Nrosenberg’s Reviews > The Half Life of Valery K > Status Update

Throwing your hands up at an organization like the KGB was no way to solve anything. You had to join, and then you did as many good things as you could, until the evil was a little bit less. He believed that. Or, he had used to. The fact was that to a little girl whose parents were taken away and whose dog was shot, it didn’t matter if the person with the gun was a psychopath or someone who wanted to do good.

“…That means you will probably die of it. Do you know what dying is?”

She nodded again. “You stop, and you turn back into stars. Mum says everyone’s made of stars. Is that true?”

(After three books by Pulley, I’m still not convinced that she has ever actually met a child or spoken to one)

It was a truth universally acknowledged that beautiful women tended despite their natural disadvantages to be virtuous, while beautiful men were invariably bastards.

Every other chapter of this book just has me like Selina Meyer laughing nervously and saying “what the fuck?”

It is dangerous to assume anything like this is ridiculous. It is the very fact that so many people believe some things are unthinkably ridiculous that makes them so vulnerable to those who are willing not only to think but to do the ridiculous thing. That’s how Stalin arrested tens of millions of innocent people without provoking a revolution; it’s so absurd that people didn’t believe it was happening

Josef Mengele jump scare, Jesus

“… So one in seven people has been to a labour camp, and if you believe KGB record-keeping, then one in ten of those is dead.”

The phone rang into the silence that followed. It was by Valery, so he picked it up. “Biology Lab.”

“Can you not,” Shenkov said at the other end…