Just finished this book last night before bed, might explain the weird images that were swimming through my head at night. I don’t normally get a chance to write about the books I finish but since it’s winter break, I really wanted to make sure I shared some thoughts via blogging.

First and foremost, I really enjoyed the book. Kira, the lead character, is not exactly a lovable character but is more like a relatable character that readers can use as eyes and ears more than a source of emotional connection. I found that this aspect was due to the environment - a story about a love triangle in the USSR can only be so emotional. Life in their world is too hard and oppressed to really get a true “American” love story out of it, but this was what Rand was going for and therefore I found it successful.

I do have some unsatisfied feelings about Kira’s relationship with Andrei. It is made clear her reasons for seeing him for over a year and these reasons I can understand and comprehend, but I still don’t know if I’m fully clear on why she was attracted to him in the first place. She was able to see he was different than the other Party members and that he carried himself with an air that she found inviting, but still, there is something about their relationship that is amiss to my eyes.

I wonder about Leo as well. When they first meet Leo tells Kira “I want to drink. I want a woman like you. I want to go down, as far down as you can drag me” as he shortly mistook her for a prostitute. In the end of the novel Leo as been dragged down intentionally, despite the love and morals him and Kira shared for a period of time. I simply wonder if he was destined to be “lost to the world” since the beginning and if Kira was only a momentary fix and not the remedy for Leo’s already established subconscious mentality.

Ayn Rand is good at the ‘love story’ and good at displaying these stories in a more complicated light, which is what I feel makes them more meaningful than your average soap-opera novella. Of course at the forefront of all of this is her philosophy and opinions on life which is something I’ll let you find out for yourself. Don’t get discouraged by the beginning of the book - it’s a slow start, indication that this is indeed her first novel. But once the story gets rolling, the imagery and the character interactions are enough to keep you reading til the end.