Keeping It Easy

AST Publishing House, September 2011

Elena Kotova’s novel «Keeping It Easy» is about the free and achieving people of the modern global world — an English top-manager John, a Russian business-woman Anna and a German career politician Helmut — whose travels around the globe, philosophical debates, playing with each other and a difficult pursuit of true love stretch across the world — from New York and London to Berlin and Moscow. Life sends them the bill in Florence...

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The German Embassy was packed. Anna noticed quite a few curious glances from people around. She would have been getting them, even if she were here alone –dressed to kill. But besides that she also had this gorgeous man on her arm. They took champagne glasses, when a couple from Switzerland approached them.

After the usual greetings, Anna could not think of a topic to talk about and when the Swiss couple asked John why mobile phones don’t work in the tube, Anna almost laughed. But John answered the question seriously and said something witty, and the three of them got into a lively conversation. Shortly a gray hair American colleague of Anna joined them. John was the center of their circle to Anna’s delight.

Then yet another colleague came and introduced his girlfriend Maria. Thecircle was growing bigger, and John was its center.

Maria soon pulled Anna aside to have a girls’ talk, when they were back, the group was twice larger, was the biggest and the loudest at this reception. Others glanced at them with some envy. John kept holding the conversation, he emanated charm, and crumbles of his glory were dropping on Anna. This is John, he’s with Anna, somebody would say when a newcomer joined the group.

“You are extraordinary, not me,” she said when they left. “You have fantastic empathy for people.”

“I just can talk to anybody about anything. Don’t forget, I am a salesman.”

“It’s much more than that. You radiated genuine interest in people. They felt this immediately therefore they wanted to stay longer with you.”

“I have told you you’re a bloody lucky girl to get me.”

But I have not got you. And I never will, Anna thought, for the first time feeling pain.

Then was the night so full of that languishing tenderness. After the night came the morning, and John, also for the first time, was so sad, when leaving. Having closed the door behind him, Anna looked in a mirror and said to her reflection:

“You! Do you want your heart to be broken again?”

John also couldn’t stop thinking that it was getting ever more complicated and intense. Anna was no longer a toy for him, she had turned into a close and important person, and it scared him. They still, of course, indulged themselves in this game for two skilled partners, but it was no longer just fun, but a genuine fondness, which was not part of the plan. He sometimes even asked himself what was missing in his relationship with his wife, and these thoughts were clearly destructive.

John called Anna, when she went on business trips to Moscow, worried, if she was fine, if she had a good sleep. He felt the urge of caring about her, and he was often forgetting that it was Audrey, whom he ought to care about. He was waiting for the weekend in Edinburgh with no excitement, rather with disdain, and though he was always having good time at these usual gatherings, he felt a bit of guilt, that Anna was alone, while he was having fun, and maybe felt low. All small disagreements with Audrey triggered arguments and annoyance from both sides. He felt that the situation was getting out of his control, and that he must not let it go this way. He started to limit himself in calling and texting Anna, just not to escalate the intensity of their relationship.

The revelation that she actually wanted the whole John, not just a part of him, had upset Anna. It was impossible even to think like this, she knew well, that she must not, this was not a part of either his or her plan. It only could turn the present magic game, which brought so much joy into hard and unrewarding work, which was bound to kill the joy.

Anna was like swimming against the current which was getting stronger with every passing day. They both struggled with the current for the sake of protecting what they had created. Two adults were struggling to keep their growing love within the limits, which they had once established.

It had all started at this stupid German reception. People who talked to them had no doubts that they belonged to each other, were a couple. And they have become a couple although they never intended to…

Book reviews

Reader comments

17.10.2011. «Оgonyok» Magazine: «A Bearable Lightness of Being», №41 (5200)

....even though Danton taught us that you can’t carry away your country on the soles of your shoes, we now see that you can bring globalization back to your country on those self-same soles. The characters in «Keeping It Easy» prove that by moving ceaselessly through relationships and cities, blithely confident that the success they have achieved in their careers will be easy to replicate in their personal lives. This novel seems to be Kotova’s initial calling-card, given that her personal experience of globalization could provide material for many more novels to come.

07.11.2011. «Russian Reporter»: Books of the week

...for those who love “novels-with-a-passkey: Kotova, ex-director for Russia at the EBRD describes her colleagues and partners in her book....

