"The novel feels torn, and this is its strongest offering to our attempts to understand what Putin’s Russia—in this novel a “beast . . . consuming everyone”—has done to its liberal citizens. The text’s deliberate contrast between the virtually filtered atrocities and M’s safe (if not exactly comfortable) expatriate life both inspires a sense of guilt and a respite from it. M attempts to tell herself that it is better to focus on one’s own life as the capital bombs civilians, but the simple disparity between her reality and the murders conducted in her language continually drags her back to horrified self-awareness."
