The Madonnas of Leningrad: A Novel (P.S.) Reviews

• Art transcends war

  
  By A1GUWFBWRXTJG0 on 2006-03-14
  As a young woman, Marina worked as a museum guide at the Hermitage in Leningrad. When war broke out and the Germans invaded the city, Marina and her comrades were tasked with removing the museum's priceless treasures and storing them safely away. During the 900 days of siege, the city residents faced devastation, starvation, and cold. The Hermitage's basement became Marina's refuge. The empty picture frames gracing its exhibition halls contained echoes of its former art, providing a distraction that helped Marina survive the horrors of war. Now living in Seattle, Marina is an elderly woman who is sinking into dementia. About to attend her granddaughter's wedding, her past overtakes the present and she is living in a muddled world of war, beauty, and the struggle for survival.
  
  "The Madonnas of Leningrad" is a beautifully written and richly layered debut novel. Author Debra Dean achieves the daunting task of juxtaposing the horrors of war with the timeless beauty of art. She seamlessly interweaves Marina's flashbacks with present-day family activities. The descriptions of the deteriorating living conditions and the slow erosion of hope turning to despair are so realistic that the reader is transported to the besieged city to suffer along with its residents. There are touching scenes of grown children struggling to cope with the infirmities of their aging parents. This is also a story of love between Marina and Dmitri; it's a love that spans the years, from their youthful separation during the war to their golden years, when Dmitri must cope with Marina's declining mental faculties. There is even a touch of humor here and there too, such as when Marina reflects on the official Communist Party verbiage used to describe the bourgeois society depicted in the art masterpieces. With such a wide variety of themes and imagery here, all expertly crafted into a modest-sized story, this book is a must-read.
  
  Eileen Rieback
  
  

• An unforgetable story of love, imagination, and survival

  
  By A3TSZ8YHZPKJ88 on 2006-02-23
  What a wonderful first effort by a new voice in fiction. The history and art descriptions are quite factual and I was reminded how much art history I had forgotten and want to now revisit. The illness of Marina reminded me of some issues my own mother had. For example she has stopped cooking because she leaves out ingredients and she tends to leave pots and pans unattended. The way Marina shifts from the present to the past also rang true. I found the descriptions to be vivid enough to picture in my mind the struggles of love and war; imagination and nature. The ending quite surprised me and was so elegantly written it brought me to tears. I would recommend this read to anyone interested in Leningrad during the winter of 1941 or who loves someone with Alzheimer's. I look forward to future reads by Ms Dean. The only thing stopping me from giving this book the five star rating is that it does jump back and forth in time and some readers may be confused by that or not particularly like to read books that do this. I'd like to add that this technique is needed to show how the main character lives and thinks. It is truly a wonderful story and I think if you can get past the tenses changing, you'll enjoy the read.
  
  

• Why isn't this book a Number One Bestseller????

  
  By A2T7GJONIZFP1Q on 2006-05-06
  What a magnificent read this was! I am resisting the urge to start reading it again right away only because I have so many on my nightstand that I want to read. But this will be one to be read again sooner than later. I found myself spending so much time looking up the works of art mentioned in the book and the Hermitage Museum website that it took much longer than it should have to read this 228 page book. It is so beautifully written I found myself reading passages over and over again and marking pages with any scrap of paper I had handy. I see it was tied for #1 Booksense pick for April. A pretty good hallmark of an excellent read.
  
  This is an amazing story of a woman with Alzheimer's disease, so many times described as "the long goodbye" and most notable in the following passage, "She is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but in a wrenching succession of separations. One moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes her a little farther from his reach. He cannot follow her, and he wonders where she goes when she leaves."
  
  The only thing a bit off-putting was the naming of an island in the San Juans "Drake" island when there is no such island (when the author uses so many other real places) but I believe it was actually San Juan Island where I have visited many times, most recently last August. That is such a small quibble.
  
  This is such an outstanding book. I only regret I can't afford to buy one to give to everyone I know.
  
  
  

• A beautifully written novel which deserves to be read again and again.

  
  By A1DYMH30TSRONY on 2006-05-13
  This is a hauntingly beautifully tale of a life.
  
  How is it possible to combine the siege of Leningrad and the cruel progress of Alzheimer's Disease into a story which is both triumphant and sad without being mawkishly sentimental?
  
  This story has done it. And along the way it reminds us all that behind every face there is a life story, that what we see and experience now is a small part of an aged person in front of us.
  
  This novel deserves to be read and reread.
  
  Jennifer Cameron-Smith
  
  

• Poignant, but lacks depth....

