Madonnas of Leningrad

Dean, Debra

ISBN 10: 0792794729 ISBN 13: 9780792794721

Publisher: AUDIOGO, 2013

Synopsis

Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories--the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild--yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye.

Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation, bitter cold, and a relentless German onslaught, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, leaving the frames hanging empty on the walls to symbolize the artworks' eventual return. As the Luftwaffe's bombs pounded the proud, stricken city, Marina built a personal Hermitage in her mind--a refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. . . .

About this title

Review:

"[A] heartfelt debut." -- New York Times Book Review

"[A] poetic novel." -- San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"Exquisitely crafted and deeply satisfying." -- Oakland Tribune

."this is a novel that dares to be beautiful - and fully succeeds." -- Daily Mail (London)

The most-recommended book of 2006 -- Salt Lake City Tribune

[A] heartfelt debut. --New York Times Book Review

The most-recommended book of 2006--Salt Lake City Tribune

"Spare, elegant language [and] taut emotion...secure for this debut work a spot on library shelves everywhere."--Library Journal

"[A] remarkable first novel about the consolation of memory."--NPR Nancy Pearl Book Review

"Elegant and poetic, the rare kind of book that you want to keep but you have to share."--Isabel Allende, New York Times bestselling author of ZORRO

"Exquisitely crafted and deeply satisfying."--Oakland Tribune

"[A] poetic novel."--San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"Dean writes with passion and compelling drama about a grotesque chapter of World War II."--People

."..this is a novel that dares to be beautiful - and fully succeeds."--Daily Mail (London)

"[A] heartfelt debut."--New York Times Book Review

..".this is a novel that dares to be beautiful - and fully succeeds."--Daily Mail (London)

Dean writes with passion and compelling drama about a grotesque chapter of World War II. --People"

[A] poetic novel. --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review"

[A] heartfelt debut. --New York Times Book Review"

Elegant and poetic, the rare kind of book that you want to keep but you have to share. --Isabel Allende, New York Times bestselling author of ZORRO"

Spare, elegant language [and] taut emotion...secure for this debut work a spot on library shelves everywhere. --Library Journal"

Exquisitely crafted and deeply satisfying. --Oakland Tribune"

[A] remarkable first novel about the consolation of memory. --NPR Nancy Pearl Book Review"

this is a novel that dares to be beautiful - and fully succeeds. --Daily Mail (London)"

-Dean writes with passion and compelling drama about a grotesque chapter of World War II.---People

-[A] poetic novel.---San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

-[A] heartfelt debut.---New York Times Book Review

-Elegant and poetic, the rare kind of book that you want to keep but you have to share.---Isabel Allende, New York Times bestselling author of ZORRO

-Spare, elegant language [and] taut emotion...secure for this debut work a spot on library shelves everywhere.---Library Journal

-Exquisitely crafted and deeply satisfying.---Oakland Tribune

-[A] remarkable first novel about the consolation of memory.---NPR Nancy Pearl Book Review

-...this is a novel that dares to be beautiful - and fully succeeds.---Daily Mail (London)

From the Author:

About the Book
A Public Broadcasting Service Series, A Grandmother with
Alzheimer's--Chance Inspiration

In 1995, I watched a Public Broadcasting Service series on the Hermitage
Museum in Saint Petersburg. My journal entry for the next day read in part:
"I was particularly struck by one incident which might make a story (even a
novel, but for the research)." During the first winter that the Nazis lay
siege to Leningrad, the Hermitage staff and their families--nearly 2000
people--lived in the basement of the museum itself. In the first days of
the war, they had packed up and evacuated all the art--1.1 million
objects--but they had left the empty frames hanging on the walls of the
museum as a token of their pledge that the art would return. A story was
related that one of the staff, a former guide now living in the cellar,
began to give tours of the empty museum to visitors. It was said that he
described the paintings so well that the visitors could almost see them.

This image gripped me. Still, I was a short-story writer and even my short
stories tended toward the brevity of poems, so the prospect of writing
something the size of a novel terrified me. Let alone a novel set in a
country that I had never visited [...] and during a tumultuous period about
which I knew next to nothing. Throw in a foreign language and some art
history on top of that, and I dismissed the notion as far exceeding any
reasonable hubris. I tried writing it as a short story, but this world was
too expansive to be contained in the short form. I set it aside. Every once
in a while, I would return wistfully and rework it a little, adding a few
pages or moving pieces around.

Meanwhile, my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. A woman who had
resolutely focused forward throughout her life, she began in her dotage to
drift back to her youth. She told stories that I had never heard before,
some of them beginning quite plausibly and then segueing suspiciously into
magical realism. (A nice topaz pendant that a great niece had admired
spiraled in value and became a rare heirloom that strangers sometimes
dropped by and paid money to see.) I started writing about her, but quickly
she metamorphosed into a fictional character, a Russian woman who had
survived the siege. Before I knew it, there we were again, back in the
museum during the war.

The Madonnas of Leningrad was researched and written over several summers
between teaching. During most of that time, I and my husband, a poet, lived
in a sweet little apartment[.] with a sweeping view of the city and the
lake but with not quite enough room for an office. So we set up shop in the
windowless laundry room that we shared with the neighbors, our desk wedged
between the garbage cans and the hot water furnace--not so different from
the cellars of the Hermitage during the war perhaps, but decidedly warmer
with the dryer humming. He worked in the mornings and I took the
afternoons. The novel was written slowly, circuitously, and without
expectations. Eat breakfast, go for a long walk, write another page or two,
make dinner, watch a movie. Repeat.

About this edition

• Publisher: AUDIOGO
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0792794729
• ISBN 13: 9780792794721
• Binding: Audio CD