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alexandraevajohanna's review against another edition
4.0
Så intressant om Stalins rike fram till Sovjets fall ur ’den lilla’ människans perspektiv. Välskriven!
guuran62's review against another edition
4.0
http://boklaadan.wordpress.com/2013/08/07/stalins-barn/
mimima's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting story about the author's parents (a Welshman and a Ukranian woman) who had a five year journey to get married. Also, included is the story of his maternal grandfather, who was killed in Stalin's purges, his grandmother (interred in the Gulag,) and mom and aunt (raised in orphanage.) Interspersed is the story of Matthews himself, who is a journalist who has been posted in Moscow. It was an airplane read and read quickly.
thewellreadrunner's review against another edition
4.0
I won this from Goodreads a few months ago, and just finally got around to reading it. This book was a pleasant surprise for me. I don't read a ton of nonfiction, but when I do, I love when it exposes me to people or places that I know very little about. Russia is certainly one of those places, and I am particularly uninformed when it comes to Russian history. It took me a little while to figure out what direction this book was taking (is it about the author? his parents? Russia itself?)...eventually I realized that the themes of all these separate stories ran together very coherently. I was especially intrigued by Mila and Mervyn's story...a happy ending, yes, but not entirely...much like many of the political changes in Mila's home country. Overall it was both moving and informative. I learned a lot!
clairen's review against another edition
2.0
I was finding this an interesting, if stylistically a bit paint-by-the-numbers, story of a Russian family and the struggles of the author's Welsh father and Russian mother to be together.
But then Matthews started talking about his own time in Eltsin Russia and I read something that angered me so much that I spent the rest of the book (which, by the way, becomes increasingly boring as we go from the story of Matthews' grandfather and mother, to that of his father) waiting for it to be over. Specifically, he mentions a girlfriend he had at the time, a Russian woman named Yana who, after he lost contact with her, was raped and murdered. While reminiscing about this woman and the tumultuous times Russia was experiencing, Matthews muses: "it seemed right, somehow, that Russia swallowed her in the end" and "if she'd been character in my novel I would have killed her off, too". Wow. The nineties were super violent in Russia, and a young woman was murdered, but at least he gets to write about it in his book?
And this is part of a bigger problem I have with the book, and especially the parts where Matthews writes about himself: the tone-deafness of it all. He is very much a foreigner in Russia (and freely admits to it), but that's no excuse in my mind for the way he speaks of some things: even the second war in Chechnya, which he covered as a journalist, is just a catalyst for his own personal epiphanies; and while I understand that this is not a book about politics, or about Chechnya, it still comes off as superficial and leaves a bad taste.
But then Matthews started talking about his own time in Eltsin Russia and I read something that angered me so much that I spent the rest of the book (which, by the way, becomes increasingly boring as we go from the story of Matthews' grandfather and mother, to that of his father) waiting for it to be over. Specifically, he mentions a girlfriend he had at the time, a Russian woman named Yana who, after he lost contact with her, was raped and murdered. While reminiscing about this woman and the tumultuous times Russia was experiencing, Matthews muses: "it seemed right, somehow, that Russia swallowed her in the end" and "if she'd been character in my novel I would have killed her off, too". Wow. The nineties were super violent in Russia, and a young woman was murdered, but at least he gets to write about it in his book?
And this is part of a bigger problem I have with the book, and especially the parts where Matthews writes about himself: the tone-deafness of it all. He is very much a foreigner in Russia (and freely admits to it), but that's no excuse in my mind for the way he speaks of some things: even the second war in Chechnya, which he covered as a journalist, is just a catalyst for his own personal epiphanies; and while I understand that this is not a book about politics, or about Chechnya, it still comes off as superficial and leaves a bad taste.
erino4dad6's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed this book. I like reading about this era in Russian/Soviet history. But what I especially liked about this book is that is is told from an unusual point of view -- at least in my experience. This is from the pov of the grandchild of a Stalin supporter who then fell out of favor. It reads very easily, skipping back and forth between generations, but still very clear to follow. I viewed it primarily as the story of the middle generation, but in reality it is subtitled THREE Generations. I sometimes felt annoyed when the present slipped in and stole my from the past, but when I remembered it is the author's story too, it was better. He is very candid about the things that happened, and how sometimes things DON'T end up happily ever after even when it seems you've gotten all you've ever wanted. I have recommended this book to a number of people.
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