You Are One of Them

by Elliott Holt

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.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Russia, Audiobook, Historical, Literary Fiction

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 30, 2013

About the author

Elliott Holt was born and raised in Washington, D.C. A former copywriter who has worked at advertising agencies in Moscow, London, Paris, and New York, Holt attended the MFA program at Brooklyn College (where she won the Himan Brown award) at night while working full time in Manhattan during the day. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Slate, Time, Virginia Quarterly Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review online, The Millions, The Pushcart Prize XXXV (2011 anthology) and elsewhere. She has won fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop, The MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. In addition to winning a Pushcart Prize, she was the runner-up of the 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award. Her first novel You Are One of Them was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan first novel prize from the Center for Fiction, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s inaugural John Leonard Award for a first book.

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, gripping book. Literally could not put it down. There was a certain resonance, as someone who was a child of the 80s, and I particularly enjoyed the parts about how we all came to terms with the Internet and this idea that the world was smaller than we imagined. There is an intriguing ambiguity in the ending, that is quite apt and to end with Sarah's letter to Yuri Andropov, and this idea that sometimes the danger is much closer than we want to acknowledge, works really well.

Only one issue, and I'll get into this in a longer review. The prologue wasn't needed at all. I pretended it wasn't there after I read it because I don't like prologues. They suggest that you need context to understand the novel which suggests you haven't started your story in the right place.

BUT, this is an outstanding novel. The title is perfect and so elegant and you realize that elegance at the end of the book but also throughout. LOTS to talk about here. I can't wait til everyone reads it.

[Bren fall in love with the sea. · Rating 2 out of 5]

“It's easy to love someone you haven't let down.”
― Elliott Holt, You Are One of Them


As the description suggests this work of Historical Fiction is about the doomed friendship of two young women during the Cold War.

Maybe not as fictional as I had thought. I read several reviews that this book is loosely based on a true story which I did not know when I decided to read it. Although I did enjoy this book I did not love it.

I enjoyed aspects of You are one of them and found the mournful tone to be very engrossing. This was one that was on my to be read list for quite awhile and I just had enough one day and read it in one night. I really enjoyed it although certain things I had issues with and I will include spoilers..

SPOILERS:

I know it says it is about the friendship between the two women..Sara and Jenny. But, for me, it is as much a coming of age story as anything else. One of the reasons I did not give it a 5, although I liked it, was because I was a bit let down by the ending. I know and understand that many books end in an abstract way, leaving the reader to decide on what they think happened.

But since the book really is about Sara's journey to find out if her friend is still alive..if she did not in fact, perish in the plane crash.. I wanted to know if it was Jennifer or not. Since we do not find out anything in regards to that issue,which is supposed to be what the book is about, that is what leads me to think this is really a coming of age tale more then anything else. Sara comes to the realization that it does not matter if it is Jennie or not..she doesn't need her anymore.

While I can appreciate the message, since the book is all about BOTH girls I was invested in Jenny's story and at the end of the day, the plot was really more about Sara and letting go of a friendship rather then keeping it. Honestly I am not sure if I would have chosen to read it had I know how different the book would be from what it is marketed as.

Also there were alot of side plots that I did not find as interesting as the central premise, particularly the romance aspect. Frankly I skimmed those parts as I found them rather dull. I really thought, going in, this was less a coming of age or romance then an intense mystery so I was a bit let down honestly although the writing was wonderful.

So I give it 3.5 stars and did enjoy it but wish some things had been a bit different.

[Snotchocheez · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Four parts utterly fascinating and one part ethereally beguiling (in a good way), I was very pleasantly surprised by Elliott Holt's 2013 debut, You Are One of Them. Stylistically, it reminded me a lot of Jennifer duBois strange little gem Cartwheel not because of any lurid 'true crime' elements, but because both authors took a news story and flipped it upon its head in a compelling, almost surreal manner.

The story that Ms. Holt chooses is one I barely remember, when at the height of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union in 1982, a girl from Maine named Samantha Smith was heralded for writing a letter to then-Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov urging him not to engage in nuclear war, For her ambassadorship efforts to attain detente between the two countries, Samantha was was invited to visit the Soviet Union, and became a media darling up until her (and her father's) death in a plane crash subsequent to her visit to Moscow and Leningrad.

