You Are One of Them: A Novel About Secrets, Betrayal, and the Friend Who Got Away
Elliott Holt
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0143125443
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"A hugely absorbing first novel from a writer with a fluid, vivid style and a rare knack for balancing the pleasure of entertainment with the deeper gratification of insight. More, please.”
—Maggie Shipstead, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
"A story about Russia, the United States, friendship, identity, defection, and deception that is smart, startling, and worth reading regardless of when you were born.”
—Kathryn Schulz, New York Magazine
"Holt's beguiling debut… in which there is no difference between personal and political betrayal, vividly conjures the anxieties of the Cold War without ever lapsing into nostalgia."
—The New Yorker
Sarah Zuckerman and Jennifer Jones are best friends in an upscale part of Washington, D.C., in the politically charged 1980s. Sarah is the shy, wary product of an unhappy home: her father abandoned the family to return to his native England; her agoraphobic mother is obsessed with fears of nuclear war. Jenny is an all-American girl who has seemingly perfect parents. With Cold War rhetoric reaching a fever pitch in 1982, the ten-year-old girls write letters to Soviet premier Yuri Andropov asking for peace. But only Jenny's letter receives a response, and Sarah is left behind when her friend accepts the Kremlin's invitation to visit the USSR and becomes an international media sensation. The girls' icy relationship still hasn't thawed when Jenny and her parents die tragically in a plane crash in 1985.
Ten years later, Sarah is about to graduate from college when she receives a mysterious letter from Moscow suggesting that Jenny's death might have been a hoax. She sets off to the former Soviet Union in search of the truth, but the more she delves into her personal Cold War history, the harder it is to separate facts from propaganda.
You Are One of Them is a taut, moving debut about the ways in which we define ourselves against others and the secrets we keep from those who are closest to us. In her insightful forensic of a mourned friendship, Holt illuminates the long lasting sting of abandonment and the measures we take to bring back those we have lost.
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winter of 1984, I wanted to pelt her with snowballs. Cold War! I imagined yelling, with the assertiveness I possessed only in my head. I hated her for being so lucky. I hated her for having a father, for having a mother who baked, for being named Jennifer Jones. People loved her because she was easy to love, I thought, and I prayed for a time when my complexity wouldn’t scare people away. But I also longed for détente. I would have given anything for someone to broker a treaty between us. I
“Exactly,” she said. “Sam said you were funny.” “He did?” It was good to remember that I had friends who didn’t just think I was sad. “He sings your praises. Did you ever hook up?” “With Sam? No. We’re just friends.” Sam and I had been friends since our freshman-orientation camping trip. He was a fixture of my campus life. “I think he has a little crush on you. He talks about you a lot.” She burped. “I’ve been drinking, so it’s full-disclosure time.” It was nearly five when we got home. I’d
advertising was a new concept in Russia. There were three expats in the office: two Americans, one Brit. The expats had a lot of industry experience, he said, and had been hired to teach the local staff how to run an agency. “The Russians don’t know the first thing about marketing. They don’t know about initiative. About competition. Or about hard work. We’re teaching them how to be creative. How to be professional.” He said all this in front of Sveta and in earshot of her Russian colleagues, and
proof.” There are insects that have been suspended—lifelike—in amber for 60 million years. Amber begins as resin, sticky and sweet, trickling down the trunks of ancient trees. Mosquitoes, scorpions, and ants are seduced by the smell, then trapped in the resin and held, immobile, unchanging, as the liquid hardens and the trees die and layers of sediment compress the resin into fossils. Even after millions of years of pressure, the insects are preserved—their legs and wings perfectly
chatter the way they always did when I was cold. I felt woozy and wondered if I had a concussion. No one was going to sweep in and take care of me if I did. Even Jenny couldn’t be counted on. She’d left me in the woods. If our roles had been reversed, she wouldn’t have spent two hours looking for me. When I asked my mother why I was the last to know the truth about Santa Claus, she said, “People believe in things until they don’t need to anymore.” Suddenly I didn’t want to see Zoya’s bare legs.