by Debra Dean
The Madonnas of Leningrad Debra Dean Hardcover, 228 pages Published 2006 by William Morrow & Company ISBN: 0060825308 (ISBN13: 9780060825300) Debra Dean has written a beautiful, poignant novel that combines a historical viewpoint of a civilian life in Russia during World War II an...
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 sur...
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...
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...
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 abou...
This is a stunning novel. Marina is a woman in her 80’s about to attend her granddaughter’s wedding near her home in Seattle. Her mind is failing, however, and she is transported back to other times in her life, most particularly to the time when, as a young woman, she worked at the Hermitage. The j...
Debra Dean had a wonderful idea for a novel, but the novel itself never lived up to my expectations for it. The setting, a museum in Leningrad during wartime, was new to me, and all the details - the food rationing, the artwork, the human misery during that time - were fascinating. Sadly though, the...
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