Our Woman in Moscow

Sydney M. Williams“Our Woman in Moscow,” Beatriz WilliamsJune 2, 2021“…the sisterhood is not divided neatly into adventurous Ruths and retiring Irises…bravery is woven from all kinds of different fabric…” Our Woman in Moscow Beatriz WilliamsThe worldwide depression of the 1930s caused many naively idealistic, college-educated young people to join the Communist Party. They saw capitalism as a failed system and believed Soviet propaganda regarding the benefits of Marxism. They ignored the estimated one to two million who died in Soviet Gulag camps and the six to seven million who were deliberately starved in Ukraine. The fact that the Soviet Union was an ally during World War II, imposed a media silence on the horrific nature of Stalin. It was not until the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb on August 29, 1949 that the Cold War got underway. The Soviets were able to detonate the bomb because they had turned a few British and American agents and infiltrated U.S. and British intelligence services. That is the backdrop to Beatriz’s book.She uses different time periods: 1940 (before the U.S. entered the War); 1948 (aftermath of the War); and 1952 (during the McCarthy hearings). She intermixes her characters with historical figures, including Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean who were part of the Cambridge Five, a British spy ring penetrated by Soviets, and which was active from the 1930s into the early 1950s.Five characters dominate the story: Ruth Macallister and her twin, Iris; Sasha Digby; Sumner Fox; and Lyudmila Ivanova. In 1940, Ruth and Iris are twenty-two. As a youth, Ruth was blond, “long limbed and just shapely enough.” She liked to take charge, a trait she still has. Once, she was accused of having a “God complex.” But she is also described by those who worked with her during the War as “fiercely intelligent, honorable, tough but fair and not above using [her] personal charisma.” Iris is quieter, with a fondness for sketching. As a young girl, she had “chubby limbs” and “frizzy curls, the color of dirt.” It is Iris that surprises. “…loyalty was the stuff of Iris’s bones.” Toward the end of the story, she reflects: “…part of her wants to explain…that she was never the little pumpkin of Ruth’s imagination, that the sisterhood is not divided neatly into adventuresome Ruths and retiring Irises, that bravery is woven from all kinds of different fabric…” True to character, she keeps those thoughts private.Like Ruth and Iris, Sasha Digby grew up in New York. His real name, which he does not share, is Cornelius Alexander Digby. Iris meets him in the Galleria Borghese, while studying Bernini’s The Rape of Proserpina. They had met, briefly, in New York, as his mother and the Macallister’s uncle Charles Schuyler had grown up together. Sasha is tall, blond, an “Apollo” who smokes too much and is secretive. He works in the American embassy in Rome. The other man is Sumner Fox: “…a large fellow, not exceptionally tall but built like an angus steer, all shoulders, square rawboned head on which a bare half inch of extremely pale hair bristles-up like a field of mowed hay.” Now working for a U.S. intelligence agency, he had been known for his football prowess at Yale. A fifth character has her own chapters: Lyudmila Ivanova who works in Moscow for Soviet Intelligence. She has an “avowed hatred of bourgeois capitalist society” and an “exceptionally ascetic lifestyle.” She has two rules for survival – first, do not attract attention and second, trust nobody. Her office has responsibility for British defectors. She waits, “like a spider in the center of an exquisite web.”The book’s title will remind the reader of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. Like Greene’s novel, this story takes place mostly during the Cold War, with democracy pitted against communism. But, while Greene’s story used satire to poke fun at Britain’s MI6, this is a story of the honor, defiance and courage of two women, especially of the one who becomes “our woman” in Moscow.

Brilliantly written with plenty of twists.

My book arrived today, in great condition! I might let my mum have this one! Looks a good story though! Thanks.

This one of the best books by this Author I have read, I was held spellbound by the story and it is so well written,

Beatriz Williams excels at writing female characters who leap off the page and men who are either thoroughly worthy of them or aren’t fit to wipe their boots. This novel is no exception, although a significant departure from most of her precious work. It explores the world of post-WWII espionage and what roles gender can play. There were many plot surprises and the reader was certainly kept interested. I missed more of the caustic humor that is usually present in her writing and was missing here due to the serious nature of the subject. But still an engrossing read and well worth your time.