Ms. Holt reimagines the story; first: by suggesting that there were two girls that wrote letters to Andropov in 1982, first-person narrator/protagonist Sarah Zuckerman and her best friend Jenny Jones (but only Jenny's letter was read by Andropov); and second: intimating that Jenny's father was an operative for the KGB, and that the plane crash she supposedly died in with her family was an elaborate hoax, and that Jenny and her family went into seclusion in a KGB-funded dacha outside of Moscow. Sarah, ten years after her friend Jenny's visit to the USSR, with mixed feelings about her friend's death (and spurred by Perestroika and the dissolution of the USSR allowing westerners' unrestricted travel), decides to fly to to Russia to reconcile her feelings for her friend. While there she learns some very interesting things that completely change the complexion of her friendship.

I really loved Ms. Holt's vision here. I was captivated throughout by Sarah's angsty melancholy (both pre- and post-Glasnost). This at first seemed like it was going to be horribly depressing, but it was more contemplative than mournful. It really facilitated my enjoyment of the novel by my being young and full of dread at the crux of the Cold War, though Ms. Holt's clarity (and her original, inventive story) makes this accessible to all. As I mentioned in an update, I don't quite understand the piddly popularity of this one from GR readers, other than, perhaps it's somewhat stuck among several genres. Part savvy YA tale, part sophisticated mood piece (a la Lost in Translation), part absorbing (recent) historical fiction made this quite the delightful read for me. I'd like to say this is Highly Recommended but that 3.49 seems to indicate I might be somewhat lonely with that opinion. Still, do give it a try.

[~✡~Dαni(ela) ♥ ♂♂ love & semi-colons~✡~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're expecting a mystery, this book will disappoint. Another reviewer compared this novel to a Nancy Drew story, but I have to vehemently disagree. There are no clues leading to the truth here, no revelations, no suspects, no red herrings. This isn't a "who done it" story at all.

Sarah is a baby when her older sister dies, an event that breaks her parents and creates an eternal absence in her life. A few years later, her father leaves Washington DC and returns to London. Sarah's mom doesn't leave the house much; she's too busy worrying about nuclear war. This is the 80s after all, the Cold War era. And it's also when Sarah meets charming, outgoing Jenny who moves in across the street and becomes Sarah's BFF. The two girls are inseparable until at age 12 Jenny is suddenly thrust into the spotlight as a child ambassador to the Soviet Union when her letter to a Russian leader is published in a Russian newspaper and picked up by the U.S. media.

Following her stint as celebrity, Jenny is invited to various speaking engagements. As she's flying to one of these, her parents in tow, tragedy strikes: Jenny's plane goes down, and everyone on board dies. Or so believes Sarah, until everything she thought she knew is turned upsidedown by a mysterious letter she receives when she's 22 and about to graduate from college. The letter, from a woman named Svetlana who was Jenny's Russian "buddy" during Jenny's visit to the USSR, prompts Sarah to visit the former Soviet Union where she has to question her own loyalty to the Jenny she once knew and to a version of the story she's carefully constructed.

The novel takes us to the newly democratic Soviet Union in the mid-90s and gives us a brief lesson in Russian culture. As a child of the former Soviet Bloc who moved to the States in the 80s, I could relate to the time and place. Holt expertly weaves in Russian phrases and paints a picture of a country on the brink of an economic explosion whose people are used to espionage and secrets.

The story focuses on a friendship between two very different girls. Withdrawn, lonely Sarah is dependent on Jenny, and her near obsession with Jenny persists into adulthood. Never mind that their relationship changes after Jenny visits the Soviet Union. Because Jenny dies young, Sarah responds to the memory of what was vs. Jenny the actual person. Few childhood friendships survive intact, and memories of those friendships are often idealized and filtered through the innocence of childhood. Sometimes, things make sense only in reverse when we have the perspective of our adult selves.

The adult Sarah is asked to confront an alternate reality, a possibility that Jenny is alive, but is she being duped? Does her desire to see Jenny once again taint her perception? In Holt's novel, there is no Truth, only stories we tell ourselves. The ambiguity of the ending can be maddening, until we realize that it's precisely the point. Truth IS ambiguous; really, there is no Truth, only versions of it, and we decide which version we choose to believe.

[Larry H · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd rate this book 3.5 stars.

Those of us who were culturally aware during the 1980s may remember the story of Samantha Smith. She was a young American girl who wrote a letter to then-Soviet Union leader Yuri Andropov during the height of Cold War tensions, asking if he was planning to start a nuclear war with the U.S., and asking for peace. She and her family were ultimately invited to be Andropov's guests in the Soviet Union, where they spent two weeks on a media tour, and Smith became a media darling on both sides of the world. Smith was a peace activist and had just begun an acting career when she and her parents were killed in a plane crash in 1985.

