Author: Linda Holeman
First Published: July 3, 2012
Publisher: Random House Canada
560 pages (paperback)
This book was an impulse buy from Wal-Mart (30% off books’ cover prices, woohoo!), but I’m so glad I did it because I fell in love with it! What interested me was the fact that it took place in 1860’s Russia. I am really enjoying European historical fiction lately, particularly the 1500-1800s, so when I saw this book, I knew I wanted it right away. It was a bit risky since I didn’t know anything about the author and it is such a new book that there are hardly any reviews on it on Goodreads, but I took the chance and it turned out to be an amazing read.
The story takes place in 1860s Russia, under the reign of Tsar Alexander II. Russia is experiencing a social revolution during this time period thanks to the Emancipation Reform of 1861, which meant that many serfs were allowed their freedom and granted the rights of a full citizen of Russia.
The entire novel revolves around this one event: the Count and Countess of Angelkov’s son is kidnapped from them by their ex-serfs (though they don’t know who did it for a while; they thought it was the Cossacks). Even though serfdom was abolished, many were still landless, poor peasants and their situation did not improve one bit; many harbored resentment towards their former masters and now acted on their feelings. Antonina, the Countess, slowly spirals into despair, becoming an alcoholic. The Count falls ill and becomes of no use to Antonina and the entire estate slowly heads toward bankruptcy. Other characters include Lilya, Antonina’s maid who is in love with Antonina and is jealous of anyone who seems to have her mistress’ affections; Grisha, the steward of the estate who regrets being involved with the kidnapping scheme greatly; and Valentin, an attractive and talented violinist who befriends the Countess during her time of crisis.
A great chunk of the book is devoted to exploring the back stories of each of the main characters. At first I felt a bit like the story was a tad disjointed because there is such a significant amount of writing devoted to explaining each character and how they came to live at Angelkov, so soon after the beginning. I suppose what I wanted was for the back stories to blend in with the story a little better: it felt like the book consisted of “kidnapping (50 pages) — backstories (200 pages) — resume kidnapping story (200 pages)”. However, each character has a very interesting story so it was a pleasant detour, if you can call it that. Actually, as I continued reading, I realized this book isn’t really about the kidnapping — it’s about the characters, and so, the so-called “detour” is actually vital to the story.
Even though I wanted the book to go back to the kidnapping story, I was not unhappy with reading about the individual characters’ pasts. Each one is so fascinating and it was really great to read about how the Emancipation Reform affected everyone on all levels. Freeing the serfs sounds great on paper, but many of them don’t feel any difference in their situation since they have no land or money anyway. They’ll have to just keep working for their master anyway. For the nobles, they begin to lose so many serfs that they can’t keep all their land, especially with the high land taxes the tsar has set, so they end up having to give away pieces of land anyway, and downsizing a lot. This book was such a great way for me to learn about this time period. Even though it is all fictional, its point is the unrest that followed such a social revolution affects everyone, and nobody comes out as a clear winner or loser.
The kidnapping is obviously what this whole novel revolves around, even though I didn’t feel like it was the focal point. The kidnapping felt more like the background on which all the characters are introduced to the reader. This is more of a character driven story, which I am usually not the biggest fan of (I’m very 50/50 on such stories), but this one had me sucked in and I was up reading this book until the wee hours of the morning. Of course, the kidnapping did provide a very exciting element to the story. The whole time I wondered if Antonina would get her son back or not, if she would ever be reunited with him. So even though this is a character driven story, I think it can be rather plot driven as well!
I highly recommend this book, it’s a great novel and I felt it was written in a very engaging and easy-to-read manner. Such a great book!
My Rating: 5/5
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