  
  By A395QKQZ15GP4F on 2007-01-05
  This is, as the other reviewers have so wel pointed out, a remarkable story of great love - of art, of family, and of survival at a time when it seemed nothing would survive - no decency, no beauty, and definitely not human beings besieged in the midst of a horrendous war.
  
  Later we find our heroine equally besieged, by the unforgiving terrors of alzheimer's disease, as she struggles to remember family, friends, and at times who she is. All of this is premise for an unforgettable story.
  
  However, I would have liked it to be longer. I would have liked to have known more of our heroes before the novel quickly descended into the horror of their situation. I would have liked there to have been more description of the physical nature of the Hermitage, and the many treasures that it holds. I guess I would have liked, well.... just more.
  
  THis is indeed a lovely novel, and I imagine that there are many, many stories like this that are as unknown to us as they were to the families of the main characters. I guess my point is this novel is merely a taste of their story, and I wanted it to be so much more.
  
  
• Elegant and moving...
  By A39ABKRS1MKFTW on 2006-07-10
  The Madonnas of Leningrad is a lovely, elegant and moving first novel by Debra Dean.
  
  Marina Buriakov is a Russian transplant living in California with her husband, Dmitri. She is a victim of Alzheimer's disease. While she can't remember what she had for breakfast or her daughter's face, Marina has vivid memories of living in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during World War II. At that time, she worked at the famous Hermitage Museum as a docent. The curator had the foresight to crate up hundreds of thousands of treasures, and to have them shipped out of the city before the war came to Leningrad. Once the German's started bombing this beautiful Venice of the north, over 2000 museum employees and their families began living in the museum's basement. Conditions are very harsh once the food supplies to the city run out and the electricity is cut off. Millions of people starve or freeze to death. When Marina is not making coffins or watching guard, she roams the museum halls, trying to remember each painting that was in each empty frame. While her family prepares for the wedding of her granddaughter, Marina's Russian past keeps creeping into her American present.
  
  Dean's pose is elegant and the story of Marina in Leningrad is moving and heartbreaking, yet uplifting at the same time. The Madonnas of Leningrad is a story of love and survival. My only complaint is that I wish this book was longer. At 228 pages, it's more a novella. Dean could have told us more about how Marina and Dmitri came to America, how did she escape Russia, what happened to her cousins, etc. Still, Dean is a talented writer and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of her. Also, she does provide the names of three excellent books about the Siege of Leningrad and the Hermitage Museum for those wishing more details about this terrible time in Leningrad.
  
  
  
• Hauntingly Beautiful
  By AVEB76ZI5VDJ6 on 2007-02-25
  The novel, Madonnas of Leningrad, is a wonderful tribute to the human spirit when it is put to the ulimate test. Out of the frozen, bleak darkness of Leningrad under siege there emerges the most wondrous images of golden framed Madonnas in tranquil, glorious colors. The pictures of each Madonna,.......... full of beauty, holding the promise of new life within them is a wonderful imagery for the essence of the story itself. In the darkness of the womb , with the pain of the delivery comes the beautiful fruit , the seed of hope, the future. On another level of symbolism, the Madonnas are mothers who suffered great loss for the price of redemption ...like Mother Russia who suffered through the siege but was eventually redeemed. The story is lovingly told and beautifully researched. The power of memory to take us to places of survival should give some hope to anyone dealing with the ravages of Alzheimers disease in their own families. Marina survived the desperate time in Leningrad through the power of the Memory palace ........where she could retreat at any given moment. It is to this Memory Palace that she will travel again at the end of her battle with Alzheimers. In this place beauty is ever present.........and the world is a lusterous canvas framed with solace, beauty and redemption. This book is a wonderful debut effort by an inspired author.
  
  
• Beautiful Writing
  By A297V7WDMJRBUX on 2007-03-20
  I recently performed a reading and concert for the Kings English Bookstore in Salt Lake City. Before leaving the store, owner Betsy Burton asked me to select any book I'd like from their amazing inventory. Overwhelmed and pressed for time, I asked her to select one for me. Betsy chose Debra Dean's book as one of her picks of the year, and with good reason. With simple elegance and some of the most gorgeous descriptions of art (many of the scenes take place in The Hermitage Museum during the siege of Leningrad) The Madonnas of Leningrad explores the beautiful strength and terrifying fragility of one woman's mind as she falls victim to Alzheimers disease.
  
  
• The human mind and its mysteries
  By A2D1TP7QATPACV on 2006-02-25
  This is the true essence of this story, what the human mind is capable of doing, and yet, what happens when it begins to lose it's power.
  
  In 1941, Marina was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad during the ugly, bitter time of the war. The staff at the museum packs up and ships off most of the art, to a secret location, for safekeeping, and Marina, along with other staff members, and their families, spend a cold, hungry winter at the museum. During this time, Marina uses her imagination to fill the empty canvases with the art that used to hang in them.
  