Smith's story is the basis for Elliott Holt's intriguing and well-told You Are One of Them. In this book, however, it is insecure, needy Sarah Zuckerman, fueled by her mother's growing fear of nuclear war, who decides to write a letter to Andropov, only to have her idea copied by her best friend, perky Midwestern transplant Jenny Jones.

Jenny's letter is the one the media and Andropov get hold of, and while she becomes the media darling and ambassador for American children everywhere, Sarah is left in her Washington home, pining for her friend, both resenting the attention her friend is getting and feeling relieved it wasn't her letter that Andropov responded to. And when like Smith, Jenny and her parents die in a plane crash, Sarah is left to wonder whether her friendship would have lasted had Jenny lived (it was already deteriorating given Jenny's new fame), and feeling alone and aimless.

Ten years later, Sarah receives an email from Svetlana, a Russian woman who was Jenny's escort during her trip to Russia. Svetlana claims that Jenny's death may have been a hoax, simple propaganda, and encourages Sarah to come to Moscow to find the truth. Still somewhat aimless, still reluctant to let anyone else in since Jenny's death, Sarah travels to post-perestroika Russia, where she sees more of the everyday struggles of the Russian people and culture than Jenny did years ago. And as she tries to determine whether she will ever know the truth, she also tries to finally move on with her life after so long.

"I've come to understand that some people are suns that pull others into their orbit," Sarah said.

But where do you go when your emotional sun disappears? And much like in nature, can people flourish without that sun? You Are One of Them is a compelling (if somewhat improbable) story of loss, insecurity, young friendship, and finding one's self. Holt doesn't whitewash her characters' flaws, which makes them both more and less appealing at times, but you are driven to continue more because you want to know what ultimately will happen than because you have sympathy for Sarah.

[Britany · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sarah Zuckerman and Jennifer Jones were best friends during the 1980s, one afternoon they both decide to write letters to Yuri Andropov about creating peace between Russia and the USA. Jenny's letter gets published and she is invited with her family to come visit Russia to see how great the country is. Sarah is left behind. On a return flight back home, Jenny's plane crashes and Jenny and her family instantly lose their lives. Was this an accident? Or a point made by two politically opposing countries??

20 years later, Sarah receives a letter from Svetlana- a Russian citizen who hints that Jenny may in fact not have been in that plane. Sarah races to Russia to find out...

This story had a great, excitable premise, however while reading, it felt like I was trudging through mud. Every time I set it down, I was in no hurry to pick it back up. The author's thoughts were rampant and seemed unorganized and chaotic. Needless to say, I'm glad that I finally finished it!

[Lobstergirl · Rating 2 out of 5]

The references to 1980s Northwest Washington are beguiling for a reader who grew up there. Commander Salamander! Sledding in Battery Kemble Park. John Eaton Elementary School. Cleveland Park, Reno Road, Macomb Street, Lowell Street, Woodley Road, Rodman Street, the Macomb Street playground, the Bishop's Garden at the National Cathedral. The anchor outside the Naval Observatory. The community club on Highland Place. The Social Safeway. Melvin Hazen Park! Au Pied de Cochon!

The girls wear L. L. Bean Blucher moccasins! (I had a pair of the camp mocs. In the olden days they sold them to females - no longer.)

Like her two protagonists, the author attended all-girls National Cathedral School (class of '92) and I was horrified by her description of how, as they walked to swim practice at the brother school (St. Albans), the boys would whistle and call them "Pussy." Or "box" - which I'd never heard before, but the girls are supposed to take as a compliment. "The annual St. Albans yearbook even included a “BABES” page with photos of the NCS girls deemed the most attractive," wrote Holt in a 2018 article about Brett Kavanaugh and the toxic masculinity of 80s D.C. private schools. (Where was the faculty when the "babes" page was going to press?)

But the D.C. details were all I enjoyed about the book. The plot was uninteresting and the last two-thirds is set in Moscow, where Sarah Zuckerman travels on a fool's errand because some random woman has told her her long-dead friend Jennifer Jones might be living in Russia. I was unfamiliar with the story of Samantha Smith but it wouldn't have helped even if I'd known. The Moscow setting and characters are charmless and the title completely unmemorable - in one brain lobe and out the other.

[Jessica J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am young enough that I don’t remember the Cold War. I was five when the Berlin Wall came down, six when the Soviet Union broke up, and while I have vague memories of those events on the news, I definitely had no idea what the hell it meant. The Day After, the Olympic boycotts, Star Wars – all of that happened just enough before my cognitive processes were solidified that I have no real concept of the paranoia and fear that accompanied them.

