The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean, Publisher: Harper Perennial; X edition (February 20, 2007), ISBN-10: 0060825316, Paperback: 231 pages
Rating: 4.5 of 5 STARS
Source: Recommended by a friend
I was at our church book club months ago and this very sweet elderly lady who sometimes sits in on our meetings took me aside and said, "Have you read The Madonnas of Leningrad?" She told me how wonderful it was but not a single bit of information about the plot. Just a few minutes earlier she had shared with the group during our discussion of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society about her own World War II experiences, about how she had lived in Manhattan and had volunteered to be a night sky watch. She talked about how hard it was to stay awake, about how none of the girls ever saw anything to raise the alarm, and about walking home after her shift on eerily deserted streets to her apartment at 3am. I immediately tucked her recommendation away as one that I had to try.
I'm finally getting around to reading it and have not been disappointed. Thanks, Miss Lucy, for the recommendation! And for sharing your own story.
I liked this book. Then I loved it when I read the P.S. at the back of the book, learning that Debra Dean had been inspired to write the story from watching a PBS series on the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and from experiences with her own grandmother diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I also loved that she was brave enough to write this novel that is so tied to the people, the art, and the architecture of the Hermitage without ever stepping foot in Russia. In the P.S. Dean tells of her and her husband's experience of finally visiting the museum well after her novel was written and sold. I also loved this description of her writing schedule:
So we (her husband is a poet) set up shop in the windowless laundry room that we shared with the neighbors, our desk wedged between the garbage cans and the hot water furnace - not so different from the cellars of the Hermitage during the war perhaps, but decidedly safer and warmer with the dryer humming. He worked in the mornings and I took the afternoons. The novel and written slowly and without expectations. Eat breakfast, write, go for a long walk, write another page or two, make dinner, watch a movie. Repeat the next day.
So - the story? It's about Marina, an elderly Russian woman now living in the United States who is slowly losing her memories to the onslaught of Alzheimer's. Marina slips back and forth from the confusing present time to the days she spent in the Hermitage during the siege of Leningrad by the Germans in 1941. Marina worked at the museum as a tour guide and the novel is just brimming with description after description of the artwork that was removed from the museum by the Hermitage staff for safekeeping during the war - especially the Madonnas. Marina builds a "memory palace" in her mind during the siege of the artwork that once hung in the now empty frames to make sure the beauty isn't lost even if the paintings are destroyed. This memory palace comes back in full force as her disease advances.
Brilliant book. I marked tons and tons of pages. And I'm dying to visit the Hermitage, now! They say the Hermitage is such an amazing museum, chocked full of treasures, that if you were to just take one minute looking at each object, it would take FIVE YEARS to see everything. Wow.
Ok - just one passage:
"And here is The Assumption of Mary Magdalene into Heaven. She is flying, her startled eyes lifted up, her arms spread wide, her cloak and red sash trailing behind her. Supporting the Magdalene are a pair of full-grown angels and a flock of tiny putti, fat little cherubs hefting her on their backs and shoulders as though she were a heavy sack of grain. Domenihino has also painted strange disembodied cherubs in the sky, infant heads propped on flapping wings."
Of course, that description makes you want to actually see The Assumption:
Rating: 4.5 of 5 STARS
Source: Recommended by a friend
I was at our church book club months ago and this very sweet elderly lady who sometimes sits in on our meetings took me aside and said, "Have you read The Madonnas of Leningrad?" She told me how wonderful it was but not a single bit of information about the plot. Just a few minutes earlier she had shared with the group during our discussion of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society about her own World War II experiences, about how she had lived in Manhattan and had volunteered to be a night sky watch. She talked about how hard it was to stay awake, about how none of the girls ever saw anything to raise the alarm, and about walking home after her shift on eerily deserted streets to her apartment at 3am. I immediately tucked her recommendation away as one that I had to try.
I'm finally getting around to reading it and have not been disappointed. Thanks, Miss Lucy, for the recommendation! And for sharing your own story.
I liked this book. Then I loved it when I read the P.S. at the back of the book, learning that Debra Dean had been inspired to write the story from watching a PBS series on the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and from experiences with her own grandmother diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I also loved that she was brave enough to write this novel that is so tied to the people, the art, and the architecture of the Hermitage without ever stepping foot in Russia. In the P.S. Dean tells of her and her husband's experience of finally visiting the museum well after her novel was written and sold. I also loved this description of her writing schedule:
So we (her husband is a poet) set up shop in the windowless laundry room that we shared with the neighbors, our desk wedged between the garbage cans and the hot water furnace - not so different from the cellars of the Hermitage during the war perhaps, but decidedly safer and warmer with the dryer humming. He worked in the mornings and I took the afternoons. The novel and written slowly and without expectations. Eat breakfast, write, go for a long walk, write another page or two, make dinner, watch a movie. Repeat the next day.
So - the story? It's about Marina, an elderly Russian woman now living in the United States who is slowly losing her memories to the onslaught of Alzheimer's. Marina slips back and forth from the confusing present time to the days she spent in the Hermitage during the siege of Leningrad by the Germans in 1941. Marina worked at the museum as a tour guide and the novel is just brimming with description after description of the artwork that was removed from the museum by the Hermitage staff for safekeeping during the war - especially the Madonnas. Marina builds a "memory palace" in her mind during the siege of the artwork that once hung in the now empty frames to make sure the beauty isn't lost even if the paintings are destroyed. This memory palace comes back in full force as her disease advances.
Brilliant book. I marked tons and tons of pages. And I'm dying to visit the Hermitage, now! They say the Hermitage is such an amazing museum, chocked full of treasures, that if you were to just take one minute looking at each object, it would take FIVE YEARS to see everything. Wow.
Ok - just one passage:
"And here is The Assumption of Mary Magdalene into Heaven. She is flying, her startled eyes lifted up, her arms spread wide, her cloak and red sash trailing behind her. Supporting the Magdalene are a pair of full-grown angels and a flock of tiny putti, fat little cherubs hefting her on their backs and shoulders as though she were a heavy sack of grain. Domenihino has also painted strange disembodied cherubs in the sky, infant heads propped on flapping wings."
Of course, that description makes you want to actually see The Assumption:
(Image from the Hermitage website)
There's so much more to the story... I highly recommend this one!
Happy reading!
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1 comment:
Thanks for a provocative review--I will put this one on my list for sure. I found your post on The Saturday Review of Books.
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