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Jonathan David, 25, a graduate of the University of Northern England (Goole Campus), starts having dreams in which people visit him and tell him what they’re thinking. One night a beautiful but sad-looking girl visits him, telling him that she wants to meet him. He has no idea what to do until he sees her next to the Avrora – a boat-museum, as his combined honours degree taught him, that is moored permanently in St. Petersburg. The help of a drunken family friend helps him to get over to St. Petersburg in double quick time, and he sets about finding her with only his personal stereo and favourite music as company. Only in St. Petersburg, a city of about 4.5 million people, does Jonathan realise the size of the task ahead of him. He is helped in his early days by Vlad, or The Man, a well-dressed but shady character he meets in the lobby of an international hotel. The Man latches onto him, worrying and eventually frightening Jonathan. He seems to be following him… Olesya, meanwhile, is in love with Jonathan, having seen him on a British Council video of Blind Date, and spends most of her days doodling his name over her exercise books and dreaming of meeting him. The St. Petersburg of 1997 is a difficult place to be however, and she soon falls for Ruslan, a boy from her institute. Their relationship starts well but soon turns sour and she starts yearning for Jonathan again, especially after she accidentally discovers that he’s in the city. Jonathan works out several plans to help him meet Olesya, helped by his dreams, but each plan is seemingly thwarted, or else the victim of extremely bad luck. The final plan is curtailed aggressively by a mystery woman. Will he ever meet Olesya? The book is set in St. Petersburg of the 1990’s in a Russia that was led by Yeltsin, crawling with organised crime and riddled with uncertainty about what was round the corner. As well as the three main characters there are ‘New Russians’, the first people to get rich after the USSR’s collapse, lecherous ex-pats, who have failed in their lives at home, and British Council officials who drink tea at 5.00 every day, convinced they are not part of the chaos outside. Of course it all ends well, but how Jonathan and Olesya get there is not revealed until the final few pages. This book is aimed at any one who likes a good story – first and foremost, that is what it is all about. As well as this, however, it aims to catch something of a world that has recently departed us – a Russia that was lonely, crime-ridden and permanently on edge as it struggled through its first decade.
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