Dean, Debra. The Madonnas of Leningrad. HarperCollins ebooks, 2006.
Reason read: January is the anniversary month of the end of the 900 day Leningrad siege (January 27th, 1944).
Confessional: I inhaled this book. I could not get enough of the tender and tragic story of Marina. Dean takes her readers through Marina’s life, seamlessly weaving Marina’s coming of age in wartime Leningrad during the 900-day siege with Marina at eighty-two years old, living in Seattle, Washington, and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. In current day, Marina travels to Drake Island with her husband of nearly sixty-five years to attend the wedding of their granddaughter. The journey is fraught with confusion and heartbreak. In the 1940s, Marina was a docent at the famed Hermitage. Just before the siege started she lost her virginity to future husband, Dmitri, just before he heads to war. This time of her life is full of expectations and uncertainty.
The most beautiful part of The Madonnas of Leningrad occurs when elderly Marina walks her “memory palace” of the Hermitage and lovingly recalls every detail of her favorite paintings. Her recollections are sad but beautiful; it is as if the reader is standing in front of each piece of art, experiencing it for themselves. The ending of The Madonnas of Leningrad is quite abrupt but also exquisite.
Line I loved, “What good is a victory when there in nothing left to claim?” (p 66).
Art:
- Annibale Carracci’s the Holy Woman at the Sepulchre
- Bicci di Lorenzo’s Madonna and Child with the Saints James the Less, John the Baptist and Angels
- Brown’s Portrait of an Old Jew
- Caraffe’s Metellus
- Caravaggio’s Lute Player
- Conestable Madonna
- Coronation of the Virgin
- Da Vinci’s Madonna and Child, Benois Madonna
- David and Uriah
- Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Valaquez’s Bodegones
- Domenichino’s Assumption of Mary Into Heaven
- Ferdinand Bols’s Old Woman with a Book
- Fragonard’s The Stolen Kiss
- Giorgione’s Judith
- Hagar Leaving the House of Abraham
- Lionello Spada’s the Martyrdom of Saint Peter
- Madonna with Partridges
- Mars and Cupid
- Martini’s Madonna of the Annunication
- Polish Noblewoman
- Raffael’s the Holy Family
- Rembrandt’s Flora, Sacrifice of Isaac, Girl with a Broom
- Rest on the Flight into Egypt
- Thomas Gainsborough’s Portrait of the Duchess of Beafort
- Van der Weyden – St Luke Drawing the Virgin
- Venus and Adonis
Author fact: Dean has written a few other things, but The Madonnas of Leningrad is the only one I am reading for the Challenge.
Book trivia: The Madonnas of Leningrad is Dean’s first book.
Playlist: “Ode to Joy” and Bach.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Saint Petersburg/Leningrad/Saint Petersburg (p 194).
~*LunaSea*~ 