  It is years later, and Marina is now in America, and struggling to remember what day it is. And yet, she remembers all the paintings, all those days of cold, hunger, and pain.
  
  This novel travels back and forth in time between the two periods and the reader gets to experience the horror of the war, as well as the beauty of the human soul. We also get to meet Marina's now grown children, and her loving husband, in present day America.
  
  I very much enjoyed this story, the imagery was beautiful, the characters gripping, the struggle in Marina's mind, heart-breaking. I only wish it had not ended so abruptly, I felt there was a huge build up, and then suddenly, the story was over.
  
  Still, I would recommend this debut novel for its beauty, and it's ability to reach into this old woman's soul, and share it with the reader.
  
  
• A poignant novel about beauty and suffering
  By A2F6N60Z96CAJI on 2006-03-28
  Your reviewer was in Washington, D.C. this week, but regrettably not long enough to go to the superb National Gallery of Art. The National Gallery, on the Mall between the Capitol and the White House, is special for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that the paintings there are the property of the country, of each individual American, for all of us to enjoy. But even so, there are times when you wander back through a hall where you've been already or observe paintings you've seen and enjoyed, and you feel they've lost something --- the image is more familiar than it was, and perhaps not as special. And as you leave, you might wonder about the people who work there, who see the art everyday, and what they feel about it.
  
  Debra Dean's luminous debut novel is about a museum docent in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad on the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Her heroine, Marina, leads tours through a legendary collection of great art --- a collection she is thrilled to discover is her own as a Soviet citizen. (She later learns that the Hermitage collection is Stalin's personal slush fund, of course, but that does little to diminish the beauty.) Dean frequently interrupts her narrative to allow Marina to do some first-person storytelling about the art she sees, and it's some of the best writing in the novel.
  
  When the war reaches Leningrad, Marina stays at the museum to help evacuate the paintings and other precious works of art, which are sent far beyond the lines for safekeeping. But Marina's own precious love, Dmitri, is sent in the other direction, to the front lines to halt the Nazi advance. Left behind in the city, Marina prowls the empty halls of the Hermitage, trying to reconstruct in her mind the past glories amidst the horrible privations of the besieged city.
  
  This is the stuff of great stories, and Dean tells this part of the tale superbly well, reminding an inattentive public of the suffering endured by ordinary Russians in the Second World War. THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD, though, is very much a tale of our time as well, with past and present interchanging and intersecting with rapidity.
  
  In our time, Marina is old and beginning to lose her faculties, and words like "Alzheimer's" and "assisted living" are being tossed about. When we see her as an elderly woman, she is leaving her comfortable Seattle home to go somewhere; she has to be reminded that it is to the wedding of her granddaughter, to a young man she does not recognize at all. The stories are interlayered so that the reader is led to recognize --- slowly, at first, and then unmistakably --- that the past devastation of the Hermitage is paralleled in the slow collapse of Marina's own "memory palace."
  
  The evocation of Marina's suffering is best seen through her own eyes, through her own confused and conflicting recollections. It is all too often seen through the eyes of her daughter, a struggling middle-aged Phoenix artist whose mundane stresses contrast unfavorably with those of the mother whose history she barely knows.
  
  The Madonna is a favorite subject of painters, again and again, because her presence in a painting says so much about so many things --- about joy, serenity, anguish, the power and majesty of divine revelation as expressed in the pride of a young mother. Even when we see the Madonna when her Child is still a baby, we know her destiny and the heartbreak that awaits her at the foot of the Cross, but we cannot be unmoved by her transcendental beauty and grace. We recognize the beauty and the suffering that accompanies it, and that cannot be separated. It is to the immense credit of Dean that she understands this essential truth and that the novel transmits it so eloquently.
  
  --- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds, who writes the "Northbound" blog at http://www.txreviews.com/blog and is hard at work on his second novel.
  
  
• An exquisite novel!
  By A21NVBFIEQWDSG on 2006-03-30
  Debra Dean's debut novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad, is exquisite.
  
  Marina is a docent for the Leningrad's famed Heritage Museum. No one but its director is doing any planning in case the German bombs start falling. He has already numbered all the artwork and assembled packing materials. As the Germans mover closer and closer, Marina and her fellow workers begin to dismantle the artworks. The only thing they leave behind are the painting's frames--representing victory for the Allied Army.
  
  As war creeps closer, Marina and her family, along with the remaining staff and their families, move into the museum to escape the impending siege and the harshest winter in memory. It is during the packing that one of the babushkas encourages Marina to construct her own "memory palace"--a place where she can retreat when the hard times get harder. This isn't difficult as Marina knows which painting is located in which room and hung in which frame on which wall.
  
