Anastasia by Willard Thurston
Two half-sisters lose their way — and their identities — while working undercover in Willard Thurston’s Russian espionage novel, Anastasia: An Enduring Dream. It’s a densely packed tale full of facades of varying authenticity, bomb formulas, plastic surgery, sex changes, and even a supercomputer that can predict the future.
It’s also a world populated by all sorts of colorful characters. There’s Vassily Sergeevich Ablesimov, a spymaster responsible for grooming and directing agents within the U.S., “an insular strategist” perusing transcripts and obsessing over suspicions about other people. Anna Anastasia Karolovna Kniaźnin — ‘Zia to intimates, alias Dr. Frieda Van Eerden — mathematician, model Communist youth, and remote sensing expert. Her younger half-sister, the unpredictable Zoya Yakovlena Stolbanov. There’s also a brilliant scientist-slash-composer, a hedonist millionaire, a crusty business exec. Then there is the stripper, Cody, who performs with “a Czech gypsy and his coterie of smelly snakes.” But the stripper is, ironically, undercover. And her real name is…
Well, let’s just say Thurston keeps readers on their toes keeping track of who is pretending to be whom. Also keeping readers on high alert is a writing style full of rich, heavy, lexicographer-worthy language, such as what we find in this excerpt: “And here Dowd presented the absent world with one of his seraphic smiles, which the knowledgeable knew were scarce as unicorns. And who should partake of this rare earth phenomenon but a watchful Daphne who, lips eschew in disbelief or entertained awe, stared down at the patent-leather gnome from his ormolu corniced office doorway, flanked by pewter sconces and two small smiling gargoyles.”
The ornate narration will delight language lovers who’ll dawdle and guffaw among the labyrinthine galleries of these pages, though this may prove a stumbling block to those who like their tales “straight no chaser.” Anastasia is rich in digressions, backstories, and eccentric visual details. If you enjoy multi-layered intrigue and suspense, and a jigsaw-puzzle form of storytelling, this may be the book for you.
Within, there is a pervasive gothic atmosphere of paranoia mixed with an archness that brings to mind graphic novels and comic books — grotesque evils and evildoers, sexy women, suave men. But at the same time so chock full of literary doodling, it’s somewhat like how Dick Tracy might have read had it been written by Vladimir Nabokov.
Given that the characters include a photographer, model and exotic dancer, there’s a fair amount of voyeuristic fantasy a la classic James Bond, complete with detailed fetishistic descriptions. Along his thick carpet of language, Thurston also wanders off like a host at a cocktail party to comment on subjects that include feminism and the aesthetics of female nudity, comparisons between the American and Finnish education systems, and suspicions about Peter Ustinov’s political allegiances. It’s all highly entertaining, provided you’re adroit in following it.
Anastasia: An Enduring Dream is a book that challenges the reader’s expectations of what a spy novel should be. And if you’re the right kind of reader, it’s a literary amusement park you might never find your way out of. And that’s not a bad thing.
This is a pre-publication review; meanwhile, Anastasia: An Enduring Dream is available for free on the author’s website.
