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wardenred's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I’ve come to believe that all stories are about time. Time passing. How life changes. What something once was. Even our own stories.
Based on the page count and how the first couple of chapters just flew by, I expected this to be a quick read. I didn't account for how heavy it would be, though.
Just as the blurb says, this is a story of a young girl becoming a gymnast under the Soviet Union which follows her from the frozen city of Norilsk to the training camp on Ozero Krugloye to Olympics and beyond. We also get chapters from her father, a longtime believer in the Soviet way of life who's growing slowly, reluctantly disillusioned; her elderly next-door neighbor and childhood babysitter, a gulag survivor who's still grappling with everything she'd had to go through; and, sometimes, flashbacks from her mother, a former ballerina and a passionate free thinker who, one day, had walked out of everyone's life and disappeared. That last mystery is in big part what holds the book together and what kept me turning pages even when the story grew too hard to bear. The way it plays out is something I'd love to talk about, but it's also a huge spoiler, so I'll just say I was both disappointed and satisfied in absolutely equal measure.
All the POV characters and then some have that MC energy—the book could easily be about anyone in the main cast, twisted just a bit differently. While I read about their tribulations, each of those characters felt so alive on the page. And yet, curiously, as I look back at the book, I don't recall the characters as fully realized fictional people. Each of them spends the story super stuck in a particular conflict, in the consequences of a specific choice. Everything they are revolves around it, and it's honestly super fitting for this book, because much as it is about gymnastics, it is even more so about the dystopian life in USSR, and it's portraying the experience with grueling honesty. I was born mere years before the collapse of the Soviets and raised by people who spent their entire life there, and the shadow of that miserable great country that everybody missed and no one had anything truly good to say about has hung above me my whole life. A bone-chillingly sad history, and the saddest part of it is that the world never truly learned from it.
As a whole, this is a story about surviving in a system that decides everything for you and constantly gaslights you. Does it still matter you love something if you're told to love it? If what you believe in turns out to be a lie, at what point do you realize you've been lying to yourself and how do you live with it? What choices can you make when everything's been decided for you? Can you say no while you still care, and what happens when you stop? There are definitely right and wrong answers here, I feel, but there are no easy ones, and it's especially not easy to tell ones from others.
The vibes here are scary thick and the writing is engrossing. I did sometimes feel taken out of the story by stuff like, when it's assumed that all the characters are speaking Russian anyway, random insertions of Russian words that have full equivalents in English. Like, why use "dochka" when it's literally just "daughter?" Also, I feel I've given up on authors who don't come from Post-Soviet countries ever figuring out how patronimics work. Clearly, this is arcane knowledge that you either grow up with or never grasp by the will of divine powers.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual harassment, Body shaming, Child abuse, Abandonment, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical content
serendipitysbooks's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Winterland is the story of Anya who, at the age of eight, was selected for a special gymnastics school in the Soviet Union in the 1970s with the eventual goal of her competing at the Olympics. Interspersed with Anya’s tale is the mystery of her mother’s disappearance and stories from her elederly neighbour who spent time in a work camp. I thought this book did a great job of showing the love/hate relationship between athlete and coach, the sacrifices children and their parents were expected to make for sport and the glory of the country, the way the desire to win trumped any concern for the athlete’s physical or mental well-being, the way gymnasts were viewed as expendable and replaceable. I also liked the way the cold, harsh physical environment paralleled the cold harsh emotional environment. My main criticism of this book was that the other two threads didn’t feel well-integrated or essential to the plot. While they contributed to a fuller picture of life in Soviet society I think that Anya’s experiences spoke for themselves.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse and Child abuse
Moderate: Pedophilia, Sexual assault, and Fatphobia
jaygabler's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
At once a warm evocation of family life in the Soviet Union and a damnation of the country's systemic repression. The author's sensitive exploration of her story's historical context makes this a sports story like none other. By the end of the book, we're completely invested in Anya's quest; not her quest for gold, but to be able to choose her own path through life.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse
Moderate: Sexual assault, Injury/Injury detail, Pedophilia, and Rape
lindsayerin's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Dementia, Death, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Child death, Child abuse, Fatphobia, and Grief
Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Sexual harassment
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Suicidal thoughts, and Pedophilia
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