This week in The New York Times Book Review, Maggie Shipstead reviews Elliott Holt's new novel, “You Are One of Them,†which was inspired by the story of Samantha Smith, the American schoolgirl who wrote to the Soviet premier Yuri Andropov in 1982 and asked if he intended to start a nuclear war. Ms. Shipstead writes:
The narrator, Sarah Zuckerman, thinks of defection not just in the sense of leaving one's country for its enemy but also as a metaphor for abandonment. Her sister, who dies at age 4, is a defector, and her father, who divorces her mother and returns to his native England, is another. So too is her mother, who vanishes into debilitating anxiety and an obsession with nuclear disarmament. Defection provides the novel with a thematic framework, but Sarah's fixation on it also works as a neat piece of subtle, cumulative characterization, revealing her tendency toward martyrdom: by dying, divorcing or struggling with unhappiness, her loved ones betray her.
On this week's podcast, Ms. Holt discusses her novel; Rick Atkinson discusses his “The Guns at Last Lightâ€; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.
