"The Madonnas of Leningrad" by Debra Dean ****

> Book Club selection, March 2012
> Debut by US author
> Originally published 2006

> Epigraph:  "But now I know, while beauty lives, So long will live my power to grieve." - Alexander Pushkin

> Quotes I Like:

• p. 3..."It is as though she has been transported into a two-dimensional world, a book perhaps, and she exists only on this page.  When the page turns, whatever was on the previous page disappears from her view."
•  p. 24..."Privacy is a conceit of degenerate societies."
• p.27..."Her uncle seemed not to notice what she saw--he droned on about acquisitions and restorations and who knows what else, while around them angels fluttered in turbulent skies and serene Madonnas gazed down as they passed.  And the landscapes, one after another shimmering with light, each frame a portal into a fresh world.".......Age 12, Marina's first impression of the Hermitage, yet also an apt description of her experience at the other end of her life as she flutters between the present and the past in her mind
• p. 119..."She is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but n a wrenching succession of separations.  On moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes her a little farther from his reach.  He cannot follow her, ad he wonders where she goes when she leaves him."......perspective of family
• p. 158..."Woe rides on woe and uses woe for a whip"
• p. 161..."What is heartbreaking is that there is still beauty in the world."....after the blanket bombing of Leningrad....juxtaposed to the epigraph by Pushkin.....wonder where the author falls on this question
• p. 203..."The future is always written with a pitchfork on the water."
• p. 206..."This slow erosion of self has its compensations.  Having forgotten whatever associations might dull her vision, she can look at a leaf and see it as if for the first time. Though reason suggests otherwise, she has never seen this green before.  It is wondrous.  Each day, the world is made fresh again, holy, and she takes it in, in all its raw intensity, like a young child.  She feels something bloom in her chest--joy or grief, eventually they are inseparable.  The world is so acutely beautiful, for all its horrors, that she will be sorry to leave it."

> Interesting Ideas:

• Sleep as a switch being flicked.....same as the switch which flicks Marina from past to present
• Absolutely loved the idea of building a "memory palace".....p.68

> Review:   This debut novel is the 2012 selection for "If All Rochester Reads.....", and the March 2012 selection for my book club. Consequently, I will have the opportunity to hear the author speak in Rochester this week. 

This story is a beautifully blended, historically interesting,poignant tale of the siege of Leningrad and its impact on the Hermitage, its artwork and staff, and it is also the story of what it might be like on the inside of Alzheimer's.  The author, Debra Dean, does an absolutely marvelous job of making the transitions between the past and the present, using events in either to trigger the mental shift from the past to the present of the protagonist, Marina.