Narrator Georgy Daniilovich Jachmenev reviews his long life, from being a servant in the household of Czar Nicholas II to his post-retirement years in London.
Georgy is the son of a common laborer in the small rural town of Kashin when a political accident radically changes his life. Georgy’s friend Kolek Boryavich decides to act on a revolutionary impulse and tries to assassinate Grand Duke Nicholas, cousin of the czar, but in the shock of seeing his friend engage in this violent act, Georgy steps in front of the duke and takes the bullet instead. As a reward for his unintended heroism, Georgy is sent to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to work for Czar Nicholas. As an exuberant adolescent, Georgy becomes a caretaker to Alexei, the 11-year-old hemophiliac son of the czar and heir to the Romanov throne, but he almost loses his position when he takes his charge tree-climbing, for Alexei’s health must be preserved at all costs. Georgy’s stay at the Winter Palace puts him in contact with the young and winsome Anastasia, with whom he falls desperately in love, as well as with the unsavory Rasputin. Boyne moves us across decades of Georgy’s life through reminiscences ranging from the Bolshevik Revolution to his emigration to England (where he gets a job at the British Museum library) to translating messages during World War II (and meeting Churchill in the process) to the loss of his beloved only daughter, Arina, to his troubled but loving marriage to Zoya.
Boyne re-creates both Georgy’s personal life and the life of pre-Revolutionary Russia with astonishing density and power.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59051-598-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Categories: RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
A unique story about Appalachia and the healing power of the written word.
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One of Kentucky’s last living “Blue People” works as a traveling librarian in 1930s Appalachia.
Cussy Mary Carter is a 19-year-old from Troublesome Creek, Kentucky. She was born with a rare genetic condition, and her skin has always been tinged an allover deep blue. Cussy lives with her widowed father, a coal miner who relentlessly attempts to marry her off. Unfortunately, with blue skin and questionable genetics, Cussy is a tough sell. Cussy would rather keep her job as a pack-horse librarian than keep house for a husband anyway. As part of the new governmental program aimed at bringing reading material to isolated rural Kentuckians, Cussy rides a mule over treacherous terrain, delivering books and periodicals to people of limited means. Cussy’s patrons refer to her as “Bluet” or “Book Woman,” and she delights in bringing them books as well as messages, medicine, and advice. When a local pastor takes a nefarious interest in Cussy, claiming that God has sent him to rid society of her “blue demons,” efforts to defend herself leave Cussy at risk of arrest, or worse. The local doctor agrees to protect Cussy in exchange for her submission to medical testing. As Doc finds answers about Cussy’s condition, she begins to re-examine what it means to be a Blue and what life after a cure might look like. Although the novel gets off to a slow start, once Cussy begins traveling to the city for medical testing, the stakes get higher, as does the suspense of the story. Cussy's first-person narrative voice is engaging, laced with a thick Kentucky accent and colloquialisms of Depression-era Appalachia. Through the bigotry and discrimination Cussy suffers as a result of her skin color, the author artfully depicts the insidious behavior that can result when a society’s members feel threatened by things they don't understand. With a focus on the personal joy and broadened horizons that can result from access to reading material, this well-researched tale serves as a solid history lesson on 1930s Kentucky.
A unique story about Appalachia and the healing power of the written word.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7152-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION
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