I sure as hell had never heard of Samantha Smith, the young girl whose letter to Yuri Andropov created a media sensation in 1983. Smith asked Andropov not to engage the United States in nuclear war and Andropov invited her to visit Russia. After the visit, she spent a few years promoting peace before she was killed in a 1985 plane crash.

Elliott Holt uses Smith’s story as inspiration for her book You Are One of Them. Sarah Zuckerman’s lived in the shadow of loss her entire life. Her four-year-old sister died suddenly of meningitis when Sarah was an infant. A few years later Sarah’s father decided to return home to his native England, leaving Sarah behind with a mother whose agoraphobia, anxiety, and fear of nuclear war was overwhelming to the point of pathological. Then, when Sarah is nine, Jenny Jones moves in next door. The two are instantly the best of friends and spend the next few years doing everything together – including writing letters to Russia premier Yuri Andropov asking for peace. Despite the fact that the letters were Sarah’s idea, Jenny’s letter is the one published in Russia and the one that Andropov responds to. Before Sarah has any idea what’s going on, her best friend is off to Russia and becomes a celebrity. After her return, Jenny is invited to do television and media interviews and even gets to write a book about her experience – and none of the publicity mentions Sarah. Sarah is naturally jealous and that, combined with normal adolescent mood swings, leads to tension in the girls’ friendship, which remains cold until Jenny and her parents are killed in a plane crash when the girls are twelve.

Ten years later, Sarah is a recent college graduate trying to decide what her next step should be when she receives an email from Svetlana, Jenny’s escort during her trip to Russia, suggesting that Jenny may not have died after all. Intrigued, Sarah heads to Moscow to find out what really happened to her best friend.

This book was fascinating to me. I didn’t know that it was loosely based upon actual events when I picked it up, so I was enthralled at the originality of the plot. It was unlike anything I’d ever read, and Cold War novels are not particularly common now that we’re more afraid of Al Qaeda than Russia. Even after I read up on Samantha Smith, I was fascinated. I mean, I devoured this book in a little more than twenty-four hours because I just could not stop reading. It falls somewhere between a spy thriller and a coming-of-age novel, with a little literary flair.

It doesn’t hurt that Holt’s prose and construction is amazing. Sarah’s psychological state was very well-developed and consistent. I felt everything her character felt, and I just wanted to reach into the pages and hug her. The book is woven with threads of paranoia and loneliness, uncertainty and insecurity. The layers of metaphors were laid down with finesse and subtlety – I definitely feel like I could pick apart Holt’s sentences and mine them for meaning, and enjoy myself doing so, but it never felt like I was getting hit in the face with symbolism.

It was just so, so good. Go read it.

[eb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I took down my original review because it was negative, and the first one posted, and Ms. Holt is active on Goodreads, and I didn't want to be a jerk. But in the context of several glowing reviews, I'll restate that this novel did not work for me, despite the often-beautiful writing. It reads like a location in search of a plot. The one and only question is, What really happened to Jenny, who died in a plane crash years ago? The answer unfolds like a Nancy Drew mystery.

[Regina Noviana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mesmerizing from the beginning til the end. It's been quite a long time since I could not put down a book. This is one of the best book I've ever read, and the story sticks with me even until now. This reminds me of my own previous live events, where a friendship could be so toxic.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who came of age during the Cold War years remembers it as a particularly haunting time, when the threat of nuclear annihilation was omnipresent and fears – even paranoia – were intensified.

Elliott Holt mines this fertile ground very effectively. Her focus is on two best friends – Sarah Zuckerman, our narrator, whose older sister died before she was born, and Jennifer Jones, her poised, all-American best friends. Jennifer becomes her “sister of choice” and the two are inseparable.

The 10-year-olds decide one day to write letters to Soviet premier Yuri Andropov asking for peace. In a great surprise, Jenny’s letter is answered and she is invited by the premier to visit the USSR and see that it, too, is a peace-loving nation. For a brief time, Jenny becomes a media sensation, causing a rift between the girls. But when her plane goes down – killing her and her parents – Sarah is left to wonder: did Jenny really die or was there more to the story than meets the eye?

All of this is established quickly (so no spoilers). The meat of the story concentrates on Sarah as a young adult, now temporarily living in Moscow and trying to make sense out of Jenny’s death. It is very evident that Elliott Holt has done her research. She writes “Going to Moscow was like stepping through a magic portal to a very different world. A world of superstition and shadows, of poetry and deadly icicles. Defectors and spies. Secret messages and invisible ink...”