Yury Polyakov, prominent Russian writer

High society novels and stories portraying life of the upper classes were fashionable reading in XIX- century Russia. This genre had its own classics, e.g. Earl Sollogoub. In the XX century, after the revolution, high society literature had obviously disappeared, its echoes can be traced only in the works of the emigrants. Today «high society» prose reappears, and Elena Kotova’s book «Keeping It Easy!» («Legko!») is the proof. The novel is written vividly, in bright and clear language, with deep knowledge of the subject matter. Those interested to know how the present high society Russians live, how they travel, how they «burn» serious money and burn with true love, those will read this piece with interest. Those suffering from attacks of social envy may do better to refrain

Samvel Ovetisyan, a widely known in narrow circles connoiseur of the fine and the beauty

It looks like Elena has set a new theme in contemporary literature – about global Russians, although I hate this word. More precisely – about mobile Russians who have turned in the world citizens, went beyond the limits of their native culture and yet remain its part

Book reviews

17.10.2011. «Оgonyok» Magazine: «A Bearable Lightness of Being», №41 (5200)

Reader comments

Yury Polyakov, prominent Russian writer

Samvel Ovetisyan, a widely known in narrow circles connoiseur of the fine and the beauty

Newton’s Third Apple

AST Publishing house, April 2012

The novel «Newton’s Third Apple» is about an elite English criminal lawyer at the top of his game, Matthew Darcy, who shuffles cases, people and relationships on the cutting edge. Once he meets Russian Barbara, a client with a complicated story, he enters a whole new world, infused with international conspiracies, intrigue and romance. Faced with the behind-the-scene conspiracy of Western secret services against Russia, is he in too deep?

Where does the money come from, Karl?

Alpina Publisher, 2018

Having created six fiction books, Elena Kotova changes her writing genre. Non-fiction, pop-science about economics and economic history. One of those rare books that provides life changing knowledge.

Where does the money come from? How is social wealth created? Does Russia have its own "special path"? The author answers these questions analyzing the most significant theories and the largest reforms of the 20th century, constantly comparing Western countries and Russia.

Elena Kotova begins her story about the path traversed by the West and Russia in the XX century, about the development of world economic laws analyzing the doctrine by Karl Marx. The most paradoxical statement of the author is: the iconic reformers of the 20th century - Stolypin, Witte, Roosevelt, the inventor of the "German miracle" Ludwig Erhard, the grocer’s daughter Thatcher - cleared the way for the laws discovered by Marx. Great theorists Keynes, Friedman, Samuelson, declaring their "anti-Marxism", used these laws to the fullest, believing that the latter had opened up to the world by themselves. And Marx became famous as the author of only one idea - the "dictatorship of the proletariat", which was taken up by the bloody dictators and demagogues of the 20th century. Meanwhile, by the middle of the 20th century, the leading countries had overcome both the "exploitation" and "oppression" that so resented Karl. And what's left? The laws remained - natural, which cannot be canceled. Elena Kotova explains the most complex economic matters in a simple and lively language, seasoned with a fair amount of humor.

The story of the theories and reforms of advanced countries now and then returns to Russia. The author explains the reasons for its backwardness, defects in the tax system, corruption, failure of “diversification and modernization”, fear of foreign investors. Nevertheless, - Kotova believes, - Russia is developing, albeit slowly and painfully, there are many examples of this in the book. It is precisely the “defect of thinking” that prevents one from moving faster. Aggressive arguments of a pair of millions of "intellectual and educated" do not lead to an agreement about where to move. And the rest of the people, who are not at all stupid and certainly not to blame for the fact that their mind and way of life have been crippled for centuries, have been discouraged to think what kind of country they’d like to have.

Elena Kotova declares: “Money is created either by the free labor of a free person, and then people themselves turn their state into a developed country. Or - by the labor of a person who gave up his freedom to the state for the sake of the illusion of justice and equality. Then the money is an order of magnitude less, and it goes not to people, but to the state. At the same time, the state can make atomic bombs and cruise missiles, but most people will still only survive, and the country will remain backward".

“There will be no money and no development in the country as long as traditional Russia lives with its myths of the past. There is no other way for it but to follow the way of the developed countries of the Atlantic".

"A person works either for profit or under threat of punishment".

Women’s Corporation

AST Publishing House, November 2012

The new novel intertwines the shocking interpretation of biblical stories, intrigues of the big business and realistic life stories of the heroes. The plot is scandalous and eccentric: creation of a super-corporation using a tabooed resource, which people never dared to write about or even to speak openly.