Skip to main content

Review: "Enchantments" by Kathryn Harrison

From Goodreads:  St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputin’s body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his eighteen-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his family—including the headstrong Prince Alyosha. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited Rasputin’s miraculous healing powers, Tsarina Alexandra asks her to tend to Aloysha, who suffers from hemophilia, a blood disease that keeps the boy confined to his sickbed, lest a simple scrape or bump prove fatal.

Two months after Masha arrives at the palace, the tsar is forced to abdicate, and Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war, Masha and Alyosha grieve the loss of their former lives, finding solace in each other’s company. To escape the confinement of the palace, they tell stories—some embellished and some entirely imagined—about Nikolay and Alexandra’s courtship, Rasputin’s many exploits, and the wild and wonderful country on the brink of an irrevocable transformation. In the worlds of their imagination, the weak become strong, legend becomes fact, and a future that will never come to pass feels close at hand.

Mesmerizing, haunting, and told in Kathryn Harrison’s signature crystalline prose, Enchantments is a love story about two people who come together as everything around them is falling apart.
My Thoughts:  I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  Enchantments was a very strange book.  The narrator of the story is Rasputin's older daughter, Masha, and most of the book is made up of stories told by Masha to the Tsarevich Aleksei (Alyosha).  She tells him stories about her childhood and events that happened during the reign of his parents but they are extremely fantastical and kind of misplaced.  The author had Masha tell Alyosha the story of the tragedy at Khodynka Field on the day of Tsar Nikolai's coronation but with this weird Master and Margarita twist.  I kind of had this 'wait, what?' moment when I saw how the author alluded to M & M and for some reason it really bothered me.  The Master and Margarita was written in the 1930s so it didn't exist in 1917 when Enchantments takes place so it doesn't make sense that Masha would include that in a story.  Also, there is this weird point where Behemoth (the cat who follows the devil in M & M) says "Am I not the shit?".  Umm, for one, this sounds like a modern saying and for two, what well-educated girl in 1917 would have incorporated this statement into a story?  I know it's stupid but that really got under my skin because the book seemed completely unrealistic.  I know it's fiction but it's 'historical fiction' so I expect some of it to be realistic.

The book as a whole was well-written and very descriptive but at the same time seemed long winded and very slow moving.  It took me a lot longer to get through the book than I would have expected.  I did like the way Alyosha was portrayed; normally he is sickly and kind of sad but Harrison portrayed him as a tough, pragmatic young man and it was nice to see that.  I also liked the part at the end where you are reading about the tsar's family being imprisoned in the Ipatiev house.  This was told from Alyosha's perspective and was actually the best part of the book.  Otherwise, I really just did not enjoy this book.  As much as I love Russian history, and especially the fall of the Russian empire, I could not get into this book at all. 2 stars.

Comments

  1. I know tiny bits of Russian history - like, I knew about the haemophilia - but not too much, so this looks interesting without confusing me. Did that even make sense? Sorry, I'm a little sleepy today!

    Anyway, it's a shame you didn't enjoy it much. I've heard such good things about it, but it does sound like the anachronisms would annoy me too.

    Have a great week :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review and Giveaway: "Distant Signs" by Anne Richter

Synopsis: Distant Signs is an intimate portrait of two families spanning three generations amidst turbulent political change, behind and beyond the Berlin Wall. In 1960s East Germany, Margret, a professor’s daughter from the city, meets and marries Hans, from a small village in Thuringia. The couple struggle to contend with their different backgrounds, and the emotional scars they bear from childhood in the aftermath of war. As East German history gradually unravels, with collision of the personal and political, their two families’ hidden truths are quietly revealed. An exquisitely written novel with strongly etched characters that stay with you long after the book is finished and an authentic portrayal of family life behind the iron curtain based on personal experience of the author who is East German and was 16 years old at the fall of the Berlin Wall. Why do families repeat destructive patterns of behaviour across generations? Should the personal take precedence over

Top Ten Books I Recommend The Most

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish . This week's topic:  Top Ten Books I Recommend the Most 1.) The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons   2.) Outlander by Diana Gabaldon           If you read my blog at all, you know I love these two books so much!  I am not afraid to suggest them to anyone who I think might enjoy them. 3.) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - I was definitely recommending this book left and right when the first movie came out. 4.) The Fault in Our Stars by John Green 5.) A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin           These are two books that I just recently started recommending but they are books that can appeal to anyone so they are easy picks when someone asks for a recommendation. 6.) Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead  - I get a little embarrassed when I recommend this book to people but seriously, just because it has vampires does not mean it is like Twilight. 7.) The Giver by Lois

Book Blog Hop (11)

The Book Blogger Hop is a weekly meme hosted by Jen at Crazy for Books .  It's a way to meet other bloggers and check out some cool new blogs. This week's question is:  "Highlight one book you have received this week that you can't wait to dig into!" Okay, I have a confession to make.  I have been so busy this week that I have not had time to get any new books.  I have several waiting for me at the library but I won't be able to pick them up until this weekend.  : ( Did you all get any exciting new books this week?