Indeed, this reader felt as if she had been given a magical passport to the USSR. Who knew, for example, that most Soviets were avid readers, that they loved ice cream even in winter, that the main ingredient in salads was mayonnaise, that babushkas (older Russian women) scolded people readily on the streets? These are all minute details, true, but when added up, they present a strong sense of place.

I should also add that Elliott Holt writes like a dream, creating entirely believable characters and locations. My only reservation is that this author seemed to be torn between creating two books. One is the story of Sarah and Jenny, an autopsy-of-sorts of a lost friendship, abandonment issues, and the shifting meanings of truth. That story, with its psychological underpinnings, is beautifully created.

Equally beautifully created is a story of the friend-left-behind who is navigating the alien world of the USSR, where truth and propaganda constantly shift boundaries, where the boundaries sometimes overlap with our own battles with truth and propaganda, and where no one can ever be sure that what they believe is what truly has happened. The author is so comfortable in her knowledge of the USSR that she sometimes drops the threads of the first story, instead of seamlessly interweaving those threads.

This is a 4-star book that is very close to being a 5-star book. In a broader sense, it is about the stories we tell ourselves to grow, and even to survive.

[Katie]

[mild spoilers] Holt is a very mature, disciplined writer. She ends paragraphs beautifully, without any of that extra debut-novel flab one so often finds. Her central metaphor, that of political defection as a kind of personal rejection, is an incredibly powerful one in that it makes both defection feel deeply, stingingly personal and romantic/friend rejection feel epic, world-ending. D.C. in the Cold War is a great setting, one too little used in contemporary fiction, and Holt deploys it with skill and texture.

It should be said that this is a deeply lonely story. The main character was left by both a deceased sister and a divorced father early in her life, and as such struggles mightily to make connections to other characters. Holt even prevents the reader from assuming a happier future for the narrator, cutting off a potential romance and describing a future heartbreak. There's a brutal truth to this, and it's never written in a heavy-handed way, but the loneliness is deep and pervasive.

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure I can express exactly why, but I was totally enthralled by this book. Everything was perfectly rendered--1980s USA, 1990s Moscow, the main character herself. I couldn't stop reading this and now that it's over I miss it.

[Mary Lins · Rating 2 out of 5]

"You Are One of Them" by Elliot Holt, comes at a perfect time for fans of the critically acclaimed and popular FX television series, "The Americans". In fact, it was an interview with Holt regarding that TV show that influenced my choosing this novel.

Sarah, our narrator, grew up in Washington D.C. and her best friend, Jenny, through an idea that Sarah originates, is given the opportunity to visit Cold War Russia. This provides instant fame for Jenny and envy for Sarah. The two grow apart. Ten years later, in the early 1990s, Sarah visits the now "open" Russia and begins to investigate some mysteries around her old friend Jenny. (I'm being vague here because I don't want to give the plot away.)

The novel is about an interesting topic and time in history as well as a fairly quick read. As a narrator Sarah is engaging and the reader becomes easily interested in her story. But once Sarah gets to Russia to find answers about Jenny, the novel seems to lose traction and the plot becomes somewhat confused; there are suddenly passages referring to an unhappy love-affair that happens in the future to which Sarah relates her feelings of being abandoned by Jenny. I found the ending very unsatisfying.

For an engrossing look at the Cold War and Russia under Stalin's reign, I highly recommend the trilogy by Tom Rob Smith: "Child 44", "The Secret Speech" and "Agent 6".

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading "You Are One of Them" by Elliott Holt. Having grown up during the Cold War, I could identify well with the main character, Sarah Zuckerman, from whose point of view the book is written. So many cultural references to that time in history reminded me of elementary school and middle school, when there was a definite fear amongst children my age about what the Cold War would bring to our lives. I remember seeing signs for the fall out shelters, and the constant coverage of the nuclear arms race and subsequent nuclear disarmament.

In conveying the story of Sarah and Jenny Jones, Holt does an amazing job of describing each character in a way that as a reader, I felt that I could have been friends with them. I tended to be more like Sarah during elementary school and middle school, but I knew girls like Sarah who were like the sun, drawing everyone into their universe.

"You Are One of Them" is a wonderful, and gripping read that I would highly recommend to anyone who grew up during this time in our history.

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is completely absorbing. It's a work of tremendous psychological suspense, and it's extremely funny--by turns wry and humane/tart and merciless--not only line-by-line but at a conceptual level. It perfectly evokes the paranoia of the cold war 80s but seems completely fresh. She does a perfect rendering of girls' friendships in both childhood and young adulthood in all their hot and cold weather. And the writing is flawless. I highly recommend this when it comes out at the end of May.

