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Displaced Persons
'Recommended for a wide range of readers, and a perfect book club choice.' - Library Journal, starred review
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Interviews |
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Carol Lynch Williams
Carol Lynch Williams discussed The Chosen One, and what inspired her to write a book about polygamy.
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C. W. Gortner
A video interview with C.W. Gortner in which he talks about his 2010 historical novel, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici.
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Vanessa Woods
Vanessa Woods discusses her first book, Bonobo Handshake, and her experiences with the extrarodinary Bonobos.
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Kwei Quartey
Kwei Quartey talks about his childhood in Ghana and his first novel, Wife of the Gods, set in a small Ghanaian community where long-buried secrets are about to rise to the surface.
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Summary and Book Reviews |
The Madonnas of Leningrad: Summary and book reviews of The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean, plus links to an excerpt from The Madonnas of Leningrad and a biography of Debra Dean. |
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Book Summary
A BookBrowse Favorite Book |
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One of the most talked about books of the year... Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. And while the elderly Russian woman cannot hold on to fresh memories — the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild — her distant past is preserved: vivid images that rise unbidden of her youth in war-torn Leningrad.
In the fall of 1941, the German army approached the outskirts of Leningrad, signaling the beginning of what would become a long and torturous siege. During the ensuing months, the city's inhabitants would brave starvation and the bitter cold, all while fending off the constant German onslaught. Marina, then a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum, along with other staff members, was instructed to take down the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, yet leave the frames hanging empty on the walls — a symbol of the artworks' eventual return. To hold on to sanity when the Luftwaffe's bombs began to fall, she burned to memory, brushstroke by brushstroke, these exquisite artworks: the nude figures of women, the angels, the serene Madonnas that had so shortly before gazed down upon her. She used them to furnish a memory palace, a personal Hermitage in her mind to which she retreated to escape terror, hunger, and encroaching death. A refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more....
Seamlessly moving back and forth in time between the Soviet Union and contemporary America, The Madonnas of Leningrad is a searing portrait of war and remembrance, of the power of love, memory, and art to offer beauty, grace, and hope in the face of overwhelming despair. Gripping, touching, and heartbreaking, it marks the debut of Debra Dean, a bold new voice in American fiction.
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| BOOK REVIEWS |
BookBrowse
This is just the sort of book that I love to be able to recommend at BookBrowse because it combines a strong storyline, with a heavy dollop of fact, in this case the history and contents of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad/St Petersburg. The characters themselves are obviously important to the tale, but the essence of the story is the nature of memory itself - as Marina's descent into Alzheimer's causes her to return to the 'memory palace' she had constructed in her mind during the the German assault on Leningrad 60 years before, while her memories of the recent past flicker in and out, "like a switch being turned off".
Full Review  (members only, 894 words).
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Media Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
A thoughtful tragedy that morphs into a tear-jerker in the third act.
Publisher's Weekly
The dialogue around Marina's forgetfulness is extremely well done, and the Hermitage material has depth.
Library Journal
Starred Review. Spare, elegant language, taut emotion, and the crystal-clear ring of truth secure for this debut work a spot on library shelves everywhere.
Booklist - Allison Block
Starred Review. Dean eloquently describes the works of Rembrandt, Rubens, and Raphael, but she is at her best illuminating aging Marina’s precarious state of mind: "It is like disappearing for a few moments at a time, like a switch being turned off," she writes. "A short while later, the switch mysteriously flips again."
USA Today - Carol Memmott
Classic war films and novels recount bloody battles and soldiers' violent, noble deaths. But in her debut novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad, Debra Dean offers a sensitive portrayal of the non-combatants who suffer on the home front: Those people whose scarring wounds are caused by hunger, sickness, loneliness and deprivation. The novel is based on actual events surrounding Russia's efforts to save the Hermitage and its artwork during the 900-day siege of Leningrad, which began in 1941
Seattle Times - Ellen Emry Heltzel
Memory and the imagination are the gifts that keep on giving in "The Madonnas of Leningrad," an exceptional debut novel by Seattle writer Debra Dean. In this bifurcated story, an aging Russian immigrant living in Seattle loses her grip on the present and yields to the past, specifically the most intense period of her life: the years of deprivation and fear known as the siege of Leningrad. To her family, the old woman is succumbing to dementia. But to Marina Buriakov, the reward for her forgetfulness is the opportunity to revisit, room by room and painting by painting...
Historical Novel Society (UK)
This superb first novel by author Debra Dean tells the story of Marina, a young tour guide at the Hermitage Museum during the siege of Leningrad in World War II.
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Recent Reader Reviews
Rated  of 5
by by H. A.
A story of hope and beauty
I have never written a book review before. However, I disagree so strongly with the last review, I felt compelled to write. Furthermore, I must point out that the last reviewer did not read the story closely because Marina saved a woman from ... Read More
Rated of 5
by bob
Remarkable little book
"The Madonnas of Leningrad" is remarkable. In this her first book, Debra Dean gives her readers a historical novel plus a portrait of a family member going through the horrible disease of Alzheimer's. Mrs Dean presents us with not only the ... Read More
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| Editor's Choice |
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Brodeck
Phillipe Claudel |
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Set in an unnamed time and place, Brodeck blends the familiar and unfamiliar, myth and history into a work of extraordinary power and resonance. Readers of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Kafka will be captivated by Brodeck. |
The Confessions of Catherine de Medici
C. W. Gortner |
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From the fairy-tale châteaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen. |
Bonobo Handshake
Vanessa Woods |
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A young woman follows her fiancé to war-torn Congo to study extremely endangered bonobo apes - who teach her a new truth about love and belonging. |
Rock Paper Tiger
Lisa Brackmann |
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American Ellie Cooper, deserted by her husband, has made a number of friends in China. But suddenly one of them disappears, and security organizations are hounding her for information. Contacted through an online role-playing game by a group claiming to be friends of Lao Zhang asking her for... |
Beirut 39
Samuel Shimon |
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An exciting collection of the best new writing from the Arab world, by thirty-nine writers under thirty-nine. |
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| Latest BookBrowse News |
Publishers Weekly accepting paid reviews (Aug 26 2010)
Publishers Weekly, one of the USA's oldest publishing industry magazines, today announced that they are accepting registrations from self-published authors...
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Larsson's ex-partner hits out at renaming of trilogy (Aug 23 2010)
Stieg Larsson would not have approved of the renaming of the opening book to his Millennium trilogy from "Men Who Hate Women" to "The Girl with the Dragon...
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