[Ayn Rand] has written a novel ["We the Living"] to make it finally plain that the Soviet state, as far as she has been able to discover, is not only a farce on the face of it but is likewise fostering a race of "crippled, creeping, crawling, broken monstrosities." Miss Rand is determined that her readers shall have nothing less than the whole truth. Kira Argounova, her protagonist, speaks for her on at least one occasion: "For one insane second Kira wondered if she could tear through the crowd, rush up to that woman [a visiting English trade-union delegate] and yell to her, to England's workers, to the world, the truth that they were seeking." We are left to assume that "We the Living" is the answer. (p. 523)
From the very outset [Kira's] attitude toward the experiment in which she shares is one of contempt and ridicule; she "loathes their ideals but admires their methods"—which would conceivably make her a mystic. Not many chapters on, she offers herself to one Leo Kovalensky, a total stranger, a few moments after first laying eyes on him, because she "liked his face"; which, one is left to ponder, might in some way account for her "individualism." The remainder of the novel shuttles about aimlessly from bedroom to rostrum, with Kira playing the role of a patient Griselda to Leo's Don Juan. Much love-making occurs in the interim, and considerable speech-making, and one is bound to confess that the former is managed to vastly greater effect. Leo in due course of time is revealed in his true colors as a counter-revolutionary, a cad, and a gigolo; Kira dies in a snowdrift while attempting to cross the border; and, presumably, the myth of a communist state explodes to the sound of low, mocking laughter.
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