[Patrick Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun book with elements of a coming of age story mixed with a mystery with some spy fiction thrown in, for good measure. If that sounds like it might be a mess, it's not, largely because Holt does a great job of grounding the story in Sarah, a protagonist who manages to be both unique and relatable. I love the sub-genre of books about people going to exotic locales to find long lost friends/enemies/mysterious people (Heart of Darkness, State of Wonder, The Third Man, most of my unproduced screenplays), so Sarah's journey to Moscow to uncover the truth about her friend Jennifer was an easy sell for me. But I think even if I weren't a sucker for the genre, I'd have enjoyed this one. The atmosphere of anticipation and its sinister brother, dread, serve this book so well, and the themes of identity and ambiguity are persistent without being too obvious. And there's also Cold War nostalgia (is nostalgia the right word?) and great Russian malapropisms and interesting jumps in time in this book, and so much to recommend it. A very strong debut.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this novel, Sarah and her Jennifer Jones write letters to the president of Russia during the Cold War asking for peace. Jennifer and her family become media sensations after her letter is printed in the Russian paper. Some time later, Jennifer and her family perish in a plane crash. Over the next ten years, Sarah comes to terms with the loss of her best friend, however, she is contacted by a Russian girl claiming Jennifer did not die in a plane crash but is living in Russia. Sarah travels to Russia in hopes of finding her missing friend.

About half or two thirds of the way through, I got bored and just wanted to know if Jennifer was alive.

Strong points of this novel were the sense of time and place, but neither Russia nor the Cold War really appeal to me. I'd much rather a book set in England during WWII but that was not this book.

Sarah was kind of annoying after awhile. The book was not terrible and certainly the writing was strong, but overall the plot, which originally seemed fresh and innovate, left me cold.

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find most books that give me some kind of view of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union and Russia in the 20th and 21st century compelling -- which largely explains the 4 star rating. The writing was very good and the resolution was clever, which made for a very readable book. But there's something a bit pathetic about the main character.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

[MTD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, how I dislike ambiguous endings! Yet, had the author chosen anything but ambiguity for this novel of the Cold War, it wouldn't have rung true to me. Based on the true story of Samantha Smith, the Maine girl who wrote to Yuri Andropov, was invited to the Soviet Union for a two-week tour, became famous, and later died in a plane crash, this story is about Sarah and Jenny, two friends living in Washington, DC during the Cold War. Sarah decides to write a letter to Andropov and Jenny follows suit. Jenny's letter draws attention, Sarah's does not, and the friends grow apart. Jenny dies soon after. Years later, Sarah receives a cryptic letter from the Russian "friend" who had been paired with Jenny during the media tour. She decides to travel to Russia to meet the friend and get some answers.

The Russian part of the book moves faster than the Washington part, and I found it more interesting. Historical and cultural details about the New (i.e. post-Soviet Union) Russia, expatriate culture, and the Russian outlook on life are interwoven well with the plot. Nothing is what it seems, it seems. The book held my interest through most of an afternoon.

[Jessica Carrillo · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my opinion, this wasn't the greatest book. I would get lost in some areas because it was sort of all over the place. Some parts of the book did, however, catch my attention which is what kept me reading it until the end. I do give props to the author for the excellent attention to detail; I got a good understanding of what the characters were going through. This is a book I probably wouldn't read again, since I had a hard time getting into the reading zone, but I'd like to find more books by the same author to explore more of their work.

[Seth Sawyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the voice of this, and the way she moves so easily from the middle 90s to the early 80s, and back again. I loved the depiction of how easily intensity in young friendships can both develop and disappear. The narrator is complicated and intense, tough but gullible when she wants to be. I loved the descriptions of the places and the people: early-80s DC, mid-90s Moscow, Russian dachas, the prep-school youth of Northwest DC, the chain-smoking divorced 20-somethings of the post-Cold War Russia. You can see everything very well. When the plot gets super-charged around two-thirds of the way through, I was surprised, but it works just fine.

A lovely writer full of tough heart who I'd follow anywhere.

[Gayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this out because I liked the premise: Sarah Zuckerman, who grew up in DC in the early 80s (like me!) had a best friend named Jenny who lived across the street. One day, they decide to write letters to Yuri Andropov to ask for peace between the US and the USSR. Jenny's letter is singled out by the Russian government, and she is invited to the USSR as a child ambassador to help thaw relations during the Cold War. Upon Jenny's return to the US, she becomes a celebrity, leaving Sarah behind. But within a year, she and her family have been killed in a private place accident en route to a speaking appearance.

