The Winter Station - Jody Shields

This was another book that struck my eye while at the bookstore, but it wasn't one that intrigued me quite enough to shell out the jacket price for it.  Luckily, that is what the public library is for.

This is a book about a plague--pneumonic plague, particularly, one that ravaged the city of Harbin (known as Kharbin the book, due to its Russian perspective) in the early twentieth century.  It's a city in China but one that is essentially ruled by Russia, but I have some reservations about this...more on that later.  The main character is "the Baron," the medical examiner for the city, who I personally could not stand.  Though he's supposed to be working with a team of doctors, all of them trying to prevent the plague from spreading, he has a much "holier than thou" perspective, pretending he knows better than everyone else involved even though no one seems to know what they're doing, himself included.

This was not a book I ended up liking very much.  The Baron was a huge turn-off to me.  While Shields presents him as having more respect for the Chinese residents of the city than anyone else, his bend towards Chinese medicine doesn't actually benefit anyone and might actually make things worse.  He's just as closed off to new opinions as his peers, though he's fine with his close-mindedness because of course he is right.  (He's not.)  And then, when things get mad, instead of buckling down and forging onward, he essentially throws a fit, leaves the main the hospital, and starts wandering the streets looking for random people to help.  He becomes increasingly paranoid about being infected with the plague himself, which, while understandable, didn't really make him any more likable because reading about his obsession over and over again didn't contribute at all to the story.

This is also a book that doesn't have a climax or conclusion, but rather instead just peters out as the Baron runs around with ever decreasing agency and purpose.  It has no sense of closure.  It's very strange.  There's a quote on the cover that this a book about Russia (IT'S NOT RUSSIA IT'S CHINA, STOP COLONIALISM) that reads as if it were written by a Russian; I don't have a huge base in Russian literature, but I would agree with that assessment...however, in this particular case, I don't think this is a huge boon to the story.  Instead, it reads as cold, something that suits the setting and story, but which doesn't really make for an emotional or riveting read.  There's a lot of drinking vodka and practicing calligraphy and mourning the fate of society, or whatever, and not a lot of stuff actually taking place, not even on a character-development front.  It is a book that is not driven by plot nor character, and instead drifts along without purpose.

And finally, let's address historical accuracy.  Shields based her narrative off a real person who wrote a memoir, which was published in German.  I don't have access to this memoir.  However, wanting to know more about this plague, I started Googling, and...well, it seems like the Baron is an awful choice for hero because he was pretty much, uhm, wrong, and all of the people made out to be villain in this were actually more heroes in the actual course of events.  Even if their initiatives weren't always successful, they were at least trying, unlike the Baron, who sneers at everyone else but doesn't ultimately do anything of his own to end the plague.

Ultimately, this was a disappointing book, one that had a vastly colonialist bend, and was not an interesting read at all.  I'm kind of sorry I sunk so much time into this, hoping it would get better when it never did.

2 stars out of 5--mostly for an interesting setting and time period and not for the characters or the story itself.