Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten

 

In Tsarina, Ellen Alpsten imagines the life of a peasant widowed soon after her marriage, claimed as a war prize and handed up the ranks until she catches the eye of Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia. 

Marta may be illiterate, but she uses her wiles, wit, and physical attractiveness to become Peter's favorite bed partner. She becomes necessary to his happiness as a man and as a ruler. Renamed Catherine, Peter marries her and then crowns her his equal-- Tsarina.

The novel follows Marta/Catherine's life, taking readers into the peasant villages and the brutal life of serfs, into war, the building of St. Petersburg, and the decadent royal courts with all its intrigue and shifting alliances. 

Since the novel is written from the viewpoint of Catherine, we can't expect to understand much about Peter's inner life. Which is too bad, since he was a complicated man who pushed Russia to Westernize and modernize but still employed brutality and ruled with a heavy hand. His excesses resulted in terrible health problems. His volatile temper and complete power resulted in the torture and murder of his enemies. It appears that Catherine was able to calm his temper, and minister to him when he suffered seizures.

I did expect to understand more about Catherine's inner thoughts. Did she truly love Peter, or, as a powerless female, was she merely using her wit to survive? Late in their story, she fears Peter and has doubts.

That Peter loved Catherine appears to be true if we believe the love letters he sent her. 

Catherine's twelve pregnancies resulted in only two surviving children, but not the sons Peter so desperately desired to keep his dynasty intact. Upon Peter's death, Catherine had to quickly react to maintain control of the government.

The violence of the age comes through, the court entertainment revolving around mistreatment of jesters and anyone the royals decided to force into humiliating situations, including physical abuse, the torturing of political or romantic rivals, real or perceived, to downright murder.

Readers will gain insight into the development of Russia. Peter envisioned a modern Russia, emulating France and European civilization. It required the heavy taxation of serfs, forced labor to build St. Petersburg which would protect Russia's western border and access to the North Sea for trading. Meanwhile, he fought endless wars  with Sweden, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire.

Alpsten's debut novel has its drawbacks, and yet still was compelling; Catherine's story is at once that of a fairy-tale princess and of a powerless pawn struggling to survive. My Goodreads friends highly rated Tsarina, swept away. 

I did not appreciate the frequent, descriptive sex scenes of rape or lovemaking, which to me were not well written and took up too much space. I really don't need to know about parting thighs, etc., when knowing feelings and thoughts in response could add depth to a character. The writing is at times awkward. But I have to admit, I did not walk away from the story. 

I received a free book through the Book Club Cook Book. My review is fair and unbiased

Catherine I By Jean-Marc Nattier - http://www.barmin-ekb.ru/?page=katalog&id=100065, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2074479

TSARINA: A Novel
Ellen Alpsten
St. Martin's Press
On Sale: 11/10/2020
ISBN: 9781250214430
hardcover $27.99

from the publisher

St. Petersburg, 1725. Peter the Great lies dying in his magnificent Winter Palace. The weakness and treachery of his only son has driven his father to an appalling act of cruelty and left the empire without an heir. Russia risks falling into chaos. Into the void steps the woman who has been by his side for decades: his second wife, Catherine Alexeyevna, as ambitious, ruthless and passionate as Peter himself.

Born into devastating poverty, Catherine used her extraordinary beauty and shrewd intelligence to ingratiate herself with Peter’s powerful generals, finally seducing the Tsar himself. But even amongst the splendor and opulence of her new life—the lavish feasts, glittering jewels, and candle-lit hours in Peter’s bedchamber—she knows the peril of her position. Peter’s attentions are fickle and his rages powerful; his first wife is condemned to a prison cell, her lover impaled alive in Red Square. And now Catherine faces the ultimate test: can she keep the Tsar’s death a secret as she plays a lethal game to destroy her enemies and take the Crown for herself?

From the sensuous pleasures of a decadent aristocracy, to the incense-filled rites of the Orthodox Church and the terror of Peter’s torture chambers, the intoxicating and dangerous world of Imperial Russia is brought to vivid life. Tsarina is the story of one remarkable woman whose bid for power would transform the Russian Empire.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

My library book club's choice this month was Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child, a novel that had been sitting on my TBR shelf for some time. I was happy to finally read it, especially as I had read and reviewed her second novel, To The Bright Edge of the World through NetGalley.

