The Madonnas of Leningrad

Debra Dean

Debra Dean has written a beautiful, poignant novel that combines a historical viewpoint of a civilian life in Russia during World War II and the effects of dementia on an elderly Russian Immigrant and her family. I loved this story. I teared up at times when Marina dealt with the difficulties of daily life in war torn Leningrad. I did not like Marina's son, but I think that is because I don't think that Marina's children were as developed as Marina's character. Overall, though, Dean wrote an incredible story that is faithful to the struggles of war and the concerns and stress that dementia and Alzheimers has on both the individual and the family

Alzheimer's is a devastating illness. Newer memories disappear, leaving only older and older memories. Marina Buriakova is slipping deeper into its grip as her husband takes her to their granddaughter's wedding. Memories that Marina has suppressed for sixty or more years are coming closer to the surface. Because she never told anyone that she was a survivor of the 872 day Siege of Leningrad, her comments serve only to make people worry even more about her state of mind. Debra Dean's hypnotic novella, The Madonnas of Leningrad, is a bittersweet meditation on the fickle nature of memory...

 

Read the rest of my review at Summer Reading Project.

The novel is set half in 1941, at the time of the Nazi siege aroung Leningrad, and half in the present. In 1941, Marina was ayoung tourist guide working for the Ermitage museum, accompanying the tourists from room to room. Her love for art and beauty is second only for her love for Dimitrij, a young soldier protecting the city.

In the present, Marina and Dimitrij are an old married couple attending the wedding of their granddaughter. Marina has been suffering from Alzheimer's, and half of the time she can't remember what happens to her, but she can still clearly picture in her mind the war in Leningrad and the beautiful works of art of the museum.

This is a moving book about a woman and her love for art. I liked it very much.

This was a half-book. A story of an elderly woman who is suffering from Alzheimer's with her husband and children coping the best that they can. I appreciate the author's idea of flashbacks and retained memories, but I felt like I was never in the loop with what was happening. For some of the book I couldn't tell if it was Marina's actual memories or just a telling of her past. Most of the individuals were not fully developed or just unlikable in my opinion.

Being at the bombing of Leningrad and caring for the paintings at the Hermitage Museum, is where Marina's story was at its best. However, many questions are opened up and then never fully developed.

There is a lot of talk about individual paintings in the Museum and their importance to history but then it is never tied back to the story of Marina's escape from Russia, her marriage and her eventual bout with Alzheimer's. Why did she memorize the paintings, did it help bring them back after the war, how did she just happen upon her future husband at a prison camp, what happened to her uncle's children, etc. etc.

Missing too much to enjoy.

The main character is a Russian woman in her 80’s, now living in America. She is suffering with Alzheimer”s disease and the consequent loss of her “self”.
As Marina’s mind moves back and forth from the present to the ever more present past, due to the progressive nature of the disease, we learn about her life as a young woman in love, working for the Hermitage Museum, during the siege of Leningrad, complete with the awful conditions that existed as the city was surrounded by the German soldiers. We live through the years of starvation and deprivation as she lives in the cellar of the museum with more than two thousand employees, with little to eat, no heat or electricity and very little news of what is going on beyond the boundary of the museum.
One of the other employees convinces her that she should build a “memory palace” in her mind and they walk, endlessly, through the museum, room after room, memorizing the names and descriptions of paintings and other works of art that had been housed there.
We move back and forth in time with her and as she remembers the art work, we are treated to a view of the Hermitage Museum as she sees it in her mind, almost as if we are viewing the paintings with her. They come alive for us as we walk the halls with her.