  Ironically, sixty plus years later in modern America, Marina is losing her memory, falling victim to Alzheimer's. She and her husband Dmitri, who somehow miraculously survived the war, are heading to their granddaughter's wedding. Marina barely remembers she has children, much less grown grandchildren, and that she lives in America.
  
  Memories kept her alive and now a memory-eating disease is taking her away. Dean paints vivid pictures of the cold, the fright, the hunger of WWII Russian and juxtaposes them against a cold, frightening illness. The writing is as crisp as the cold air that whips through the Heritage's blown-out skylights. The setting moves so easily between 1941 and present time that I feel I am experiencing Marina's illness with her.
  
  Near the novel's end, Marina takes a group of young soldier boys on a tour. As she leads them through the dirty, dark, empty building, the great works of art, in their rich, vibrant colors, are once again on display--and this reader was in awe. I loved it!
  
  Armchair Interviews says: Anyone who loved Jonathan Hull's Losing Julia will find The Madonnas of Leningrad as beautiful and enriching.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• not what I was hoping for
  By ADSVALYHEFEEI on 2007-08-23
  There are some pretty turns of phrases, but this book cannot decide what it is.
  Is it about Alzheimer's disease? Well, possibly. Is it about surviving the siege? Possibly.
  But I bought this believing that I'd have a unique approach to a woman's struggle during the long, devastating siege of Leningrad by the Germans. It does in that it touches on people starving, people dying, but the general focus is on her tenure as a guide (and packer) at the Hermitage and what her speeches were to this and that group. It attempts to be mystical and misses the mark. This book didn't hold together well for me.
  
  Chapters shifted back and forth between Marina's Russian life and her old age as her memory is receding...and the problems her husband has with her...and her daughter's lonely and complicated life...and you probably get the idea.
  The madonnas of the story are paintings.
  
  
  
• Interesting First Novel.
  By A33ALOFWK986HV on 2006-04-11
  This is a novel about the German seige of Leningrad focused on the ghastly winter of 1941-42. The experience of the population of Leningrad (now again St.Petersburg)during the seige is an epic in the history of Europe and the world. It is estimated that as many as 1.5 million residents of Leningrad, mostly women, the elderly,and the young, died of exposure, famine, and lack of adquate medical care. It is a great story of human endurance deserving of more recognition in the West. It is also worthy of a fuller and better treatment than that which it receives in this first novel.
  
  Author Debra Dean centers her story about a young woman,a docent at the Hermitage Museums, who struggles to take care of her family and still survive to be reunited after the war with her lover Dmitri. The descriptions of the museums themselves and the relocation of their contents to safer places are fascinating and effective. Unfortunately, she also employs the rickety device of telling the principal story in a series of flashbacks in which the mind of the once young docent, now an old woman in the somewhat advanced stages of Alzheimers, pops in and out between Leningrad during the seige and a family wedding in present day Los Angeles. Sadly, the contemporary story detracts from the gripping account of survival during the seige. An excellent novella is thus deformed into a less than satisfactory novel. A word of advice to author Dean: If you think it is useful to describe for your readers the furnishings of a gallery in the Hermitage (p.151), please do not use the words "et cetera" as in "Checkerboard parquet floors, et cetera."If we already know how the room looked, why undertake to describe it in the first place?
  
  
• "joy or grief, eventually they are inseparable"
  By A2NHD7LUXVGTD3 on 2007-09-01
  _The Madonnas of Leningrad_ shows us the world through the eyes of a survivor of the seige of Leningrad, both as it was happening to Marina in 1941, and as it was remembered by an 82 year-old Marina suffering from Alzheimer's. It is a heart-breakingly beautiful story, as Dean vividly describes not only the magnificence of the Hermitage (and its artwork), but also the struggles Marina faces as both a young woman and a crone.
  
  I was particularly struck by the way Dean allowed me to see through the eyes of a woman with Alzheimer's - what Marina's husband, daughter, or construction workers saw as nonsensical, was, in fact, logical to what was going on in Marina's mind. The ebb and flow between time and place, the gradual loss of ones self, and the child-like wonder of someone suffering from dementia were humanely portrayed. Recommended.
  
  
• disappointment
  By A35T4EVAWNW606 on 2007-09-09
  I totally agree with Electra Wilson's review. The book was definitely not what I had expected. I know St. Petersburg quite well and bought the book because I was intrigued by its title. What I had hoped for was a typically Russian story but unfortunately I could not find the Russian soul in it anywhere. It should have been entitled "the war-time experience of an Alzheimer's patient." War is horrific in any setting, and Debra Dean made it Leningrad by mentioning a few monuments and streets and by choosing Russian names for her characters. But which authentically Russian "babushka" would worship a foreign painting, even in times of extreme hardship? She would perhaps have a time-worn picture of an ikon folded up in her pocket that she would take out and look at once in a while when times got hard. Marina's reunion with Dmitri after the war is also extremely far-fetched. What are the odds she would accidentally run into him on the street in another country? And what ultimately happened to the children Mikhail and Tatiana? There is no tying up loose ends and the story becomes totally unsatisfactory. If you love Russia, and especially St. Petersburg, like I do, skip the book.
  
