A review by cherrykois
The Last Russian Doll by Kristen Loesch

4.0

This is a wonderful plot driven story of survival told through multiple point of views and times. Dolls and fairy tales play a large role in the narration of the story, which is an interesting twist on normal novel-writing. The novel starts with Raisa, our heroine, living in London with her unhappy, alcoholic mother, who has a collection of Russian dolls. Raisa is invited by a Russian historian to spend some time in Moscow as his assistant. From there the backstory evolves and the characters become alive. During revolutionary times, we meet an unhappily married princess, a vocal revolutionary, an evil-minded noblewoman and her daughter. The scenes of revolutionary times are vividly drawn. We experience the siege of Leningrad - written with its own wonderful twist of a character writing stories on walls from with the paper and glue had been removed to serve as food. We see the horrific lifelong effects of imprisonment in the Gulag - long after the prisoner has been technically "freed". I thoroughly enjoyed this novel - - not only did it have lots of Russian history and well done characters, but the use of the dolls and the fairy tales added a great deal to its intrigue. My only negative is that the plot is quite intricate, and I did feel that one large piece of the plot was not resolved to my satisfaction (but maybe I need to reread that part!!!).