Madonnas of Leningrad - Book Review

Madonnas of Leningrad is an astonishing debut novel that captivates and moves the reader. Debra Dean’s novel tells the story of Marina, a young woman enduring the siege of Leningrad during World War II. Years later, as she begins to suffer from Alzheimer’s, her adult daughter struggles to understand her mother’s experiences during the war. Emotional but sentimental, powerful but never overwhelming, Madonnas of Leningrad should absolutely not be missed.

Slowly starving while trapped in The Hermitage, Russia’s famous fine art museum, Marina spends her days remembering the classic paintings that once lived on the museum walls. Memory becomes a key theme of the book, which flashes between her memories of the siege and the present day, when she suffers from Alzheimer’s and confuses past and present.

In the present day, Marina has been married for decades to the young soldier she saw off to war, Dmitri. They have raised their young children in a comfortable American life, and are preparing to attend their granddaughter’s relatively-lavish wedding. This joyous gathering contrasts stunningly with Marina’s memories of the somber huddled masses gathered together in the siege.

Madonnas of Leningrad—the title refers to the many classical religious masterpieces that hang in the Hermitage—is a book about art, its power to tell stories and inspire imagination, and the legacy the museum leaves to the people of Leningrad. Art sustains in a very literal sense, too, as the starving museum-dwellers boil the glue in the pictures frames and eat it. Dean weaves this combination of the sublime and horrifying so powerfully that Madonnas of Leningrad is itself a masterpiece.