I haven’t read any of Vesna Goldsworthy’s other books but I did really enjoy a radio adaptation of Gorsky. Perhaps if I had actually read it I’d have realised it’s an update of The Great Gatsby (that’s another one for the TBR pile, then). Iron Curtain, in its turn, echoes Medea. Yes, it’s a love story as the subtitle tells us, but it’s also a window into life in a communist country in the early 1980s, albeit through the eyes of the privileged few. It helps that the country isn’t specified: it stopped me looking up its history or at maps so I got on with reading the story. More than once I looked up to find over an hour had passed while I was engrossed. The part set in seedy, grimy London reminded me of Eimear McBride’s The Lesser Bohemians; love, it seems, makes a grotty flat bearable. You can tell that Goldsworthy has experienced both places for real: the detail is too good, rings too true to be anything other than believable. I think it was Milena’s narration in and of itself that really caught me though, neither too simple nor too all-knowing. I think these characters will stay with me for some time.

'Iron Curtain' by Vesna Goldsworthy begins in an unnamed satellite communist state behind the Iron Curtain. Milena, a red princess, rails against the constant observation and expectations set by the regime. Constantly watched, and aware of secret cameras, she alternates between recklessness and conformity. Then a British poet comes as part of a carefully curated festival of the arts, and Milena falls in love. She makes the decision to flee.

Whilst I found this book really interesting and atmospheric, I did struggle with the pace and one note of it and as a result did start to feel less inclined to pick it up and continue with the story. Milena's view point isn't contrasted with any other perspective and it therefore felt like something was missing. Whilst for me this novel is cleverly and beautifully written, it didn't get under my skin and I wasn't sad when it was over. It is however, a novel that will invite discussion and would probably make a very good book club read.

A love story?
A contrast between cultures>
Freedom or surveillance?
This beautifully constructed story centres around Milena, living a luxurious lifestyle in a soviet satellite state in the 1980's, and Jason, a prize winning published poet visiting from Britain.
As their cultures and ideals collide, the reader is exposed to the political and cultural history of the time, although their story is always at the forefront.
This is a compelling read which opened my eyes to the issues of the time.

Milena is a “red princess,” living a privileged, if restricted life as the daughter of a top minister in the Communist government of a small Russian satellite country. Bored and cynical about her homeland, when she falls in love with a visiting British poet she is employed to translate for, she decides to seize the chance to escape and make a new life in London. Soon, however, she begins to realise that neither London nor her new husband Jason are what she expected or hoped for. An unusual book set during the Cold War when the gap between East and West seemed to be narrowing but before real change occurred, it offers a fascinating insight into life under Communism. Like Milena’s idea of the West, it is not quite how it has been portrayed. The slow development of her understanding and recognition of the truth about her position is moving and believable, as her romantic vision of life with irresponsible manchild Jason begins to splinter and she must make a decision about where her future really lies.

Vesna Goldsworthy charts the trajectory of a 'love' story in this astutely observed piece of historical fiction set in the 1980s in an era of political turbulence in a unnamed Soviet communist satellite country and a changing Britain under Thatcher. Milena 'Mimi' Urbanska is a privileged Red Princess, living a life of luxury, daughter of one of the leading elite Party members, a member of the 'it' crowd, flirting with rebellion whilst being protected from any of the consequences of her behaviour. However, a tragedy stops her in her tracks, a trauma that has her changing a life that she had previously glided through. More alone and isolated, she becomes hardworking and succeeds academically, seeking to be more low key. She becomes a English translator at a Maize Research Institute, when she is asked to interpret for a visiting left leaning British poet who has won a minor poetry prize, Jason Connor.

Meeting him, she sees a handsome, louche and irresponsible man, poorly dressed, ill equipped to handle their climate, claiming an Irish ancestry, but as he is lauded and admired, her perspective begins to shift as she begins to view him through rose coloured lens. Jason states he loves her and wants her to return to London with him. She refuses, but as time goes by, her love grows as she dwells on her dissatisfactions with her comfortable life that comes at a price, the heavy surveillance, the claustrophic, and insular community, and the limitations of the controlling environment. As she plots to join Jason, she naively assumes that she can never be herself at home, willing to pay the cost of leaving her country, her family, and everything she knows. However, London is a shock, as she becomes 'Millie', finding herself living in dingy squalor and poverty, living with a Jason she begins to see more clearly, a self centred, feckless manchild who will never be able to provide for them, she must do that. Initially she is sustained by their love and her unwillingness to confront the horror that she might have made a monumental error, that is until she faces betrayal.

