The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott ** (of 4)

I'll be honest. I didn't finish reading. Yes, it is a best seller with a waitlist of 22 weeks on Libby. The Secrets we Kept is based upon the true story of two American secretaries at the CIA who during the height of the Cold War smuggled Boris Pasternak's magnum opus, Doctor Zhivago, out of the Soviet Union. The Russians wouldn't publish it. The CIA's intent was to break the hearts and minds of Soviet citizens by sneaking the published book of Russia's most beloved poet back into the USSR. The CIA hoped to prove that an open society (The West) that celebrated literature was superior to a closed one (The East) that sent its poets and writers, or in this case, Pasternak's muse and mistress, off to the Gulag.

Only, the fictionalized retelling is less interesting, and frankly less credible, than the truth. The CIA's secretaries bridal beneath male chauvinism with 21st century sensibilities, expressing dismay that would not have been publicly voiced for another two decades. Back in Russia, there is great drama between Boris Pasternak and his paramour, Olga Ivinskaya, but no passion. It as if we are observing a romance described by a minor league baseball announcer.  And back in the book, even after 140 pages, the pair of secretaries destined for Cold War skullduggery had still not been selected nor trained, which is to say that the action was nearly as flat as the characters.