2.10.2012

{Book Club Friday}: Russian Winter


It is Book Club Friday again and I am linking up with Blonde, Undercover Blonde. This link up is every Friday and you can review any book that you like. So - head on over and find some great books to add to your list.
This week I read Russian Winter written by Daphne Kalotay.


Here is the description from Goodreads:

When she decides to auction her remarkable jewelry collection, Nina Revskaya, once a great star of the Bolshoi Ballet, believes she has finally drawn a curtain on her past. Instead, the former ballerina finds herself overwhelmed by memories of her homeland and of the events, both glorious and heartbreaking, that changed the course of her life half a century ago.
It was in Russia that she discovered the magic of the theater; that she fell in love with the poet Viktor Elsin; that she and her dearest companions--Gersh, a brilliant composer, and the exquisite Vera, Nina's closest friend--became victims of Stalinist aggression. And it was in Russia that a terrible discovery incited a deadly act of betrayal--and an ingenious escape that led Nina to the West and eventually to Boston.
Nina has kept her secrets for half a lifetime. But two people will not let the past rest: Drew Brooks, an inquisitive young associate at a Boston auction house, and Grigori Solodin, a professor of Russian who believes that a unique set of jewels may hold the key to his own ambiguous past. Together these unlikely partners begin to unravel a mystery surrounding a love letter, a poem, and a necklace of unknown provenance, setting in motion a series of revelations that will have life-altering consequences for them all.
Interweaving past and present, Moscow and New England, the backstage tumult of the dance world and the transformative power of art, Daphne Kalotay's luminous first novel--a literary page-turner of the highest order--captures the uncertainty and terror of individuals powerless to withstand the forces of history, while affirming that even in times of great strife, the human spirit reaches for beauty and grace, forgiveness and transcendence.

What did I think:
I loved the book itself.  I found it hard to put down.  There were quite a few characters and a lot of time and pages where put into developing them.  In the end, I found that some of that time seemed wasted since we didn't get clear resolution on most of them.
That being said, I loved the fact that it was set in Stalin era Soviet Union with the backdrop of the ballet.  It met my love of historical fiction.

BOOK 11:30 FOR 2012

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