Goldsworthy is a storyteller of talent and wit, insightfully focusing on the failures of family, freedom, and country, comparing and contrasting the social, political and cultural differences of two such apparently different countries. Mimi and Jason's love story is one that the reader can see is doomed even as Mimi, laden with her ideals and expectations, is planning to join Jason. Jason's perceptions of his freedoms bring hurt, and a re-evaluation of their marriage which has Mimi coming full circle as she seeks retribution. This is a fascinating and riveting read, of the personal and the political, a love story set in historically significant period of change in Britain, and with the upcoming collapse of the communist political systems, symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain in 1989. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Really enjoyed this book.

It stands out for me because it gives a perspective I haven’t read about before. Set in 80s Bulgaria, we are given insight in to what that was like but also an insight in to what it was like looking on at Britain from the outside then.

The plot is moved along by a love story but the book is so much more than that.

I have not read any books by this author before and quite enjoyed it. Milena is a daughter of a man who was tucked in quite nicely with the hierarchy of Russia and led a very charmed life. The story is set both behind the Iron Curtain and in the UK. She is going out with a Russian man (Misha) who is very dapper and likes to look and be different to others in his country. Milena, her friend and Misha are together when it was decided to play Russian roulette with an old gun. Milena is very anxious with this and when it is her turn she refuses to pull the trigger. Misha said he would take the next go and the bullet was in that chamber and he dies. Milena becomes very sad and feels that to instigate a game like that he did not love her enough, if he did he would not have taken that chance. Life has to carry on and she decided to take a job translating which is not for her. Eventually she goes to an event which coincides with Jason being at the same venue. Jason is a poet from the UK and she becomes enamoured with him, his views are particularly leaning to the left. They have a “thing” and when he invites her to London she sees this as an opportunity to fly the Soviet nest. After a while in the UK she wonders whether she had made the right decision as she finds the way of life so totally different to her home, East and West colliding is a difficult transition. She loves the freedom and it is so very different from home but being a socialite in one life and not in the other comes with its issues and problems. One of them is the state of Jason’s flat as she comes from such a good home and has a special status. This is a love story of sorts – does their romance continue, you will have you read the book to find out

Fantastic new novel from Vesna Goldsworthy about falling in and out of love, set in the mid 1980s on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

The first half of the novel takes place during the last hurray of socialism in an imaginary Soviet satellite country, while the second half takes place in London. Goldsworthy’s narrator is Milena Urbanska, a ‘red princess’, daughter of an old revolutionary, the president’s right hand. On the surface, Milena’s life may be privileged but she lives in a surveillance state with very limited choices and freedom. Unmoored after an accidental death of her equally privileged ex-boyfriend, she picks a very unglamorous translating job at an agricultural institute but then gets asked to translate at a literary event where she meets Jason, a handsome, left-leaning guest poet from England. The two fall in love during the brief encounter and she eventually accepts his invitation to join him in London but her experiences there leave her questioning whether she has made the right decision.

So well-written and sharply observed, from Milena’s dissection of her family household at breakfast to the snobbery of the socialist elite (spot on) and to her first impressions of England, flying into London. There is so much I loved about this book – the characterisation of Jason and his family, how Goldsworthy handled Milena’s isolation in London and the social, political and cultural differences between East and West. I felt it deeply too, coming from what was then the same part of the world as Vesna Goldsworthy to the fabled West only a handful of years later. It felt as if Iron Curtain was written for me personally and I highlighted practically half the book to come back to. A very early but serious contender for best book of 2022.

Highly recommended. My thanks to Random House, Vintage and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Iron Curtain.

We view living in the west as a better option to alternative societies. This book makes you think again as Milena, a privileged person in a Soviet satellite state, makes choices for her life after meeting an attractive Western poet. A thoughtful read.

One of the most attractive things to me in a new book is an unusual setting, or even better a setting that I hadn't thought was unusual but I realise I know very little about. 1980's Bulgaria, particularly being the children of the elite politicians in Bulgaria is a scenario I could probably make glib stabs at imagining, but Iron Curtain does a fascinating deep dive. Milena, as the daughter of one of the countries leaders, comes of age in comfort and privilege, she snaps at a few cultural restrictions but an opening game of Russian Roulette is a handy shorthand to the boredom and actual danger they are involved in. Dissociated from friends and family, against her better judgement she falls in love with a British poet on a cultural exchange and we eventually get a fascinating outsiders look a the Western freedom and paradise of Thatcher's Britian. The book plays some lovely Georges Mikes outsider misunderstandings with the grimy world of Shepherd's Bush basement flats, and freezing cold country houses. In the centre is Milena, dripping with disdain and mild confusion trying to make the best of scenarios that either in communism, or capitalism trap her.

