A Book A Week: Snowdrops by A. D. Miller

Snowdrops by A. D. Miller, Doubleday, 2011 (library copy)

“Snowdrop. 1. An early-flowering

bulbous plant, having a white

pendant flower. 2. Moscow slang.

A corpse that lies buried or

hidden in the winter snows,

emerging only in the thaw.”

When you turn the first page from that epigraph, you’ll get a glimpse of a snowdrop (definition 2.), but just a glimpse. Much of the early book feels like it could become a noir crime story. At any moment, the gruesome or violent bubbles just below the surface of the increasing tension. 

But this is not a detective novel nor thriller. The mystery that unfolds is the puzzle of denial that Nick Platt builds around himself. Nick, writing from the safety of Britain and his upcoming wedding, tells us—or rather his fiance, for the book is a written confession to an unnamed person he is hoping will still want to marry him after reading it—about the last winter of his four-and-a-half years as a lawyer in Russia. About the secrets that damaged his career and haunt his thinking. Nick allowed himself to be lured into two bad situations, both of them involving fraud, both of them hiding violence. Nick doesn’t experience the violence himself. The story is not graphic except for that one glimpse of a corpse discovered in the melting snow. Nick’s actions and inactions and intentional thick-headedness enable violence to happen. In truth, the crime would have happened with someone else if not with Nick—his seductresses indicate as much when it’s all too late to change. They call him their Kolya, and avert their eyes when he seeks explanation. 

The colder the Russian winter gets, the colder the narrative feels, the more disconnected Nick becomes from a sense of responsibility and legality. Nick is what happens when we willfully look the other way, how we become culpable for our own ignorance. By the end, I was angry at Nick—not as angry as I imagine his fiance might be—but angry at his pathetic excuses and his inability to relinquish his desire for the trappings of corruption. Nick’s desire is perhaps the more gruesome snowdrop, eclipsing that thawing and decaying glimpse. For the found body merely underscores Nick’s collusion in fraud.

In spite of my anger, the book kept me hooked to the end. A frosty, atmospheric morality tale.