It turns out that The Snow Child interrupted Ivey's writing of that novel. She caught a story and couldn't let it go.

I had heard so much positive buzz about this book! Then, it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in literature!

The book clubbers all enjoyed reading The Snow Child, one saying she didn't expect to like it but was 'hooked'. Several enjoyed it, but thought it would be a 'one time read.' Another labeled the novel as a 'historical romance fantasy.'

The readers loved the descriptive writing of the Alaskan landscape, one saying nature itself became a character in the book. A reader was impressed by the realistic exploration of childlessness and the challenges of marriage.

Of course, there was great debate over the tension between realism and fantasy in the novel, the question of the nature of Faina, the 'Snow Child' who appears out of the snow and is adopted by the childless, middle-aged homesteaders, Mabel and Jack. Is she real? Is she a magical being? Is she human? We wondered about Faina's killing of a swan and her use of the feathers on her wedding dress. Was she the swan? Was the swan her burgeoning sexuality or attachment to the wild and free life? 

Faina is at home in the wild where she is free and independent. Jack and Mabel lure her into their lives, but she disappears over the summers. She seems trapped between two worlds. When her need for companionship results in circumstances that will keep her from her wild and free world, she fails.

We talked about this being a feminist novel. The childless homesteader wife Mabel had lost her her one baby. She thought that by leaving the East for Alaska, she and her husband would be equal partners. It takes her husband's incapacitation to allow her to become a full partner. 

Mabel begins in isolation, alienated from her back-home sister and family, and alone in Alaska. When the neighboring family barge into her life with their good-natured willingness to help out and socialize, being in community literally is a life saver. The neighboring wife wears men's pants and displaying a competent, almost joyous, attitude in her ability to wrest success from the inhospitable wilderness. We talked about the importance of community in the book and during this pandemic when everyone is isolated at home.

Later, I realized we had not even touched on the homesteader husband, Jack. At first, he tried to protect Mabel from the hard work he endured, not asking for her help resulting in alienating her. He follows Faina and discovers her secret home and history. It is Jack who protects Faina's companion fox and later fiercely defends her innocence.

There is hardship and sorrow, personal growth and joy, realism and magic to be found in these pages.

The Snow Child was a lovely book club selection. 

The Snow Child
by Eowyn Ivey 
Reagan Arthur Book/Little, Brown and Company

from the publisher

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them. (

The Cold Millions by Jess Walter

Spokane felt like the intersection of Frontier and Civilized, the final gasp of a thing before it turned into something else--the Last Rush Town, Gig called it, for the silver rushes in the foothills, but also the rush of railroad and bank, school and merchant, brick, stone, and steel, old-growth timber turned to pillared houses, hammer popping nonstop against the wild, a mad rush to log and pave the whole world.~ from The Cold Millions by Jess Walter

In 1909, the cold millions,"living and scraping and fighting and dying," with no chance in this world, are countered by the cold millionaires in their palatial, golden homes who dole out thousands to secure their privilege. 

Migrant workers sheltered in open fields as they drifted between cities, looking for work. The police cleared out the vagrants. The working men were lured by union organizers of the Industrial Workers of the World, promising to give workers a fair deal and a voice by taking power out of the hands of capitalist bosses.

The rise of unions was met with hostility, their leaders vilified as anarchists and revolutionaries who recruited discouraged workers into an expendable army. 

The rich didn't want to level the playing field. They sold the dream of opportunity, the chance to rise into wealth like they had.

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps originally meant to do the impossible. We hear about the few who started with nothing and built empires. And of the 1% who now control the bulk of money, many unconcerned about the cold millions who exist outside of the mythic American Dream.

Jess Walter's novel tells the story of Gig and Rye, sons of Irish immigrants who have died, the boys become migrant workers. Pawns in the system, they had to pay money for information on who is hiring; after a while they were fired and once again had to pay money for information on who is hiring...

Gig is a Wobblie. When Rye sees him arrested at a peaceful demonstration of unionists, he is moved to join the protest. East Coast union organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn arrives to raise money to hire Charles Darrow to defend Gig and the five hundred workers wrongfully imprisoned and inhumanly treated. Rye becomes a symbol--the sixteen-year-old orphan abused by the police.

