Tag: blogtour

#BookReview The Girl From The Hermitage by Molly Gartland @EyeAndLightning

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Girl From The Hermitage by Molly Gartland. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Lightning Books for my digital review copy. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, Nicole at BookmarkThat and on Instagram, Karen at karenandherbooks .

The Girl From The HermitageAbout the Book

Galina was born into a world of horrors. So why does she mourn its passing?

It is December 1941, and eight-year-old Galina and her friend Vera are caught in the siege of Leningrad, eating wallpaper soup and dead rats. Galina’s artist father Mikhail has been kept away from the front to help save the treasures of the Hermitage. Its cellars could provide a safe haven, as long as Mikhail can survive the perils of a commission from one of Stalin’s colonels.

Three decades on, Galina is a teacher at the Leningrad Art Institute. What ought to be a celebratory weekend at her forest dacha turns sour when she makes an unwelcome discovery. The painting she starts that day will hold a grim significance for the rest of her life, as the old Soviet Union makes way for the new Russia and her world changes out of all recognition.

Format: Paperback (288 pages)                 Publisher: Lightning Books
Publication date: 14th September 2020 Genre: Historical fiction

Find The Girl from the Hermitage on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Publisher (20% off with discount code HERMITAGETOUR. Free UK P&P) | Amazon UK | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The book’s opening chapters immediately immerse the reader in the horrors endured by the people of Leningrad during the siege of that city in WW2 – the desperate shortage of food, the freezing conditions, the unburied bodies lying in the streets under a blanket of snow, the life and death choices individuals were forced to make. As Galina later recalls, “For many, it was luck that determined who lived and who perished. But for her, it was the Hermitage that saved her.”

The book charts the life changes Galina’s experiences – from daughter, to mother, to grandmother – and the many events that challenge her – betrayal, the loss of friends and family. In parallel, the reader witnesses the political changes that take place – the end of World War 2, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the formation of modern day Russia with its increasing commercialization. Looking back, Galina reflects, “How is it possible that so much can change in twenty short years? […] The collapse of the Soviet Union. One by one, she lost them.”

Despite everything Galina endures, she remains loyal to her homeland. As she explains, “It’s the motherland. I suppose it is like a family. No matter what arguments and problems we encounter, we still love each other. Even though, at times, we do and say terrible, hurtful things.” Let down by others more times than she deserves, Galina often has to call upon the resilience she learned at an early age. I admired her magnanimity and ability to forgive others, and the strength of character that enables her to remake her life many times over.

I loved the way in which the act of painting is described in the book. For Galina’s father, Mikhail, not only is the portrait commission a means of ensuring his and his daughter’s survival, the act of painting it is also a mental distraction. “As he paints, he forgets about everything he cannot control. He loses himself, the Hermitage, war and hunger in the viscous paint. He creates a rhythm: palette, canvas, palette, canvas. The brushes keep time, dancing between the two.”  The portrait is also a dreadful reminder of the divisions in society that see some go hungry while others have plenty.

Later in the book, Mikhail’s artistic motivation is cleverly echoed in the feelings Galina experiences as she paints a portrait of a young girl by a lake on a day that will trigger both happy and sad memories in years to come. “Her brush dances, partnered with the symphony of squawking geese. The languid ebb and flow of their movements puts her in a trance as she focuses her attention on the emerging portrait.”

In the Afterword, Molly reveals the fascinating story – and the portrait – that inspired The Girl from the Hermitage. For those without access to the book, you can read about it on Molly’s website.

The Girl From The Hermitage is an enthralling and emotional life story, a celebration of the artistic impulse, and a revealing account of a nation during a period of upheaval and change.

In three words: Dramatic, emotional, intense

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Molly Gartland authorAbout the Author

Originally from Michigan, Molly Gartland worked in Moscow from 1994 to 2000 and has been fascinated by Russian culture ever since. She has an MA in Creative Writing from St Mary’s University, Twickenham and lives in London. The manuscript for her debut novel The Girl from the Hermitage was shortlisted for the Impress Prize and longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition, the Bath Novel Award and Grindstone Novel Award.

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#BookReview Talland House by Maggie Humm @SheWritesPress

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Talland House BT PosterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Talland House by Maggie Humm. My thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to She Writes Press for my digital review copy.

About the Book

Royal Academy, London 1919: Lily has put her student days in St. Ives, Cornwall, behind her – a time when her substitute mother, Mrs. Ramsay, seemingly disliked Lily’s portrait of her and Louis Grier, her tutor, never seduced her as she hoped he would. In the years since, she’s been a suffragette, a nurse in WWI,and now she’s a successful artist with a painting displayed at the Royal Academy.

