Lying Together - Jennifer Beth Cohen
Story synopsis:
In January 1998, while the rest of her newsroom is chasing the Monica Lewinsky story, television journalist Jennifer Cohen gets a lead that takes her out of covering that scandal and deep into another one—the trafficking of sex slaves from the former Soviet Union into the United States. Knowing that the college crush she never quite forgot works for a St. Petersburg newspaper, she hires him to help out. Much to their surprise, they fall madly in love over thousands of miles of telephone line. Cohen finds herself engaged to marry a man she barely knows and on a plane to Russia. No one could have predicted the total collapse that followed—of the Russian economy, of her fiancé's sobriety, of Cohen's mental health and physical safety, and of her professional aspirations.
Cohen's vivid descriptions of her life in anything-goes Moscow—bribing government officials, meeting pimps in back alleys for interviews—are a colorful counterpart to the despair and loneliness that replaces the love between Cohen and her fiancé. Their battles with prescription drugs, alcoholic rages, and physical abuse are recounted, offering a poignant and unvarnished look at a complicated relationship in a complicated land.
Commentary:
I found this book in the bargain section of an indie bookstore in San Francisco. Since I am having my own "Russian affair" of sorts, I just thought it would be a quick, painless read on the flight back home.
But instead, I found a book that touched many nerves and personal insecurities. What was supposed to be a 2-hour read stretched out to over a week because I kept stopping, upset about specific events that the author and her fiance had to go through.
Jennifer Cohen was a young & ambitious producer when she decided to leave NY in pursuit of her Russian sex slave story. It was risky for her in many aspects -- professionally and personally -- to just up and move to a country so vastly different from the one that she's known all her life. Granted that she's lived there as a college student, but this time around, her situation was made further complicated because she was going to be living with Kevin, the boy that she loved and lost in college.
One Amazon review of this book likened it to a Jerry Springer show; it had sex, drugs, violence, broken engagements, scandals, affairs, and the seedy Moscow underground as the backdrop. Granted, it's easy to see this book as a sociological snapshot of that particular time period in Russian history, the point when things were supposed to get better, but for some reason, they didn't. What affected me deeply was Cohen's own personal hell, partially caused by her own romanticism that Russia will love her almost as much as she loved it and partially caused by her faith that the man that she loved will be the first step to a perfect life. As you can tell from my cynicism, things didn't end up as she had envisioned them... far from it.
Despite the personal hardships that she possibly had to relive in writing this memoir, Cohen's voice rings strong and confident. She is not afraid to show herself as weak and (maybe) as vilified in what happened in Russia. The book doesn't pull punches, it's not afraid to show the truth.
In January 1998, while the rest of her newsroom is chasing the Monica Lewinsky story, television journalist Jennifer Cohen gets a lead that takes her out of covering that scandal and deep into another one—the trafficking of sex slaves from the former Soviet Union into the United States. Knowing that the college crush she never quite forgot works for a St. Petersburg newspaper, she hires him to help out. Much to their surprise, they fall madly in love over thousands of miles of telephone line. Cohen finds herself engaged to marry a man she barely knows and on a plane to Russia. No one could have predicted the total collapse that followed—of the Russian economy, of her fiancé's sobriety, of Cohen's mental health and physical safety, and of her professional aspirations.
Cohen's vivid descriptions of her life in anything-goes Moscow—bribing government officials, meeting pimps in back alleys for interviews—are a colorful counterpart to the despair and loneliness that replaces the love between Cohen and her fiancé. Their battles with prescription drugs, alcoholic rages, and physical abuse are recounted, offering a poignant and unvarnished look at a complicated relationship in a complicated land.
Commentary:
I found this book in the bargain section of an indie bookstore in San Francisco. Since I am having my own "Russian affair" of sorts, I just thought it would be a quick, painless read on the flight back home.
But instead, I found a book that touched many nerves and personal insecurities. What was supposed to be a 2-hour read stretched out to over a week because I kept stopping, upset about specific events that the author and her fiance had to go through.
Jennifer Cohen was a young & ambitious producer when she decided to leave NY in pursuit of her Russian sex slave story. It was risky for her in many aspects -- professionally and personally -- to just up and move to a country so vastly different from the one that she's known all her life. Granted that she's lived there as a college student, but this time around, her situation was made further complicated because she was going to be living with Kevin, the boy that she loved and lost in college.
One Amazon review of this book likened it to a Jerry Springer show; it had sex, drugs, violence, broken engagements, scandals, affairs, and the seedy Moscow underground as the backdrop. Granted, it's easy to see this book as a sociological snapshot of that particular time period in Russian history, the point when things were supposed to get better, but for some reason, they didn't. What affected me deeply was Cohen's own personal hell, partially caused by her own romanticism that Russia will love her almost as much as she loved it and partially caused by her faith that the man that she loved will be the first step to a perfect life. As you can tell from my cynicism, things didn't end up as she had envisioned them... far from it.
Despite the personal hardships that she possibly had to relive in writing this memoir, Cohen's voice rings strong and confident. She is not afraid to show herself as weak and (maybe) as vilified in what happened in Russia. The book doesn't pull punches, it's not afraid to show the truth.
