Finally, my first finished book of 2010. And the beginning of another alliterative feature here at the lair. I really need to stop doing that…I’m going to become the George Lucas of the blogging world with that one-trick pony. Although now I’m rhyming with my alliteration. Wee!
Debra Dean entered the literary scene with this debut novel, 2007’s The Madonnas of Leningrad. The beauty of this novel is twofold. First, Dean is enviably skilled at writing. She wields words with precision and flourish, providing us with a touching and complexly crafted tale. Second is her ability to balance somewhat daunting juxtapositions of war and art, reality and the hazy illusions that remain when memory fails.
The protagonist of the novel is Marina Buriakov. In current time, she is an 82-year-old Russian woman preparing to attend her granddaughter’s wedding. The story, however, is not linear, shifting with sometimes discordant fluidity between the now and a past in which she was a docent at the Hermitage Museum during the siege of Leningrad. The muddle and confusion is caused by the fact that Marina is beginning to slip ever deeper into the maelstrom of Alzheimer’s.
It’s Dean’s eloquence in balancing the shifting of this story that captivated me. At first, the shifting would be separated by chapters, alternating between the now and the past of Marina’s life. But as the book progressed, those worlds meshed, clashed, overlapped, canceled out, and contradicted each other. But, whether through the ravages of the siege or the ravaging of Marina’s memory, there was always beauty in the telling. To be able to still find such things, even in light of horrible events such as war or Alzheimer’s…like I said, that’s an enviable skill.
Final Verdict: This book actually doesn’t belong to me, so I’m not going to be able to keep it. However, I have added it to my list of books to purchase. Dean is a master of language, and this is one of the most beautiful debut novels I can ever remember reading. It’s worth owning simply for the pleasure of being able to revisit the eloquence of Dean’s prose.
