The story Miller tells in Independence Square is a double helix of espionage and regret ... a tense, private tale set against the Orange Revolution but evoking the whole complicated enterprise of spycraft and nation-building.Short but complex ... He’s particularly acerbic when portraying Western journalists ... Miller spins the chaotic exuberance ... it’s still harrowing to see the way power radiates through nations and lives, raising some, crushing others.
At its best, Independence Square made me think of a 21st-century Graham Greene novel, an absorbing thriller informed by emotional intelligence and a deep understanding of geopolitics. There’s more than a trace of Greene in the book’s sharply drawn minor characters, its insights into the world of diplomacy and political deal-making, and the contrary pulls of duty and desire. Where the novel falls short of Greene is in its over-elaborate structure, which switches between tenses and points of view in a way that feels unnecessarily complex. My other quibble is that the final revelation about what torpedoed Simon’s career is delayed beyond the point at which a reader will find themselves guessing it ... Miller has a sharp eye for the pathos and absurdities of post-Soviet life ... The most compelling and memorable character is Kovrin, a carnivorous Ukrainian success story who seems to hold the key both to achieving a peaceful outcome in the square and to understanding what triggered the implosion of Simon’s career.
Miller has a fine eye for detail ... The novel’s motor is the reader’s hunger to find out how Davey’s life, once so gilded, could crash so badly. But we already know nothing ends well; not Davey’s career, not Olesya’s idealism, not the Orange revolution. After a while this triple whammy of negatives slows the story down. The ending wobbles as Davey seems set to follow a particular track; an event unfolds from which there is almost no point of return, then abruptly reverses ... [Davey's] story lingers long after the last page.
... it is a strength of this book that people do keep surprising us. Like any good novelist, Miller manages this by creating the illusion that everyone, even a minor character, has an inner life. The human heart cannot be reduced to an algorithm. The plot thickens nicely, spiced with piquant aphorisms to lend it that fatalistic Russian flavour ... It is perhaps a pity that the story’s climax is a long philosophical argument on the benefits of self-interest, rather than, say, a knife-fight or a foot chase. Or both. You sense at this stage the journalist in Miller muscling out the novelist, offering a mini-lecture on realpolitik to bring us up to date on the sick soul of Europe ... The detail of Miller’s scenario feels authoritative, and the quality of his prose is never in doubt. But a touch of something more vulgar and racy might have made Independence Square a book that grips as well as gripes.
AD Miller covered the Orange Revolution for the Economist magazine but we should not infer anything from Independence Square, because he tells us not to. His author’s note goes beyond the standard proviso about any resemblance between fictional characters and real people being coincidental ... Isn’t it odd to set a book in a real time and place and say at the outset that nothing you are being told is trustworthy? Is it because Ukraine is of no importance except as an exotic locale? Or just because a British author requires a foreign setting, his own country being insufficiently corrupt and violent to provide narrative excitement? ... If plots are what you read novels for, Independence Square might grab you. But this one is about politics, which the author had already signalled he has no interest in except as fizz for his novel. So you may prefer to wait for Independence Square to reach Netflix and get it all over with in 90 minutes ... What novels can do is reveal character. If you cannot work up interest in the plot, Independence Square provides this real consolation and shows that the author has the power to be a real writer ... But the author’s ambition lay with the political-intrigue genre, and the really human things become secondary to the plot ... So instead we get a lot of damn foreigners! Who speak the simplified portentous English uttered by Tonto in The Lone Ranger, Oriental sages in kung-fu movies and Yoda ... It’s not Miller’s fault. He knows about Ukraine and knows about people and could tell us a lot about both. But the publishing industry wants novels and plots and movie deals and shortlistings for the Booker and, as with AD Miller’s last book, sales exceeding a quarter of a million copies – so this is what we get.
