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A review by camscampbell
Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
This is an incredible book that feels as if it were written just for me. It's one to savour and take nice and slowly so that the culture and the history have time to sink in. Or blast through it, safe in the knowledge that this is only your first time reading it—you'll read it again and again.
It starts when Peter the Great sticks his bayonet into the swamp that would become St Petersburg in 1703 and continues until 1962 when Stravinsky and Shostakovich meet for the first time.
Read this with the Internet close at hand, as it'll have you looking up art, listening to music, watching movies, reading novels and poetry, and even going into your attic to drag out old boxes of books to find your old poetry books. Okay, maybe that's just me. Where IS that book of Akhmatova poetry I bought 30 years ago? Time for a second mission into the attic I think.
Also, read the book with a box of tissues nearby. Is it spoilery to mention... yeah, maybe it is. I'll save it. Just have tissues, is all I'm saying. I'll spoiler-tag it.
Trigger warning: Suicide
Near the end of the book, Figes describes the final days of Marina Tsvetaeva and then publishes her suicide note that she left for her son. It's just heartbreaking.
I can't even begin to imagine how much research must have gone into this book. Figes writes a beautiful thank you note to his research assistants, ending it by thanking his daughters, "whose loveliness in no small part inspired it. It was written in the hope that one day they might understand their father's other love." That had me tearing up.
I'll be buying another copy of this to give to my daughter. She's a musician and is studying at Guildhall. She's played a fair bit of music from Russian composers, including my man Shostakovich. If I ever get to hear her playing the principal horn in Shostakovich 10, I'll melt into a puddle.
It starts when Peter the Great sticks his bayonet into the swamp that would become St Petersburg in 1703 and continues until 1962 when Stravinsky and Shostakovich meet for the first time.
Read this with the Internet close at hand, as it'll have you looking up art, listening to music, watching movies, reading novels and poetry, and even going into your attic to drag out old boxes of books to find your old poetry books. Okay, maybe that's just me. Where IS that book of Akhmatova poetry I bought 30 years ago? Time for a second mission into the attic I think.
Also, read the book with a box of tissues nearby. Is it spoilery to mention... yeah, maybe it is. I'll save it. Just have tissues, is all I'm saying. I'll spoiler-tag it.
Trigger warning: Suicide
I can't even begin to imagine how much research must have gone into this book. Figes writes a beautiful thank you note to his research assistants, ending it by thanking his daughters, "whose loveliness in no small part inspired it. It was written in the hope that one day they might understand their father's other love." That had me tearing up.
I'll be buying another copy of this to give to my daughter. She's a musician and is studying at Guildhall. She's played a fair bit of music from Russian composers, including my man Shostakovich. If I ever get to hear her playing the principal horn in Shostakovich 10, I'll melt into a puddle.