Many years later, Sarah receives an email from someone in (now) Russia, claiming to have met Jenny on her visit in the 80s, and suggesting that Jenny is still alive, having defected to Russia. Sarah has to decide whether to pursue the investigation into what really happened to Jenny and, in so doing, address her unresolved issues about the demise of their friendship.

[Incidentally, about 30 pages in, there were details in You Are One Of Them that were so familiar to me that I went online to see where Holt went to school. Sure enough, she went to my small, DC private school, which explains part of why this book appealed to me so much.]

So there are basically two parts of this book - the part about Sarah and Jenny's friendship, and the part that explores the mystery of what actually happened to Jenny. I loved, loved, loved the first part. The treachery of middle school friendships set against the dark backdrop of the Cold War was perfectly covered by Holt, down to the little notes Sarah and Jenny used to write to each other, the cruelties that adolescent girls visit on each other, and Sarah's sense of isolation and rejection. I also enjoyed following Sarah into adulthood and seeing how she coped with her deeply flawed family and the insecurities that were ingrained from a young age.

The second part of the book was a little problematic for me. I thought that in Russia, Sarah behaved in ways that were pretty out of character. Some of the postulated theories about Jenny's whereabouts were overly simplistic and should have had more complexity. And there is the ending itself, which has its own opacity (but which I ultimately admired). It's hard to address the second part of the book completely without spoiling the ending, so I will leave it at that. If you've read it and want to discuss it, email me!

Russia plays a huge role in this book - its history, its transformation in the 90s, and the ways in which its society adapted to Western sensibilities post-Cold War. Holt has a great talent for conveying the effect of the city's weather, architecture, and economy on the psyches of its inhabitants, whether native or ex-pat.

You Are One Of Them was my favorite book so far this summer. It's not perfect, as I said above, but I love Holt's writing and can't believe this is her first novel. I will be watching carefully - "like KGB, da?" for her next one.

Full review: http://everydayiwritethebookblog.com/...

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, but I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. It seemed to be a combination of many things I love, and as a copywriter, I was interested in seeing Elliott Holt's transition into a very different format. Many people assume most copywriters are failed or aspiring novelists working on their manuscripts by night, but the kind of writing demanded by each profession is vastly different. It's definitely evident that this is a first novel because at times it feels very much as if it's staying on the surface level. The characters were stereotypical, and although I read the book quickly, I didn't feel as if I knew them very well. The writing is beautiful and straightforward, which I enjoyed, and which made it a very quick read. But at times it was overly simplistic, and I wanted to delve more into the characters' motivations and emotions. The story is strongest at the beginning, when it builds a beautiful tale of a growing friendship between two young girls who create a sense of safety during a time of uncertainty with each other. Because the young friendship between the two girls is the backdrop and undercurrent throughout the entire book, it does give the story a hint of young adult historical fiction, which is a genre I really loved. I think that's why I expected to like this book a lot more than I did.

To be honest, I was much more interested in Jenny's life as a defector in Russia and her transition into a life of hiding there, rather than in Sarah's quest to find her. The Russian characters, Svetlana and Andrei, seemed almost like throwaways, and the plot points that Svetlana advanced ended a little too abruptly. Most of the reason I gave the book three stars was because the parts when Svetlana led Sarah on tours around Moscow, giving her opinions on American and Russian cultures, were really well done and wryly written. These characters became the most interesting for me, because their analysis of American culture and its impact on post-Cold War Russia could have been further explored, especially with the goldmine of a setting that was a post-Cold War Russian advertising agency. There was so much to be done there! And I wished I would have gotten more. The writing about Moscow, and the creation of the place and time there, is some of the most beautiful and promising writing in the book.

I enjoyed the ambiguous ending and the gradual buildup to a quick reveal, which seemed to mimic the way Sara was able to gradually let Jenny go so she could grow up on her own. But still, the final quarter of the book was rushed in a way that didn't necessarily make it feel natural. It was almost as if the author didn't know what to do once she'd revealed the truth about Jenny. I'll definitely be eager to see more from Elliott Holt, but perhaps because of the huge buildup for this book, I couldn't help but feel a little unfulfilled.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the end, everyone turns away from Sarah Zuckerman—defectors. At least that’s how it feels.

The first to flee Sarah’s proximity is the toddler who should have become her big sister: dead. Shortly thereafter grief and anxiety leave Sarah with a mother only capable of a fierce, exhausting, cautionary love—a leftover mother. Then off goes the father, to another land, and another family, with brighter smiles—a do-over father. And so, Sarah exists in her grey world, which is not terribly good, but not terribly bad, although catastrophe is most certainly right around the corner (at least that’s what her mother, obsessed with the possibility of a nuclear war, constantly reminds her).