  
• Love, survival, and the power of imagination
  By A23MAG8UKFL0QW on 2007-12-22
  I work with older adults who are in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, one of the most dreaded possible outcomes of aging. The people I work with certainly have problems with their memories, especially short term memory, but they continue to enjoy conversations, reminiscing, music and art. I would like to think their journey is like Marina's, the heroine of Madonnas of Leningrad.
  
  Marina and Dima live in Seattle and on the weekend which opens the book, they are headed to one of the near-by islands for the wedding of their granddaughter. They didn't always live in Seattle. They met in Marina's new school when they were both eleven, after her parents had been arrested by the secret police in Russia. He protected her and taught her to be quietly defiant. They remained friends until the evening before he headed off to fight the Germans. He asked her to marry him when he returned and they became lovers that night, then he was gone.
  
  Debra Dean's story weaves back and forth between the present and the Siege of Leningrad by the Germans. Her vignettes of the rooms in the Hermitage in Leningrad are startlingly vivid, especially when one realizes that the young Marina is reenacting her tours from memory as she faces the empty frames of the great art which has been sent to safe keeping in the event that the Germans reach Leningrad.
  
  Is the Marina who sits on the ferry on her way to the wedding remembering what we read? Is she remembering the vivid details even as she gazes absently at the water? Even as she wonders who the woman next to her is until the woman calls her Mama. Of course, she remembers, Helen, Elana.
  
  Marina is conscious that "[o]ne of the effects of this deterioration that as the scope of her attention narrows, it also focuses like a magnifying glass on smaller pleasures that have escaped her notice for years. She tried once to point out to Dimitri the bottomless beauty in her glass of tea. It looked like amber with buried embers of light and when held just so, there was a rainbow in the glass that took her breath away."
  
  The day of the wedding, Marina sits on the patio of the hotel and finds herself seeing figures from the past. "Marina reaches for [her daughter-in-law] Naureen's hand and grips it tightly in her own. More distressing than the loss of words is the way that time contracts and fractures and drops her in unexpected places."
  
  In the Hermitage, many of the paintings had religious themes and many of them included the Madonna. When Marina accompanied one of the older women, Anya, through the dark and empty halls, Anya would often stop and pray in front of frames which had held different Madonnas. And although Marina felt religion was for the masses, she too began furtively offering prayers. Life did seem to become more bearable. She survived and many others did not.
  
  Dimitri, whose love for Marina never fades, finds that "she is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but in a wrenching succession of separations. One moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes her a little farther from his reach. He cannot follow her, and he wonders where she goes when she leaves." Perhaps she returns to the Hermitage and the multitudes of Madonnas offering comfort and compassion.
  
  Reviewed by Judith Helburn
  For Story Circle Book Reviews
  www.storycirclebookreviews.org
  reviewing books by, for, and about women
  
  
  
• beautiful themes, beautifully written
  By ABO4H3T2PFIGP on 2006-03-17
  Few books move me to tears, but this one did more than once. Dean fuses the memories of a wasting mind with heroic survival in a novel that reminds us of the power beauty holds over us even in the midst of suffering, and perhaps even how suffering clarifies beauty.
  
  Beautifully written and imagined. I have been recommending this book to everyone.
  
  
  
• Debra Dean's 'The Madonnas of Leningrad'
  By A3UE6I6OFXVC2T on 2006-04-26
  In her wonderful first novel, Debra Dean knits together a woman's horrifying past, as a survivor of the German seige of Leningrad in the winter of 1941-42, with her equally devastating present journey through the ravages of Alzheimer's disease.
  
  As her short term memory fails her - she can no longer recognise her immediate family - Marina still recalls the bitter winter when she, and other women remaining in Leningrad after the men were drafted as soldiers, fought the equal perils of cold, hunger and the numbing loss of hope that enveloped them with the darkness of the cellar at the Hermitage Museum where they sought shelter from the German air raids.
  
  Marina's war time experience was made bearable by her constant mental review of the museum's collection prior to its evacuation to safety and the belief that she had to retain these memories in order to safeguard the existence that the Third Reich was threatening to extract from the Russian people.
  