Iron Curtain is a propulsive faux memoir, and Goldsworthy skewers a number of broad types, with a touch of light and shade for characterisation. Milena's poet partner is every "Middle-Class communist British artist" in the eighties, flirting with dregs of an ancestral Irish heritage and more than happy to live on his Giro, or handout from downwardly mobile parents. He is - and this is the secret of the mild generosity here - talented, though being a talented poet isn't worth an awful lot when living on borrowed floorspace and bringing up a child. The hardest job the book has to do is sympathetically explain why Milena - who found her poet somewhat pathetic on their first meeting - would then fall in love at long distance to risk everything, and the book just about convinces on that front. Certainly the reversal to type near the end is much more convincing, a problem when stuffing the book with comic caricatures. If there is a problem here it is trying to settle on the point of the story - Milena is such a fascinating protagonist and companionable storyteller that the book feels like it ends abruptly. Perhaps its the tale of an outsider in 80's London, but I hugely enjoyed the communist set first half, and was looking forward to seeing Milena talk about the fall of communism (there is a framing device at the start which is set after - but this insider viewpoint would have been fascinating).

I've been recently bemoaning the fact that period dramas, and books, are now being set in my lifetime (I'm old!) so the other job a book like this has to do is convince me that it really feels contemporaneously written. And on that front the sense of a grimy London, and the few cultural references sold the bit I knew on me, so the bit I didn't (Bulgaria) convinced by proxy. I really enjoyed Iron Curtain, there was enough introspection within the character of Milena to take her outside her privilege, and there are other characters whose secrets are teased at. The biggest prejudice it managed to easily dismantle was that the UK of the 80's would be easily better that a Soviet satellite state - the role of poverty and society makes a huge difference. It isn't an apolgia for communism, but it also makes a point that you can't eat and drink a free press.

This is an excellent read; well written in a style that keeps you reading long past lights out. The story is interesting and makes one see Thatcher's England in a very different light to the normal portrayal. A love story it may be but it is not always a happy one. Highly recommended.

So much more than a love story

This is terrific, and highly recommended. Goldsworthy hangs an account of the relationship between East and West, a kind of mutual suspicion and mutual fascination and misunderstanding, which has been fostered between capitalist and communist countries. Rampant individualism (West) and rampant collectivism/State Control (East) contain each other as shadows.

Set in an unnamed ‘Soviet Satellite State’, in the early 80’s Milina, privileged daughter of a high ranking hero of the Communist Party, is already a rebellious, protected young woman, part of a nihilistic, individualist group of other young people, who can escape some of the punishments which would be due to them for their rebellion, because of their privilege. She models her style as ‘The Juliette Greco of the Steppes’ The same situation, of course, exists in the West. Power and wealth mean one law for the rich, another for the poor.

A tragedy rather changes Milena’s expectations, and her status trajectory is likely to be a little lower than she might otherwise expect. She does, however, due to her knowledge of English, get assigned as a translator on a cultural project, where a romantic left leaning, louche poet from England (from a privileged background) is invited as a guest, for a showcase series of lectures. Jason Collins, layabout, handsome poet, happily an eternal student on a grant, so that he never actually needs to work, but is subsidised by state and family, won a minor poetry prize, and because of this youthful/trendy bandwagon vaguely revolutionary spoutings – though talk rather than walk – is a bit of a hit in the Russian cultural event.

He is also smitten by Milena. As she, eventually, realises Cupid struck home for her too.

No spoilers, as we are given information, right at the start of the book, which begins in 1990, the year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the relationship between Jason and Milena did not have any kind of lasting happy ending.

This is a story not just of love’s betrayal and disillusionment, but also of political and ideological disillusionment – from both sides of the Iron Curtain, and also from those who had a sense that ‘before the revolution’ to be a revolutionary was to have some kind of integrity, which totalitarianism of the left, betrayed. However: the collapse of Communism, the embracing of consumerist individualism, as seen in late stage capitalism, is not such an embraceable ideal.either.

Goldsworthy had me hooked here, first page to last. Thoroughly recommended

Thank you to Net Galley, the publisher – and, of course, the author. This was an absolutely absorbing read

This was such a deeply engrossing read - fascinating for a broad range of reasons. I have always been captivated by cold war socio-cultural histories, and this novel provides such a singular insight into one woman's familial, political, personal and inner life in a 1980s Soviet satellite state. It also tells a brilliant love story - thrilling in such a classic sense; traversing global and ideological boundaries; bursting with drama, honesty, joy and pain. I've never read anything quite like this. Highly, highly recommended.

It took me a couple of chapters to get into this and I thought of giving it up, but then Milena and Jason's love story began to emerge and I was committed. This is a story of East meets West in Thatcher's Britain - England is a grim place for Milena who is used to luxury and privilege. However, she is in love and that is all that matters - until it doesn't. I then re-read the beginning which pulled it all together. This is a powerful story which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Milena Urbanska is the privileged daughter of a Government Minister, in a Soviet Satellite state, (a Red Princess), when she meets Jason, a penniless English poet. She laughs at his naivety, but they quickly fall in love. Jason has to return to London, and asks her to give up her privileged life and travel back with him, however, she’s not sure she can do that, much as she’d like to. As the months pass though, she convinces herself that she truly loves him and begins her plans to defect to Britain, where she hopes to use her skills as an interpreter.

