Iron Curtain

Goldsworthy (Chernobyl Strawberries) offers a witty and perceptive novel of love in the twilight of the Soviet Union. The year is 1984, and Milena Urbanska, the pampered daughter of a highly placed party official living in an unnamed Communist satellite country, is used to the finer things in life but chafes under the state scrutiny that goes along with it. Working as an English translator, she meets Jason Connor, a young British poet, whom she promptly sleeps with. After Jason returns to England, Milena books a trip to Cuba with a stopover in London, where she reunites with Jason and informs her parents she has no intention of returning home. Jason lives in a squalid flat in Bloomsbury, a marked change from the luxury Milena is used to. But before anyone can say “glasnost,” Milena is married to Jason and the mother of twin boys. Spied on by the Russians and saddled with eccentric in-laws (Jason’s mother looks like “the bohemian mistress of some double-initialed writer from the past”), Milena finds the grass less green than she expected. Goldsworthy’s perceptive and well-crafted story plays like The Americans as revised by Sally Rooney, with acidic observations worthy of the late Kingsley Amis. By flipping the Cold War script, Goldsworthy comes up with a winner. (Feb.)