Then Louis appears at the exhibition with the news that Mrs. Ramsay has died under suspicious circumstances. Talking to Louis, Lily realizes two things: she must find out more about her beloved Mrs. Ramsay’s death (and her sometimes-violent husband, Mr. Ramsay); and she still loves Louis.

Set between 1900 and 1919 in picturesque Cornwall and war-blasted London, Talland House takes Lily Briscoe from the pages of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and tells her story outside the confines of Woolf’s novel – as a student in 1900, as a young woman becoming a professional artist, her loves and friendships, mourning her dead mother, and solving the mystery of her friend Mrs. Ramsay’s sudden death.

Talland House is both a story for our present time, exploring the tensions women experience between their public careers and private loves, and a story of a specific moment in our past – a time when women first began to be truly independent.

Format: (Paperback, 352 pages) Publisher: She Writes Press
Publication date: 3rd September 2020 Genre: Historical fiction

Find Talland House on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon UK | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

I haven’t read Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, the novel in which the character Lily Briscoe appears, so I came to Talland House without any knowledge of the book which inspired it. I think this probably placed me at a disadvantage when it came to appreciating how and to what extent Maggie Humm has incorporated elements of Woolf’s original into Talland House, and how much of the characterization of the individuals who appear in the book is drawn from the author’s own imagination or builds on what is in To The Lighthouse.

This is particularly the case with Mr. Ramsey who, in Talland House, is depicted as having few redeeming qualities. Described variously as ‘hot-tempered’ and ‘self-centred’, the reader witnesses sudden outbursts which, if carried out by a child, would probably be described as temper tantrums. However, since he is a grown man, and a heavily built one at that, these fits of temper, with their undercurrents of violence, are considerably more alarming. His wife’s attempts to prevent these outbursts or distract others’ attention from them I found unsettling.

Having lost her own mother, it’s no surprise when Lily finds herself drawn to Mrs. Ramsey, the very epitome of a caring mother. Not only is Mrs. Ramsay beautiful but she displays a keen interest in art, music and literature. Finding her friendship returned, Lily delights in the “rich essence of female connection, a fervent intensity because they were were both women”.

Having visited St. Ives in Cornwall, I enjoyed the sections of the book set there and could easily imagine the picturesque streets, houses and sea views inspiring artists like Lily. I could also appreciate the challenge of trying to capture the essence of the natural world in paint. For Lily, painting is a vital form of self-expression allowing her a freedom to communicate thoughts and feelings she feels unable to articulate verbally, either because of the inadequacy of words or because of social conventions. “She wanted always to paint as she’d dimly known she could paint, not imitating others but becoming herself.” Her inability to complete her portrait of Mrs. Ramsey, therefore, is more than just an irritation, it is a reflection of Lily’s doubts about her own artistic ability and, in a way, her feeling of incompleteness as a person.

The events in Talland House play out at a measured pace switching back and forth in time, from Lily’s first arrival in St. Ives in 1900 to the final scenes in 1919. This provides plenty of opportunities for descriptions of landscapes which emphasise their colours and shapes, as if seen through the eyes of an artist. I especially liked how the author captured the gloomy, eerily silent atmosphere of First World War London, such as in this passage in which Lily glimpses the tower housing Big Ben. “It was silent, the unlit white-and-black clock difficult to see in the smog. Missing the striking of hours and quarters, she felt outside of time, and the streets, too, seemed to float free, as if a grey ocean had swept up the Thames enveloping them all.”

Although a smaller element of the story than the blurb might suggest, Lily’s efforts to discover the true circumstances surrounding Mrs Ramsey’s death add a sprinkling of mystery to the final chapters of the book. However, I mean it in the best possible way when I say that I didn’t think the book needed this extra, rather melodramatic element. Personally, I found Lily’s story, as she grows in self-confidence and forges an independent path in life, sufficiently engaging in its own right. On the other hand, for those who have read To The Lighthouse, the author’s solution may provide the vital missing piece to complete the equivalent of a literary jigsaw. Or perhaps I should say, the last brushstroke on the canvas.

Rich in detail, Talland House is an absorbing story that celebrates female friendship during a period of upheaval and social change.

In three words: Thoughtful, engaging, detailed

Try something similar: Charlotte by Helen Moffett

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About the Author

Maggie Humm is an Emeritus Professor at the University of East London in the UK. An international Woolf scholar, she is the author/editor of fourteen books, the last three of which focused on Woolf and the arts. Talland House was shortlisted for the Impress and Fresher Fiction prizes in 2017 (as Who Killed Mrs. Ramsay? ) and the Retreat West and Eyelands prizes in 2018. She lives in London and is currently writing Rodin’s Mistress, a novel about the tumultuous love affair of the artists Gwen John and Rodin.

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