★★★★☆ Meet Dawn, the polo-playing communist spy

Polostan

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson's Polostan is the story of Dawn Rae Bjornberg, AKA Aurora Maximovna Artemyeva. Actually, I should say it is the beginning of Dawn's story, since she is (near as I can work out) only in her early twenties at the end of the book, and it is clear that her eventful story is going to become more eventful in the two subsequent Bomb Light books we have been promised. Dawn grows up partly in Montana and partly in Russia.

Polostan is not the usual Stephenson brick. Fans like me know Stephenson mainly as the author of thick science fiction novels, but also some equally thick historical fiction such as the Baroque Cycle. At any moment Stephenson may digress to a 20-page treatise on orbital mechanics or North American feral hogs or the legal powers of the Dutch monarchy. In Polostan he managed to bottle this impulse up. The result is an ordinary length, or even brief, novel. It is not science fiction, even though it is fiction and is in part about science.

Fans will sense that Stephenson is suppressing the urge to give us a thorough treatment of polo. But he controls himself successfully. You will learn a little about polo by reading Polostan, but only in passing and when it's relevant. Polo comes in because Dawn is a skilled polo player. Apparently the raising of polo ponies was a lucrative business in Montana and Dawn learned the game through working on a ranch where that happened.

In the course of her life Dawn meets a lot of historical figures such as General George Patton and Stalin's spymaster Lavrentiy Beria. Also, in 1933 she meets and becomes intimate with a boy attending the Chicago World Fair. Although he is known to Dawn only as "Dick", those familiar with 20th century physics will recognize him as another historical figure (Richard Feynman, who was 15 in July 1933). Bomb Light is subtitled "A Riveting Historical Epic of International Espionage, Intrigue, and the Dawn of the Atomic Age." I expect that we will see more of Dick in the two volumes to come.

I enjoyed this. It's an exciting eventful Bildungsroman with a compelling central character. Even without Stephensonian digressions, I learned a lot about Russian and American history in the period leading up to the outbreak of the second world war. And I was consistently entertained. I recommend it, and look forward to the two volumes to come.

Polostan on Amazon

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