Shauna reviewed Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. …
A well-written, experimental novel for the economically inclined
5 stars
This book had me at its premise: "a novel about the socialist calculation debate". If you are not interested in economic theory, you should skip it - the question of how best to run an economy is not just the main driver of the story and a topic of conversation among characters, there are several significant chunks of the book that are just straight-out lecture. I found the lecture-y bits to be very helpful context, so I will not dock stars for them, though I preferred the actual story (which is maybe 85-90% of the text).
The book follows many characters, real and some fictional, some we keep circling back to and some we never see again. Luckily Spufford has a knack for sketching interesting characters quickly. Still, this is not the kind of book that grips you hard and fast so you can't put it down. You can read it in pieces here and there. That's fine - it succeeds in what it wants to be, not a thriller or an epic but a thoughtful exploration of an important question through the lens of storytelling.