When Milena arrives in London, she discovers that Jason’s rented flat is appalling, especially for one used to leading the life that Milena had. However, the fact that she’s with the one she loves, and no one is following her, and there are no hidden cameras in the home, that record her every move, gives her a real sense of freedom. She’ll soon discover that Jason likes his freedom too, and that will fracture the love and the life that she’s given up so much for.

‘Iron Curtain’ gave a wonderfully interesting insight into the lives of the ‘special’ ones behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980’s - socialist aristocrats, those holding important positions within the government, high ranking party members, whilst the proletariat faced food shortages, economic stagnation and large-scale political upheaval. It also gave a real sense of 1980’s Britain, and the huge contrast between the two worlds.

With a look at the culture, history and political scene in two completely different countries, combined with the love story of two very interesting protagonists, this was a fascinating and absorbing read, and I really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

This is an outstanding read. A young woman, the daughter of a senior government official in a communist satellite state, meets Jason, a poet visiting from England. They fall in love and in use course she finds a devious means of going to London and marrying him. The depiction of her home state is very informative and well written. The love theme which runs through the book is also beautifully explored. The book highlights the mental and physical barriers of two very different countries. The ending is sadly predictable but well worth waiting for. This book is remarkable in all kinds of ways. I strongly recommend it.

Mylina is a 23 year old daughter of the Vice president of a communist country behind iron curtain. She is an interpreter employed by the government. She is controlled by her father and mother as to where she goes and what she does. Everything is heard and seen. She does however manage to have a love affair with Misha , the son of another high ranking official until he is sent away to the army.
She is then seconded to be the interpreter to Jason, a British poet who has been invited as a prize winner to read his book of poems. A storm causes the airport to close ensuring Jason has to stay a few days longer. He seduces her then asks her to go with him to London. She refuses but spends a few months pining for him before deciding to trying and make her way to London. A long convoluted plan is hatched.
A great story.

In this novel, Vesna Goldsworthy takes me to two sharply contrasting worlds. The main character is Milena, daughter of a senior Communist, a Red Princess, so in her home country she has immense privilege but little freedom. This life takes up the first half of the novel, during which there are some dramatic episodes which kept me reading long after I'd intended to put the book down.

In the second half she defects to England to join poet Jason, thinking herself in love, but throughout I questioned if she truly was. She finds herself living in squalid impoverished circumstances, and still under scrutiny, just as she was at home, so life is anything but simple. There are many interesting observations on the contrasts between her two lives. For example, Jason's wealthy parent´s huge house is freezing, whilst poor people's apartment buildings in her native country benefit from state-provided heating. And she is surprised to find food in restaurants infinitely better than in people's homes, again the opposite of what she is used to.

Milena is an interesting character, quite solitary, full of uncertainty despite her bold defection. Jason, on the other hand, is charming but shallow with very little sense of responsibility. Their relationship veers between ecstatic and tense and throughout I felt that Milena deserved better!

The novel dips into culture, history and politics but is above all a love story and it is fascinating to follow its evolution through the author's fluid prose. I love books which have a clear beginning, middle and end, and this is just such a book. The ending is excellent with no loose ends left untied, but I would love to know what happens next. Once I'd finished reading, I went back to the prologue, which sums up the whole narrative beautifully!

Iron Curtain by Vespa Goldsworthy is a very interesting read. Set half in an unnamed Communist country and half in London, the novel tells the story of Milena who is the daughter of a high ranking party member. In one sense this is a love story but largely it sets out to illustrate the mind of a woman born into a strict regime and her naivety about life in the West.

This is a wonderful book with a very different style of narration. Milena is so 'buttoned up' because of the continuous monitoring of every move and conversation of her life in an unnamed minor communist country that the usual style of description and conversation is muted.

When Milena acts as interpreter for a poet who has come from England to receive a prize she falls in love and follows him home where she experiences an impoverished life in London in the 1980s. She has left a life of privilege as a 'Red Princess' i.e. the daughter of an influential politician to a life of squalor but she now has a degree of freedom.

I was completely absorbed in her story, she conveyed her puzzlement at differences in her old life and her new one is so many different ways. It's an unusual book in that events which have a huge impact on her are not dwelt on, there's not a great emphasis on feelings although the whole book is about love and revenge but that's because Goldsworthy has got completely inside Milena's head. I'm reading the book as a European and am used to more discussion of feelings but this was intense and fascinating and a real insight into the communist regime.

I absolutely loved it and wish my review could better explain the beauty of the writing and the intensity of the story.