A Game Of Chance
Heads You Win, Jeffrey Archer’s first standalone novel after the sprawling seven-part Clifton Chronicles, is also an epic set in three countries spanning several decades.
In 1968, a Russian teenager, Alexander Karpenko, escapes with his mother Elena, from an oppressive KGB-led regime that killed his father in Leningrad. They have help from an uncle, to hide in a container, that would take them to the West. At the docks, they have to toss a coin to decide whether to go take the ship that will carry them to the UK or to the US.
Archer then follows both strands of the story, what their lives would be like if they went to one country or the other. Alexander is bright, his mother, a skilled chef, is hard-working—and in both the stories, there are similarities as well as differences, but ultimately, it says that people make their own destinies, depending on how they deal with the opportunities offered to them.
It is an inventive idea, and a fast-paced read, in which the two Alexanders and Elenas leave their awful past behind; they make the best of the immigrant experience with their ambition and enterprise. There is a surprise twist in the end, as the two strands criss-cross and merge in unexpected ways.
