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Amazon.co.uk Review
In Tatiana and Alexander, Tatiana is 18 years old and pregnant with Alexander's child. Believing herself to be a widow she has escaped to America and is working as a nurse on Ellis Island. Her life is good, her baby son is beautiful, and her new friends entertaining, but her heart calls out for Alexander. Alexander, meanwhile, has been arrested by Stalin's secret police and is awaiting death, accused of being a spy and a traitor. In a series of flashbacks his childhood is revealed. His father, a committed communist, removed his family from a comfortable life in America "to live what we believe" in poverty stricken Russia. Alexander, an American, has been serving in the Russian Red Army in attempt to protect himself. Wounded, beaten, betrayed, the memory of Tatiana is the only thing that stops him from despairing--"you were my only life force".
Tatiana and Alexander powerfully describes the triumph of the human spirit in a world of sadness and loss. As Tatiana says: "We walk alone through this world, but if we are lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness". --Eithne Farry --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Praise for Tatiana and Alexander
'This has everything a romance glutton could wish for: a bold, talented and dashing hero, a heart-stopping love affair that nourishes its two protagonists even when they are separated and lost, a long and bitter military campaign, plus personal excavations into the past. It also has – thank goodness – a welcome sense of humour and discernable characters rather than ciphers.' Victoria Moore, Daily Mail
The Bronze Horseman
‘Pulling off the passionate love story embedded in a truly epic narrative is a difficult thing to do. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind remains the blueprint for the genre, while Tolstoy's War and Peace carries off the literary honours … it's quickly apparent that the Russian-born author Paullina Simons has the measure of this kind of epic romantic saga. The power of her descriptive writing, the vividness of the historical detail and, most of all, the strength of her central characters mark out her novel as a considerable achievement … she is able to make some powerful statements about the durability of the human spirit, but never at the expense of descriptive passages refulgent with power and beauty’ Barry Forshaw, amazon
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Customer Reviews
There are really no words to describe this book in the right way. The depth of the two main characters and the experience of WWII in Europe and America is heartwrenching. This is one book you can't just finish and move on, the story of Tania and Alex will stick with you for so long, much like The Bronze Horseman did.
Tatiana was able to escape to America and end up in New York working as a nurse at Ellis Island. She has given birth to a son, Alexander's son. But she is torn. She doesn't know if Alexander is dead or not and because of that he haunts her with every breath in er body.
The same goes for Alexander who stayed in the Soviet Union so Tatiana could be free. Now he is a prisoner with only one goal, to get to Tatiana or die trying. He is even more haunted and is practically dying because of it.
This is so much more than and simple boy meets girl story. This time the story is mainly from Alexander's point of view. What he was like as a child, how he came to the USSR and how he met Tatiana and what she really means to him. The reader sees it all again trough his eyes, his feelings. We truly understand why he needs Tatiana and what she has done for him.
There is despair, tragedy but hope. The reader goes on this journey through war torn Europe and with Tatiana in America. Does she decide to go on with her life without Alexander like so many others before her? Or does she try to do everything in her power to find Alexander?
Again it is all about sacrafice, hope, etc...
There is also sensuality and a merging of souls...
There is and unbelievable amount of death, torture and hardships no one could imaging.
Go on this journey and see how an epic masterpiece is really written. You will cry with sadness but again the hope is there that Tatiana and Alexander will become one.
I was not disappointed, but quite frustrated at times! I was anxious for Paullina Simons to immediately take up the protagonists' story where she had left off, but since this novel has to be accessible to readers who have not read 'The Bronze Horseman', I found myself wading through pages of recaps of the main events of the previous book, told only from a slightly different perspective (Alexander's instead of Tatiana's), when I only wanted to know what happened next.
Persevere, and if you are not impatient like me, you will find some beautiful description of how Alexander and Tatiana fell in love, as well as added details that avid readers of 'The Bronze Horseman' will relish. Once the new story gets underway, the level of intensity and emotion experienced by the characters is almost unbearable at times, and left me in tears.
I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone, but there are several unexpected plot twists that made me gasp (particularly in relation to Tatiana's twin brother Pasha), and the last section of the book, entitled 'Alexander', had my heart thumping in my chest and me desperately turning the pages.
It's very difficult to compare this book to its prequel, as both books are at once very similar and extremely different in their style. However, they both contain the same ability to move the reader, and the same depth of emotion expressed through Paullina Simon's beautiful prose. 'Tatiana and Alexander' is sadder, has more pain and longing and less vibrant innocence than 'The Bronze Horseman', but is just as beautiful.
Read this book, but read 'The Bronze Horseman' first, or you will not be able to appreciate fully its subtleties. Be warned, though; Tatiana and Alexander are characters who will become real to you, who you will find yourself thinking about long after their story has finished, and who will move you in a way that very few books ever will.
I would not advise reading this before the first book as it deals with much of the same plot in a more detailed fashion, and you will not get the full effect of the layered narratives if you read them out of order. On the other hand, if you have already read the first book there is no point in you reading this review- you will already be a devotee of both Simons' gorgeous dialogue, narrative and imagery.
One thing that impressed me about this novel was its elaboration on the violent undercurrents of the first novel: here Alexander's 'addiction' to violence and need to protect his wife is fully explored and worked through, not simply pushed under the carpet as with most romance novels. The appearance of a character assumed to have died in the first novel (not wanting to give too much away here) is also a brave move by the author and sets the novel up for a completely emotionally satisfying climax.
One small gripe I have is that the novel is called 'Tatiana & Alexander' here in the UK, and 'The Bridge to Holy Cross' in other countries- the latter title is infinitely preferable in my opinion because it expresses the epic nature of this work and does not merely reduce it to a romance novel. However, this is a tiny problem and probably only annoys me, although obviously it has not spoilt my enjoyment of the novel.
Much of the book is spent fleshing out things that we already know about, such as how... Read more
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