Tag: historical fiction

#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 Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans @DoubledayUK

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Crooked HeartAbout the Book

When Noel Bostock – aged ten, no family – is evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, he ends up living in St Albans with Vera Sedge – thirty-six and drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she’s unscrupulous about how she gets it.

Noel’s mourning his godmother, Mattie, a former suffragette. Brought up to share her disdain for authority and eclectic approach to education, he has little in common with other children and even less with Vee, who hurtles impulsively from one self-made crisis to the next. The war’s thrown up new opportunities for making money but what Vee needs (and what she’s never had) is a cool head and the ability to make a plan. On her own, she’s a disaster. With Noel, she’s a team.

Together they cook up an idea. Criss-crossing the bombed suburbs of London, Vee starts to make a profit and Noel begins to regain his interest in life. But there are plenty of other people making money out of the war and some of them are dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn’t actually safe at all…

Format: ebook (282 pages)                     Publisher: Transworld
Publication date: 6th November 2014 Genre: Historical fiction

Find Crooked Heart on Goodreads

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

My Review

I very much enjoyed Lissa Evans’ book Old Baggage when I read it back in 2018 so I was excited to learn she had a new book coming out, V For Victory. Before reading that for the blog tour (you can read my review here) I felt I just had to find time to squeeze in reading Crooked Heart. I’m so glad I did because, not only did it fill in some gaps in the story, but it meant I spent time getting to know Noel and Vera.

I’ll say right now the author made me fall in love with Noel. I laughed at him thinking up suitable punishments for some of his more irritating classmates and recording them in a notebook. “Roy Pursey. Liver pecked out by eagle. Harvey Madeley. Locked into an oubliette and forced to drink own urine. The Ferris Twins. Lavatory cleaners.” Although his eclectic knowledge and precocious vocabulary (courtesy of his years with Mattie) make him stand out from his contemporaries, underneath Noel is just a young boy who’s found himself alone in the world.

Therefore he’s fortunate to be taken under Vera’s wing – even if her motives are mercenary to begin with. Her actions and approach to life are epitomized by the question Noel poses to her at one point in the book, “You mean it’s legally wrong but morally right?” She’s not the only person in wartime London tempted to cross that line, whether that’s flirting with the butcher to get a better cut of meat, fiddling the ration books or trading on the black market. After all, it’s a time when every moment may be your last.

Unfortunately for Vera (known as Vee), not all her ploys – even her legal ones – work out as she hopes. For example, having taken out an insurance policy on the life of a very elderly and frail-looking neighbour, Vera is frustrated to find the old lady continues to enjoy rude health. As Vee reflects, “That was what happened when you tried to do something straight: the world simply laughed at you.”

Crooked Heart features the author’s trademark blend of drama, period detail, gentle humour and emotional storylines.  In one very touching scene, Noel visits the house he used to live in with Mattie and finds himself noticing objects that belonged to her – one of her slippers, her toothbrush, her comb, an old shopping list, her gardening coat hanging on the back of the scullery door. It’s as if she has just popped out and might return at any moment, although he knows that cannot be the case.

I loved Crooked Heart and it made the perfect appetizer for the wonderful V For Victory.

In three words: Funny, heart-warming, tender

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Lissa EvansAbout the Author

Lissa Evans has written books for both adults and children, including Their Finest Hour and a Half, longlisted for the Orange (now Women’s) Prize, Small Change for Stuart, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Costa Book Award, and Crooked Heart, longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Old Baggage was a sell-out Waterstone’s Book of the Month and Their Finest Hour and a Half was adapted into a star-studded film with Gemma Arterton and Bill Nighy.

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