as posted here
SAMANTHA BOND
18/09/2009 4:00:00 AM
Winner of the 2008 Vogel Award, Document Z is a fictionalised account of “the Petrov affair” – a bone fide Cold War episode that took place in 1950s Canberra.
The Vogel is one of Australia’s most prestigious literary awards, responsible for launching the careers of writers such as Kate Grenville, Andrew McGahn and Tim Winton, and offering a prize of $20,000 (Croome got an extra $50,000 to mark the prize’s 50th anniversary). However, I was sadly disappointed by the 2008 winner.
Based on extensive research of recently declassified records of the 1954 Royal Commission on Espionage, Croome fictionalises the characters of Evdokia Petrov, her husband Vladimir and another important player, Michael Bialoguski. The life Croome breathes into these characters – including his exploration of the personal cost of their defection – is the most successful aspect of this novel.
Most notably, Croome succeeds in bringing Evdokia to life, giving her a personality beyond that which can be gleaned from documents; likewise, he builds a believable character for Bialoguski as the Polish immigrant intent on recognition for his role in securing their defection.
Document Z’s main failing is that it lacks narrative drive – there is a certain “so what?” factor.
It starts with a good hook: Evdokia Petrov, wife of a Russian defector, is being put onto a plane to be flown back to Russia to face punishment and even death for her husband’s crimes. The book then goes back three years in time to tell the Petrovs’ story and how it all came to this.
The main setting for the early part of the novel is the newly minted Soviet embassy in the newly minted national capital, Canberra. It is 1951, the height of the Cold War, and paranoia, rumour and suspicion run rife at the embassy. Both Petrovs are party loyalists also working for the MVD, Moscow secret intelligence. ASIO, often referred to as “the competitors”, is determined to discover who in this group works for the MVD.
The first part of the novel sets the stage for the action that eventuates, but it does so at extreme leisure.
Historical fiction has become a massive genre over recent decades. A problem with the fictionalisation of more recent history is that events remain in living memory and thus can’t be as easily manipulated as history of a hundred years ago or more. Croome sticks to the facts … and perhaps this is the problem. The facts aren’t that interesting and so neither is the story.
Document Z also ends fairly weakly, but this, too, is true to life. Here, at novel’s end, I began to envisage the difficulty that must have confronted Croome when trying to shape these events into a narrative.
While his narrative style and prose is excellent, this alone does not a story make. If I haven’t spent much time here describing the plot, it’s because there isn’t much of one. The second half was better, but I still struggled to finish the book.
Document Z seems to be a novel about politics, but not a political book. Soviet Russia is 20 years dead; why is there now a need for this book, retelling what is a minor footnote in Australian history? Was it simply that the ASIO documents had been declassified, thus providing a wealth of useful material for a novel?
Still, if you are interested in Australian history, the Cold War and espionage, you may enjoy it more than I did. – Allen & Unwin, $23.99
as posted here
Doc Evatt was insane for getting involved in the Petrov Affair.
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