Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: March 1, 2022
Source: ARC E-copy via Netgalley
Summary:
In post–World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion and loss, perseverance and ambition.
In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is her own dream of becoming an actress. When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei.
Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality. Kolya’s revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha’s ambitions converge with Andrei’s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.
My thoughts:
I am on a roll with reading historical fiction set in Russia and I am just loving it! Thanks to being a Patreon member for the Thoughts from a Page Podcast, I was given the opportunity to be an early reader for Elena Gorokhova’s upcoming book and then invited to a zoom chat with her. It was such a great experience and I look forward to be able to do this with a few more books in the future with Cindy and her Patreon group.
I admit, I don’t know much about Russian history, so I found this book to be incredibly interesting. I appreciated that it was set post-WWII during the time of the Iron Curtain and we see how that is affecting the lives of those living there. Told through the eyes of Sasha, with the backdrop of the theater, I found myself completely engaged in this story, a story that is very much based on the author’s family history.
I learned so much about Russian life, culture and even politics from this story, and the zoom chat with the author just enhanced my experience. The book itself really opened my eyes to the way that life was for the people living in Russia at this time and I really fell in love with Sasha who was so determined to live out her dream of becoming an actress at all costs. I loved how the author uses the uncle’s diary entries from his time in the war to bring that aspect to life.
While this story gives us a glimpse into the life of Russia during this time, it is ultimately a story of love and sacrifice. It beautifully delves into the relationship between mothers and daughters and also about what your duty to your country is versus what your passion is. I think this would make such a fantastic book club pick as there is just so much to unpack and discuss. This is Elena’s debut novel, though she has written two memoirs that I for sure will be checking out.
