone and a stack of yellow steno pads. Our fingers flew across the keys. Our clacking was constant. We paused only to answer the phone or to take a drag of a cigarette. Some of us managed to master both without missing a beat.”

Throughout the book these women are among the “we” who kept the secrets in the title and who express a commentary on the life and times of the men and women working in the Agency. The author has “the girls” describe themselves in their own words as college trained intelligent women - some of whom had served in the Second World War and could fly planes - but who are not likely to progress far in the man’s world of the 1950s. That is, unless they have unusual characteristics and skills which single them out for work as spies.

Enter Irina, a young Russian American, whose father perished in the attempt to get his family safely out of the Soviet Union to a better life in America; and Sally, an experienced and glamorous spy who is given the task of training Irina for covert operations. They fall in love and in the homophobic environment of conservative 1950s America this is never going to end well. Nevertheless it leads to adventures for both of them in spying operations overseas, including, for Irina, helping to get Pasternak's book into the hands of ordinary Russians.

The book also tells the story of Olga, Pasternak’s muse (the character of Lara in Dr Zhivago is based on her), beginning with her arrest at her home in 1949 and subsequent detention in the Gulag where she loses the baby she has been carrying.

The story of how Olga eventually returns to Pasternak from Siberia, helps arrange for his manuscript to be published (which may be fictional as Pasternak, the real man, was apparently well connected), and is eventually gaoled again (completely true), puts the spotlight squarely on the character of this man, his book which wins him the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the suffering he puts his family through (wife and his children, and lover and her children) - all in the name of Art.

Who is Lara Prescott?

Lara Prescott is an American writer. Her first name was inspired by her mother’s love for both Boris Pasternak’s 1957 novel, Dr Zhivago, which tells the love story about Dr Yuri Zhivago and Lara Antipova, in Russia in the years before World War I and during the Russian Civil War (1918-1922); and the film adaptation of it by David Lean which was released in 1965.

Lara received a Masters of Fine Arts from the Michener Centre for Writers at the University of Texas in 2018. She has written and published short stories. Her debut novel, The Secrets We Kept, was published in 2019 and has been translated into 29 languages.

Lara grew up in Pennsylvania and studied political science at American University in Washington DC. Prior to writing fiction, Lara worked as a political campaign consultant. She lives in Austin, Texas.