  Almost to spite the important role that memory has played for her throughout her life, Marina's brain now succumbs to Alzheimer's Disease. Dean describes how past life entwines itself with present experience to create the poetic confusion that will eventually lead to the end of Marina's life. Both Marina's young life, as well as her condition in old age, tug at the reader's soul while important questions about life, society, war and dying play throughout the book like the brush strokes of the masters whose work Marina dwells on during the seige.
  
  The book is well written, its topics are interesting and the images it raises are quite vivid. However, important themes are repeatedly truncated in the interest of brevity throughout this book. Perhaps Dean does this deliberately in order to illustrate Marina's present inability to complete her own thoughts. But, whatever the reason, questions are left unanswered regarding both aspects of Marina's story, the past and the present, and, as a result, neither dimension is dealt with in adequate depth.
  
  Furthermore, by allowing Helen, Marina's daughter to figure into the story to the extent that she does, Dean opens up another very important theme - that of a family dealing with a loved one with Alzheimer's. But this, too, is chopped down before it has been allowed to develop adequately. Why not expound on this a little more?
  
  Dean should have felt free to allow herself to develop the whole story further - as a reader, I would have revelled in the opportunity to know more about Marina then and now, about the war, about Dmitri and if Helen ever finds out about the link between her own love of art and her mother's past.
  
  Debra Dean shows herself to be a wonderful and sensitive writer and I hope to see more from her in the not-too-distant future. I hope, too, that, in her next effort, Dean will come forth and show us her full colors with a richer, more indepth development.
  
  
• Two stories in one
  By ADFEVWV4EF2IF on 2006-07-29
  Two stories about the same woman during different times in her life seamlessly brought together into one. I enjoyed the individual stories, but found the metaphors and symbolism predictable and boring. I would have enjoyed reading two separate stories instead as both were interesting in, and of, themselves. Worth reading, but not what I had expected.
  
  
• The Madonnas of Leningrad
  By A8TNZ5HVCOGW6 on 2006-10-06
  In this novel by Debra Dean, we get glimpses into both the life of those battling to survive in Leningrad in 1941, and the battle with Alzheimers.
  During WW2 as an employee of The Hermatige museum in Leningrad, Marina along with the other employees are emptying the museum of all of its treasures to try to ensure their safety during the war. Living in the basement with little to no food rations she hears the bombing outside and sees the devastation from her watch on the rooftop.
  
  In present day, we find an elderly Marina and her husband travelling to a family wedding. Battling Alzheimer's Marina scarcely remembers her own daughter, but she is gripped by these memories of 60+ years ago.
  
  The author does a wonderful job of blending these two times together with seamless transitions from one era to the next and back again. In addition to the main story we are treated to some wonderful information about the treasures that were housed at the Hermatige museum.
  
  
• A good read on several levels.
  By A1YUF5M9O0JLE on 2007-03-10
  This first time novel was a reward to read not only for the history and the love story but also for the story between aging parents and children. While some readers did not appreciate the time shifts from the present to WWII and back, I found that it was a necessary and important device to help the reader understand Marina's dementia. The descriptions of the Hermitage and the Winter Palace transport the reader straight to wartorn Leningrad. It was a joy to read and I look forward to the author's next work.
  
  
• Two stories reflecting each other
  By A11NL2A0RDEGF on 2007-04-25
  As one can read from the summaries, this book is about a young woman's experiences during the Siege of Leningrad during WWII and her later descent into Alzheimer's. I found both stories to be compelling, but especially think the author did a good job of portraying Marina's confusion due to Alzheimers and the reaction of those around her at her granddaughter's wedding. It provided a great insight into the fact that we can never understand the past experiences of others especially our parents.
  
  I do believe this is a very well written novel; however, at times, I must admit that it didn't grip me as it should. I don't have a strong art background and quite frankly found some of the descriptions of the paintings tedious (I know those of you who are art lovers are going to disagree with that statement). This is a great novel for the lovers of historical fiction AND art.
  
  I would highly recommend The Siege: A Novel by Helen Dunmore which is also about the Siege of Leningrad.
  
  
• Haunting ...
  By A1BI8PUEHA5CHW on 2007-04-28
  I have wanted to read this book for a long time and it is worth the wait to get my hands on it! It is beautifully written as it criss-crossed across the years of the past into the present. It presented a confused woman's state very well (and very scarily!) as she remembered the war as she hunkered down in Leningrad, and the old lady she has become.
  
  This book is about Marina. She is elderly and confused. She retreats into her memory of what it was like to be in besieged Leningrad during World War Two. She remembers the paintings that adorned the great art musuem and the history while starving. It seems as if the paintings that were no longer there (they had been bundled up to be taken someplace safe) were her lifeline, her reason to remain alive while waiting to hear back from Dmitri, her fiance who had been drafted to fight at the front, and waiting for the endless relentless grip of the bitter winter to be over. Over and over she remembered the living Madonnas that engraced the musuem walls at one time ~~ even long after the war is over.
  