Rye is also courted by the richest man in town, Lemuel Brand, to spy on Gurley. Brand hires Dalveaux to stop the next union meeting, rolling out a speech about the "dangers of socialism--East Coast agitators--immigrant filth--concerned mine owners and business leaders--real Americans--jail full of vermin--mayor's hands tied--in support of police--moral responsibility--commercial interests--future in balance--last stand of decency--". Rye and Gurley are to be stopped. 

One man to a boat. We all go over alone. The lesson comes early in the novel. Cops and killers, detectives and anarchists, wealthy men deciding everything in a back room, and Gurley--Rye knew them all. Each tried to be in charge of his own life. Rye outlasted them all, partly because of Gig's sacrifice, and partly because he found work and a family that took him in. Rye wasn't alone in the boat, after all. He was lucky. He won a few battles, and Gurley said that was all one could hope for in this life.

The Cold Millions is about the rise of the unions; it is historical fiction that makes past places and people come alive; it is a family drama that will tug at your heartstrings. The writing is fantastic. And best of all, it is a mirror flashing light on timeless social and personal conflicts.

I purchased a book.

I previously read and reviewed the author's novel Beautiful Ruins.

The Cold Millions
by Jess Walter
Harper, Collins
Published October, 2020

from the publisher

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins comes another “literary miracle” (NPR)—a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century.

An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice,  and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a  kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams.

The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.

Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war?

Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, The Cold Millions is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe).

Phantoms by Christian Kiefer

Gorgeous writing, foreshadowing that draws the reader to turn pages, wonderful characters, and an exploration of deeply American themes propelled me to read

Phantoms  by Christian Kiefer in two sittings.

John Frazier returns from Vietnam a shattered man. He moves in with his grandmother and takes a job pumping gas. He becomes involved with two formidable women whose husbands were once best friends--a confidence man, becoming the bearer of the secrets of their entwined family histories dating to the 1940s.

Aunt Evelyn Wilson's husband ran an orchard. Kimiko Takahashi was a Japanese picture bride. Their husband worked together, friends over their shared love of the orchard. Their children grew up together.

The ugliness of racism underlies the story of star-crossed lovers separated by WWII and the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese Removal Act, a story that ends in tragedy.

They would love each other. In secrecy and in silence. And then all of it would blown away, not only because of history but because of their very lives, adrift as they were in the swirling spinning sea between one continent and another.~ from Phantoms by Christian Kiefer

John has struggled for years to contain his experiences through his writing. His early promise as a 'war writer' has not been fulfilled. It is time to tell this other story, Ray Takahashi's story.

If the kind of experiences I had in Vietnam have already become a tired American myth, over told, overanalyzed, then perhaps this is a good enough reason to justify what I am trying to do in these pages, returning to the 1969 of my memory not to write about Vietnam at long last but instead to narrate the story of someone I did not know but whose time in Place County has come to feel inextricably tied to my own. ~from Phantom by Christian Kiefer

I love the language of this book. John notes that he had read Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe twice,"its sentences consuming me. O Lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again," and was reading it again after the war. I believe I have read it four times! I discovered Wolfe at sixteen in 1969, and fell in love with his language.

This grim story also is a celebration of life. The ending is a beautiful affirmation that brought strong emotions and a catch in my throat.

There are days--many of them--when golden light seems to pour forth from the very soil.~from Phantoms by Christian Kiefer

I purchased an ebook.

Phantoms
by Christian Kiefer
Liveright
ISBN: 978-0-87140-481-7
$26.95 hard cover; $14.55 Kindle
published April, 2019

from the publisher:
In the panoramic tradition of Charles Frazier’s fiction, Phantoms is a fierce saga of American culpability. A Vietnam vet still reeling from war, John Frazier finds himself an unwitting witness to a confrontation, decades in the making, between two steely matriarchs: his aunt, Evelyn Wilson, and her former neighbor, Kimiko Takahashi. John comes to learn that in the onslaught of World War II, the Takahashis had been displaced as once-beloved tenants of the Wilson orchard and sent to an internment camp. One question has always plagued both families: What happened to the Takahashi son, Ray, when he returned from service and found that Placer County was no longer home—that nowhere was home for a Japanese American? As layers of family secrets unravel, the harrowing truth forces John to examine his own guilt.

In prose recalling Thomas Wolfe, Phantoms is a stunning exploration of the ghosts of American exceptionalism that haunt us today.