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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Simons was born in Leningrad and emigrated to the US in the 1970s. She sets her love story in the war-torn Leningrad of 1941. Utilising as her setting this phantasmagoric city of decaying splendour, Simons expertly involves the reader in the fate of two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha, living a penurious existence with their brother and parents. Their lives are ineluctably changed when Hitler invades Russia in June 1941. On that day, Tatiana meets a confident and attractive young officer, Alexander. As the Russian winter wreaks its havoc and the bombs fall, Alexander and Tatiana struggle with their growing love in the face of death and destruction. Simons' most impressive coup here is to ensure that the troubled love affair at the centre of her narrative is not engulfed by the terrifying conflagration that surrounds her characters. Tatiana in particular is drawn with a truly felicitous grasp of character: idiosyncratic, strong-willed and charismatic, she possesses all the requisite qualities to support a tale such as this.
However, the author isn't content to merely soothe and stir the reader: by using Hitler's war machine on the one hand and the dehumanising Soviet system on the other, 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:
The train station crumbled like wet paper. Tatiana crawled from the beams and the fire, but there was nowhere for her to go. Through the smoke she could feel bodies around her. Hot and faint, she felt for them with her hands. The gunfire came from right outside the door, but when the lattice beam fell from the ceiling, all sounds faded away, all faded away and there was no more fear. Only regret was left. Regret for Alexander.--Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Praise for Paullina Simons
Tully
‘Pick up this book and prepare to have your emotions wrung so completely you’ll be sobbing your heart out one minute and laughing through your tears the next… Read it and weep – literally’ Company
Tatiana and Alexander
'This has everything a romance glutton could wish for: a bold, talented and dashing hero, a heart-stopping love affair … It also has – thank goodness – a welcome sense of humour and discernible 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 … 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
Simons' manages to insert some history in the novel also; although it never reaches the depths of the dreaded 'historical novel'.
What sets this novel apart from other romances is the strength of the relationship between Alexander and Tatiana- unlike most romance novels they don't spend the entire time double-guessing and testing the other's affection for them. The author does a good job in creating sympathy for all the characters, not just the protagonists but also those that surround them and Tatiana's emotionally damaged family. This is possibly the only romance I have ever read which allowed the reader to empathise with the third member of the love triangle (Tatiana's sister, Dasha)and the 'villains' may not be likeable but they are understandable.
I have heard other readers complaining that the couple are typical 'Mary-Sues' but despite their overwhelmingly good natures they are significantly flawed enough to make for interesting reading. Much of the second half of the novel deals with the undercurrents of violence in their all-consuming relationship, contrasted poignantly with their attempts to build a lasting home for themselves in Lazerevo.
One warning though- the ending of the novel is heart-wrenching, to say the least, and although a sequel has now been released when I first finished this novel I had to hide it, simply to stop myself crying!
It is truly the greatest book that I have ever read and one that I will continue to read again and again over the course of my life. It is the most heartbreaking, gut-wrenching tale of love and war that has ever been told, and since finishing it, I have been unable to enjoy any other book. I still feel emotionally and physically drained from following the ill-fated paths of the two central characters, Alexander and Tatiana and I challenge anyone who finishes it to deny the same. Yet now, my one fear is that I myself will never experience a love so powerful and a need so great, but at least I now know what to look for.
All I can say is, "Thankyou Paullina Simons."
(sad isn't it!). Read more
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