  It is very beautifully written and very haunting. It will haunt you as you read of a woman's mind as she struggles to survive a brutal war as well as the ravages of a disease eating away at her mind. It is compelling and spell-binding. Once you pick this book up, you will not be able to stop until the last page has been turned. Then you'll want to research all the paintings that has been lovely described in this novel ... it will haunt you for days afterwards ~~ as a reminder that life is fragile and art will transcend time and be timeless. This book is a little gem to be shared over and over with your friends and other book lovers.
  
  Don't hesitate to pick this one up. You won't regret it!
  
  4-28-07
  
  
• A Lyrical Passage Between Lives
  By A265NE6H6LYX87 on 2006-02-27
  The Madonnas of Leningrad is the poignant story of Marina, who survived the Siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. The novel tells the story of how Marina memorized all the works of art in The Hermitage Art Gallery after they had been evacuated from the museum; she would walk the halls as a mission to not forget the beauty in the hopes that one day they would return. Set during the deprivation and devastation of the times, Dean brings to life the artwork amid Marina's personal story of survival.
  
  Dean weaves the aforementioned story into Marina's present-day life which is tragically affected by Alzheimer's. The irony of having memorized great works of art only to come to the sad loss of her daily memories later in life is heart wrenching. Dean has brought her characters to life and has made the analogies between the two lives of Marina seamless. This is a story that will haunt me for a very long time. Highly, highly recommended.
  
  
• I can see the Madonnas of Leningrad!
  By A28WRXXSRLBEGV on 2006-03-22
  Rich in imagry and text it's a book you will find hard to put down! Ms. Dean takes us on a journey into the past then back again seemlessly and right along with the main character. The complexity of family relationships is also looked at and how they come together in a crisis makes you wish they were your own!
  KUDOS to Ms. Dean on her first novel!
  
  
• Reviewed by Michelle Boucher-Ladd
  By A299L0XDG92LMP on 2007-01-26
  The Madonnas of Leningrad is a haunting debut novel for Debra Dean. The main character, Marina, is failing. She is struggling to remember as age and Alzheimer's eat away at her memory. She lapses back to a tramatic period in her life and mixes past memories with the present. Her past is the siege of Leningrad during World War II where she worked at the Hermitage Museum as a tour guide. During the fall of 1941 with the Germans descending on the city she works with others to remove all of the art from the walls and frames of the museum. As she works she is locking away in her memory thousands of paintings so that she might point to any spot on the wall and remember vividly what was there. Someone must remember.
  
  As the Germans begin to surround the city Marina's childhood sweetheart asks her to marry him, she agrees and he takes her picture with him to the front and later as a prisoner he takes it to Germany. It is her image that consoles him. This is a hauntingly beautiful story of faces. As Marina becomes surrounded by hunger and death it is the memory of art, paintings of the virgin that carry her through the winter. Marina creates for herself a "memory palace," where she is safe and can feast upon the beauty that was. Debra Dean's use of imagery brings the Hermitage to full glory on a contrasting background of human tragedy. It is an amazing story of survival and of love.
  
  The modern day Marina is reliving the past only this time it is her mind that is under siege and Alzheimer's has replaced the Germans. Having survived the siege and a pregnancy Marina is then reunited with her love, Dmitri. Together they begin a new life in the United Sates where they raise a family, eat well, and never speak of the past. As Marina's memory slips back to her days at the Hermitage her daughter Helen becomes aware that there is more to her mother than just the doting old housewife she grew up with. Helen tries to pry away at her mother's memories hoping to draw from the past links to her own life and her own love of art.
  
  This is a sad story told in such a loving way that it is hard to put down. Debra Dean has done a fantastic job of creating for the reader a museum of words and images that are both heartrending and breathtaking. This book will inspire a visit to your local art museum or gallery. It is a perfect pick for book clubs as it poses so many questions of art and humanity. Is art nourishment? How is war beautiful? How do we remember things? This passage could inspire much discussion:
  
  " No one weeps anymore, or if they do, it is over small things, inconsequential moments that catch them unprepared. What is left that is heartbreaking? Not death: death is ordinary. What is heartbreaking is the sight of a single gull lifting effortlessly from a street lamp. Its wings unfurl like silk scarves against the mauve sky, and Marina hears the rustle of its feathers. What is heartbreaking is that there is still beauty in the world."
  
  It is so thought provokingly written. The Madonnas of Leningrad will have you rereading its most contemplating segments and its imagery will haunt you. It will definitely have you looking forward to the next Debra Dean novel.
  
