It's 1941 and Marina is a guide at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad (St Petersburg). The museum staff are frantically packing up all the museum's treasures and sending them away to keep them out of the hands of the advancing Germans. Throughout the siege of Leningrad, as the city freezes and starves, Marina and her family live huddled in the cellars of the Hermitage. If you've enjoyed books like Sarah's Key and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, you'll probably also enjoy this book which has a similar structure and is written in a similar style. It alternates between Marina's life in WW2 Leningrad and her life as a grandmother with Alzheimer's in present day Seattle. In her younger life, it is her imagination and memories that give her hope and keep her sane, but in her later life they are symptoms of the dementia that is taking over her brain.What I liked about this book was the way that it captured life in Leningrad at this time and the loving way that so many of the paintings are described. I enjoyed looking them up online and studying them in conjunction with Marina's descriptions. I was interested to read in the afterword that the author had never visited Russia when she wrote the book, but that she was relieved to find how accurately she had conveyed it when she did eventually visit. Many of the events in the book are based on real life events.So I enjoyed the book but I also feel a bit lukewarm about it. Ultimately the story isn't meaty enough. The romance could have been better developed, or her relationship with her children. It reads like a love letter to the Hermitage more than a compelling story in its own right.Another book that vividly brings the horrors of the siege to life is the wonderful City of Thieves.
I really didn't read this book. I was having some visual problems which made it impossible for me to read for a time. The Madonnas of Leningrad was our Book club choice for the month of January and it was not available in audio. I asked my sister Jane, who was staying with me for the holidays if she would read it for me and tell me about it. She loves to read and I thought she would enjoy it. A beautiful thing happened. My sister told me the story in such detail and with such emotion that the characters became real to me. She loved the book and so did I. During her story telling sessions we shed tears as she walked me through the scenes of Leningrad and the Hermitage Museum during the Nazi siege. Together we were so touched by the strength of the women in the story.My sister has gone through some difficult times recently and in her search for healing has been considering ways that she can be of service to her community in Alabama. As she finished telling the book to me by reading the last few pages aloud I was so moved. I said to her as she closed the book. "Jane, I think you have found your calling." She tilted her head and gave me a questioning look. "Doing what you've done for me, for the blind or the elderly", I said. Jane's eyes filled with tears as she said, "You're right, I have."The characters of this incredible story will stay with me and influence how I see and remember the beauty around me. My sisters charitable act of reading and telling this heroic saga will remain in my "memory palace" forever as well.
"This way, please. We are standing in the Spanish Skylight Hall. The three skylight halls were designed to display the largest canvasses in the collection. Look up. The huge vault and frieze are like a wedding cake, with molded and gilt arabesques."The debut novel by Debra Dean was a pleasant surprise for me. It was a story about a young Russian woman who survives the siege of Stalingrad during World War II. It is also a story about the evacuation of the Hermitage Museum and one woman's mission to memorize all the artwork now gone. And lastly, it is a tale of a mind diminishing from the disease of old age.The writing was eloquent. The story was vivid and captured my interest. I look forward to reading more novels by this author in the future.
—Suzanne
This work of historical fiction hangs in my memory like a painting. Leningrad (St. Petersburg)is under seige by the Nazis and while many fled, several caretakers of the Hermitage take up residence in the basement. Their lives as tour guides transformed the paintings into life companions. Removing them from the walls, they stored these grand works of art in the deep recesses of the Hermitage's underground crypts. The women who cared for these paintings walked the halls and continued the tours without patrons and paintings, just to keep their spirits alive: theirs and the paintings'. At night some would sit on the rooftops and watch the flashes of bombs and fires - waiting for their turn to come. It's a bit like Bradury's "Fahrenheit 451" where individuals memorize and recite books that were burned. It's a lovely tribute to the power of art.
—Robert Strandquist
Such a beautiful book! It's hard to believe that this is the author's first. The characters are lovingly drawn, and the descriptions are so real that it is easy to imagine the paintings and the museum as she describes them. The story is spiritually satisfying as well. The bookends of Marina's life are so unbearably heartbreaking, but there are moments of salvation. Although Marina claims to have no faith, her obvious love of art - in particular the religious art with its Madonnas - becomes her faith. In the end, when giving a tour of the empty museum, she is able to describe each painting so well that others are able to see what is not even there. On the flip side of the story, viewing the world through the eyes of Marina's dementia, we can see how loving a life she was able to achieve, despite her earlier hardships and privations. Lovely, lovely.
—Heidi