Then, Jenny Jones moves in across the street, with her blonde hair and freckles. For a delicious while, the girls’ lives conjoin and Sarah becomes “Jenny and Sarah” becomes “something resembling happy,” all the suburban banalities of Jenny’s life gracefully and graciously eclipsing the abnormalities of Sarah’s. But when the girls both write letters to Soviet premier, Yuri Andropov, only Jenny’s garners national attention. After that, Jenny’s glow becomes too harsh for Sarah and the friends drift. Ultimately, Jenny defects from Sarah’s life, too. At least this is what Sarah believes until she receives a mysterious email during her senior year of college ten years later, and heads off to Russia in search of a new truth.

A fast-paced book studded with exquisite must-read-it-again prose, “You Are One of Them” is a poignant study of the ways in which certain people pull us into their orbit, and how we hover—grateful moons—just to be close to them. Rich with details of Cold War era 80s youth, and post-Cold War Russia, Holt’s debut novel hits all the right social, emotional, cultural, and pop-cultural notes. Perhaps most deftly, though, “You Are One of Them” artfully portrays the ways in which grief and longing motivate and manipulate us.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

I enjoyed the book. It was easy to read, interesting, and a story unlike one I had ever read before. Holt tied together the main character’s past and present very well and ended the book on an empowering note.

The book is about Sarah, the main character, and her relationship with her childhood best friend Jenny. Both girls wrote letters to Yuri Andropov, and Jenny’s letter received a response. Jenny was invited to the Soviet Union, and became a media sensation. Soon after, she died in a plane crash.

Sarah received a letter from a friend of Jenny’s in Russia, inviting her to tour Russia. She also wrote about the possibility of Jenny being alive.

Sarah went to Russia in search of the truth. Along the way, she learned much about herself - who she was before Jenny’s death, and who she became after.

It was a good book, although I would have liked to read a little bit more about the emotional experiences Sarah was going through, so that I could connect and feel for her just that little bit more. Other than that, Holt wrote well, and, as mentioned above, connected Sarah’s past and present very well.

I’m so excited to have won one this Goodreads book, and I recommend it to anyone who wants a refreshing, page-turner weekend read.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good citizen and bad citizen, Nuclear weaponary, War games, KGB, CIA, Russia and America, presidents, secrets and defections.
These all feature somewhere in this storys timeline.
The author tells the tale of two young girls in America, rather wealthy ones, who find a war with Russia quite scary and decide to due the good deed of writing to the Russian president with a letter of concern. The main character who as already lost her sister to illness has forged a relationship with one particular schoolmate who catches the hearts of Russian officials in her letter and soon finds that she is also lost to a tragic accident.
The writing never bored with all the Americans in Russia storytelling it held my interest to the end, the story edges around the spy field and defecting it does not go deep undercover but does a good job showing how some citizens defect in its storytelling. The tv series The American is doing well in the ratings, the Russian and American story seems to still pull in interest and so this tale may provide some decent entertainment in its reading, a story that has some historical significance.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Accidentally found myself reading not just two novels at once but two novels about the former Soviet Union by peer-contemporaries. The actual subject matter handled by Elliot Holt and Anthony Marra couldn't have been more different, though. Where Holt's protagonist worries questions about friendship, identity, and coming-of-age under the shadow of the bomb, Marra's characters confront profound realities of life and death, hunger, violence, suffering, and war - so a comparison is not exactly legitimate. Holt's writing is wonderfully detailed and packed with trivia of growing up in the 1980s - I call it trivia because it sometimes seemed as if she had a checklist and couldn't move forward until each item had been mentioned. The plot itself only hinges on one question, and I wished it could have been broader. (I'm not doing a plot summary here.) But I enjoyed the mystery of wondering about Jennifer's identity and liked the open-ended conclusion. [*Spoiler*: I think it was all a financial scam and that the woman was not really Jenny.] Good.

[Chaitra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. For some reason I just did not connect with either the story or the main character. In theory, this book should have interested me more than it did. A period of the Cold War I'm unfamiliar with. I've heard of the defectors and the re-defectors and the spies everywhere, but not enough, not from the 80s. I also was brought up in India, where if the Cold War touched us, I was blissfully unaware of it.

But this book, while it's perked up my enthusiasm for this period, was not engaging. This is the one time I was wishing this was a straight mystery and not literary fiction. I could have done with some tight plotting and swift pace.