  
• Too close to home
  By A2JOVD32W47TZH on 2007-04-02
  Debra Dean does an amazing job of getting under the skin of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941. The conditions for life were utterly intolerable yet the heroine survived by using her mental capacities, remembering every item of the Hermitage Collection using her memory. Ms. Dean had never been to Russia (then, the Soviet Union) yet she recreates the horrors of the siege with clarity and candor. It is a remarkable tour de force. For anyone who has survived wartime bombing, Madonnas is "too close to home."
  
  
• Loved it! And the madonnas were not only in the paintings.
  By A1IHUPM1GQQ8GW on 2007-09-09
  Someone may already have pointed this out, but isn't part of the point of the shifting timescape the fact that this is what happens in Alzheimer's? One minute you're there, and the next, you're not? Or you're somewhere else? I found the author's use of time-shifting extremely effective. In addition, I thought her blending of Marina's lives (for lack of a better word) was handled with delicacy and skill. The way she came back, at the end, to Marina's sweet attempt to "show her rescuer the world" was, in my mind, exquisitely done and very poignant. Marina had several worlds--some real, some imagined--all along. I am fortunate to have some knowledge of Russian history and the siege of Leningrad, but that certainly is not a requirement for enjoying the narrative. I thought this book was terrific--my favorite summer read. Highly recommended.
  
  
• The power of the mind
  By A1N134HXXST079 on 2008-07-22
  This inspiring story of remarkable endurance proved to be one of the most pleasurable reads for me this year. "The Madonnas of Leningrad" is a poignant tale of one woman's harrowing experiences during the 900-day Siege of Leningrad in WWII, alternating with events in her present-day life.
  
  In 1941, Marina Krasnova is a young museum guide at the magnificent Hermitage Museum. Anticipating German attack, the museum staff work night and day to pack the priceless masterpieces to be transported to safety. When the bombings begin, the staff and their families seek refuge in the cellars of the museum, and not long after, starvation, disease, and desperation reduce their numbers. To escape the suffering of their daily lives, Marina and her friend, Anya, build in their minds a "memory palace," burning into their memories each room and the artworks that formerly graced them. As she walks from room to room, Marina sees past the empty gilt frames and sees again the grandeur of each painting-- the Rembrandts, the Da Vincis, the Carravagios, and hundreds more. To Marina, they were all part of her life and what sustained her in the darkest days. Amidst the bombings, she continues to hope that she will once again see her beloved Dmitri, the soldier she has fallen in love with and the father of the child she is carrying.
  
  In the present day, Marina, now Mrs. Buriakov and in her 80s, is ravaged by Alzheimer's. Her memories of her children and recent events are in tatters, but memories of her Leningrad days are as vivid as always. As her faculties continue to degenerate, her mind takes her back to the days of the siege--back to her "memory palace" and the extraordinary paintings and events that defined her life. Her husband and children grow increasingly concerned, and when she disappears one day, it becomes the catalyst for her daughter, Elena's, search for her own identity and meaning in life, as well as a deeper understanding of her mother.
  
  As expected, there is a wealth of art woven within, but one doesn't need to be an aficionado to appreciate the story. The numerous descriptions of the artworks facilitate our understanding of Marina and we identify with her desperate need to hang on to something, no matter that it's intangible, to survive. These masterpieces symbolize hope--that their return to the Hermitage someday is also the return of peace to Marina's Leningrad. The story does not merely contrast the younger Marina (when her mind saves her) and the older Marina (when her mind fails her). More importantly, it illustrates the power of the mind and spirit to provide courage and hope in even the bleakest of circumstances. It's a moving story written concisely yet descriptively, though not overdone, and particularly evocative in the chapters that deal with wartime hardships. Ms. Dean's debut was definitely worth this reader's effort and the few hours spent with her "madonnas" have been a delight.
  
  
• "What is heartbreaking is that there is still beauty in the world."
  By A1UH8RMD57P34Y on 2006-03-06
  Like the fine artwork The Madonnas of Leningrad's protagonist Marina commits to memory, author Debra Dean weaves a rich tapestry of literary language. Readers will savor the vivid details with which she paints not only the masterpieces that graced the pre-German-sieged Hermitage but also the tricks that the now aged Marina's faltering mind play on her. Fluidly alternating between past a present, even as Alzheimer's wreaks havoc on her, nothing can destroy Marina's precious "memory palace." "Someone must remember or it all disappears without a trace, and then they can say it never was." Singlehandedly devoting herself to being that someone, this mental mind game that served as Marina's saving grace as war loomed large and threatened her very existence now returns to ease her final journey. Other than what felt like an abrupt ending to me, The Madonnas of Leningrad proved a fulfilling read.
  
  

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