madonnas

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.