My school book club is reading The Madonnas of Leningrad, and I finished it last night. This is the tale of a woman in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Russia, during WWII.
The story is set in the present (in Seattle), but the main character suffers from Alzheimer's, and frequently remembers the distant past more clearly than her immediate past. In Russia, before the war, she was a docent in the Hermitage art museum, and the book opens with her packing tens of thousands of pieces of art onto trains to be sent to Siberia for the duration of the war, to be safe from the Nazis.
After the art is gone, the Nazis nearly take Leningrad, and things go from bad to worse. The citizens are dying of hunger, there are no jobs, and the children are all sent away from the city for protection (just like the art). However, not many of the children returned.
The book was interesting for two reasons:
First, Bob and I took a vacation to Russia a couple of summers ago, and we saw much of St. Petersburg, the Hermitage, and the art skillfully described in the book.
Second, you just don't read much about Russia's perspective throughout WWII. For so long they were our most dangerous enemy that I think we neglected to view their suffering as equal to the rest of occupied Europe during WWII.
The book is only about 225 pages (which seems to be about 1,000 pages shorter than the shortest Russian book ever written). All in all, I thought it was a sweet little gem.
Da, I did.
No comments:
Post a Comment