Four stars. I thought this book was excellent and I learnt so much from it. I am giving it just four stars maybe unfairly. The reason is that it just jumped about a fair bit. I read The Unwomanly Face of War by the same author recently and was completely bowled over by it. I thought it was spectacular....I just found Chernobyl Prayer less well executed. It follows the same monologue structure but the monologues didn’t seem to have as much organisation. I went from a very Chernobyl related narrative to one about folk history then back to Chernobyl. Commentary about the coverup and downplaying by the establishment was really interesting but just as I got interested in it the drift changed, and then changed back again.
I think that had I not read The Unwomanly Face of War so recently I would have given this a higher score...Undoubtedly this book is extremely important and is the way history should always be written...from the perspective of ordinary people, not the powerful.
I am looking forward to reading Secondhand Time by Alexievich because I hope that aspects in this book should be elaborated on in that too