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candacesiegle_greedyreader 's review for:
The Last Russian Doll
by Kristen Loesch
"The Last Russian Doll" is unputdownable, and offers one of the best split
time-period narrations I've read in ages. You know how it so often goes--one time line is great and the other one, usually the modern one, is meh. In this novel, one strand of the story follows Rosie, AKA Raisa, who travels to Russia in 1991 as assistant to a very famous and elderly Soviet dissident. The real purpose of her trip is to find out who killed her father and sister fourteen years ago before she and her mother fled to Britain. The other strand is that of Antonina, the very young bride of a wealthy man who falls in love with a Bolshevik in 1917. Tonya's story is harrowing as she fights to survive the Revolution and the civil war that follows. There are layers and layers to both tales as there are in those Russian matryoshka dolls, and even the inescapable porcelain dolls that haunt Tonya, Raisa's mother, and eventually Raisa.
Kristen Loesch knows her Russian history well, but not only that, she understands both the time periods she's chosen and builds a riveting story of how the Russian people found ways to survive. I was glued to every page.
"The Last Russian Doll" is an excellent historical novel, and if you're hungry for more stories of the Russian Revolution, grad "Sashenka" by Simon Sebag Montefiore or Janet Fitch's "Revolution of Marina M."
time-period narrations I've read in ages. You know how it so often goes--one time line is great and the other one, usually the modern one, is meh. In this novel, one strand of the story follows Rosie, AKA Raisa, who travels to Russia in 1991 as assistant to a very famous and elderly Soviet dissident. The real purpose of her trip is to find out who killed her father and sister fourteen years ago before she and her mother fled to Britain. The other strand is that of Antonina, the very young bride of a wealthy man who falls in love with a Bolshevik in 1917. Tonya's story is harrowing as she fights to survive the Revolution and the civil war that follows. There are layers and layers to both tales as there are in those Russian matryoshka dolls, and even the inescapable porcelain dolls that haunt Tonya, Raisa's mother, and eventually Raisa.
Kristen Loesch knows her Russian history well, but not only that, she understands both the time periods she's chosen and builds a riveting story of how the Russian people found ways to survive. I was glued to every page.
"The Last Russian Doll" is an excellent historical novel, and if you're hungry for more stories of the Russian Revolution, grad "Sashenka" by Simon Sebag Montefiore or Janet Fitch's "Revolution of Marina M."