Nick is a corporate lawyer, an English ex-pat living in Moscow, working for his parent banking company to faciliate the building of an oil supply tanker in Murmansk. One day on the Metro he saves a girl, Masha, from being robbed of her handbag and becomes friendly with her and her cousin Katya, friendship deepening into a sexual relationship. Masha introduces Nick to her aunt who lives in a big old flat in central Moscow and the narrative unfolds, in which Nick is surrounded by deceit and corruption and becomes gently implicit.
The descriptions of Russian culture and lifestyle are beguiling and well written, the causal corruption in which any transaction has a backhander price, in which the dreams of altruistic communisim have given way to an animalistic survival of fittest. The symbiotic relationship between the narrative, the extremity of Russian winter and the nature of the Russian psyche are nicely put together. There is an overall air of menace, not just in central narrative but in the shadowy presence of gangsters, oligarchs, women as currency, mistresess, strippers, prostitutes and the sense that all is defined by price and not human compassion.
However, it feels like not much happens in the book as it is very clear where things are going from the outset and that it can't end well.
The framing of the book as a story that Nick is telling his future wife and seeking absolution is interesting but a little irritating
A final note, the cover is brilliant. One way up it reads 'snowdrops', a macabre play on words between a beautiful flower symbolising the triumph of spring over winter, and Russian slang for something far more sinister, but the other way up it looks like cyrillic writing. A nice touch.
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