The Russian Girl (Hardcover)

From Publishers Weekly
This time out Amis pere has written a sort of dourly comic version of le Carre's The Russia House. English expert on Slavic languages Richard Vaisey, married to dreadful but wealthy Cordelia, falls for visiting Russian poet Anna Danilova, who seeks English celebrity support to get her brother out of a Moscow jail (the time is the period surrounding the failed coup against Gorbachev). This presents an agonizing dilemma for the lovelorn Richard: Anna is a terrible poet, so what is he to do? And how is he to keep her and suspicious Cordelia apart? In lighter hands this could be the stuff of a lively contemporary farce, and there are certainly some comic moments: Cordelia, for instance, is a brilliant creation, and her extended revenge, when Richard finally plucks up the courage to leave her, is horrifyingly hilarious. But Amis's awkwardly plodding style, admired though it may be in England, and the rather dim characterization of Richard, allow the story to be only fitfully amusing. At least Amis's customary misogyny is all concentrated this time on the fearful Cordelia, and in Anna he has created one of his more believable and likable women.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Dr. Richard Vaisey is an esteemed scholar at the London Institute of Slavonic Studies whose wife, Cordelia, has perfected the art of manipulation. When Anna Danilova, an obscure Russian poet, asks his help in freeing her brother from a Russian jail by making her "famous" and thus calling world attention to the brother's plight, Richard finds himself torn between his growing passion for her and his outright dislike of her poetry. Realizing what is going on between her husband and "the Russian girl," Cordelia, plots revenge. Vaisey's conflicting emotions allow Amis, in his acerbically witty way, to