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America – The National Catholic Weekly – May 29,
2006 -- Place of Refuge --
By Robert Walch -- With sensitivity and a strong sense of place,
first-time novelist Debra Dean vividly recreates one of the
overlooked stories of World War II. In the fall of 1941, with German
troops preparing to invade Leningrad, the Hermitage Museum staff
frantically packs away over two million priceless items for
safekeeping. Some of the crates of art will be loaded on railcars
and shipped away for protection while other containers will be
hidden away deep within the building’s cellars...
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Daily Mississippian (Oxford) -- Monday, May 1,
2006 -- 'Leningrad' a simply beautiful debut novel -- By Kenneth
Jones -- It could be argued that Marina is living the good life.
Just how good life can be in 1940 Soviet Russia is open to debate,
but Marina is happy. She loves her family, she is engaged to the
very attractive Dmitri and she has an amazing job as a tour guide at
the Hermitage museum in Leningrad. With the Stalinist purges behind
them and the majority of their lives still ahead, it is an enticing
thought that...
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Seattle Magazine, April 2006 -- The Madonnas
of Leningrad: A Novel by Debra Dean (William Morrow, 2006, $23.95)
-- It's rare and exciting to read an undiscovered author's first
novel and find it flawless. Enter Seattleite Debra Dean's Madonnas,
a fascinating story about a Russian woman named Marina who survives
the Nazis' siege of Leningrad and later battles Alzheimer's disease.
Marina is first introduced as a young woman surviving cold,
starvation and bombings in the basement and deserted galleries of
Leningrad's esteemed Hermitage Museum, where in peacetime she worked
as a . docent. Marina, who hides out...
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Richmond Times Dispatch (VA) -- Sunday, April 30,
2006 -- An aging mind is lost in a memory palace -- By Doug
Childers -- In her first novel, Debra Dean explores a subject with
which many baby boomers are now struggling: the growing
forgetfulness of an aging parent. In the case of Marina, the
82-year-old protagonist of "The Madonnas of Leningrad," the cause is
Alzheimer's disease, and the effects are terrifying for her family.
Dean divides her novel into two distinct periods, and she exercises
considerable skill sliding from one to another and back again. In
one period, the present...
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Lincoln Journal Star (Nebraska) -- April 23, 2006,
Sunday -- "The Madonnas of Leningrad" a remarkable story of memory
and forgetting -- By CHARLES STEPHEN -- "This is the spot that
held one of the most prized paintings in the entire Hermitage
collection," Marina tells the gathered boys on tour of the museum.
"The painting is called 'The Holy Family,' and it was painted by
Raphael." But the walls are bare, only the frames remain. There are
no paintings before them, except in Marina's memory. The paintings
and the sculptures have all been removed, some to basement rooms,
some to the east, where Nazi bombers could not reach. It is the fall
of 1941, and German armies...
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The Ledger Independent (KY) – April 20, 2006 -- A
first novel to read again and again -- by MARTHA D. BONE --
Debra Dean’s first novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad, is the story of
Marina Burakov, a Russian immigrant suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Marina lives in the Pacific Northwest, and the book tells the story
of a trip Marina and her husband take to the wedding of their
granddaughter. Marina’s life as a docent at the Hermitage Museum
during the siege of Leningrad...
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The State (SC) – April 2, 2006 -- A tormented mind
takes refuge in the beauty of art -- Reviewed by Nancy Kreml --
When novelists find their way into art museums, are we satisfied if
they lead us only to clues and scandals? In “The Madonnas of
Leningrad,” Debra Dean takes her characters — and readers — into one
of the world’s greatest art collections. There we find something
more elusive than a hidden dagger: We meet the power of art to
transcend pain and confusion. Beyond that, Dean takes us to the
strength and ultimate goodness of the human heart...
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USA Today – Thursday, March 30, 2006 -- Debra Dean
examines the lives of Russians living under siege in 1941 in The
Madonnas of Leningrad -- By Carol Memmott -- Classic war films
and novels recount bloody battles and soldiers' violent, noble
deaths. But in her debut novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad, Debra
Dean offers a sensitive portrayal of the non-combatants who suffer
on the home front: Those people whose scarring wounds are caused by
hunger, sickness, loneliness and deprivation. The novel is based on
actual events surrounding Russia's efforts to save the Hermitage and
its artwork during the 900-day siege of Leningrad, which began in
1941...
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Portland Tribune – Tuesday March 28, 2006 --
Novel’s ‘memory palaces’ gleam -- As with Alzheimer’s itself, story
draws past more clearly than present -- By ELLISON G. WEIST --
Debra Dean’s debut novel is filled with detailed descriptions of a
place she didn’t lay eyes on until after her book was finished. The
treasures of Russia’s Hermitage Museum are lovingly re-created in
“The Madonnas of Leningrad.” Yet the Seattle author and her husband
only visited St. Petersburg last March, well past the time when the
manuscript had been completed...
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Bookpage – April 2006 -- The memory palace --
By Leslie Budewitz -- Memory is fragile, and flexible. Even its
failures serve us at times. The Madonnas of Leningrad, the first
novel by Seattle professor Debra Dean, is the story of Marina, a
young museum docent who takes refuge in the Hermitage during the
1941 siege of Leningrad. The paintings and artifacts are gone,
carefully packed and shipped out of reach of German bombs. On the
advice of a babushka, an older woman on the museum staff, Marina
builds a memory palace: a museum in her mind where each painting
still hangs on the wall. The memory palace...
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Oakland Tribune – Sunday, March 26, 2006 -- Debra
Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad, William Morrow 231 pg hb $23.95 --
By Diane Weddington -- Exquisitely crafted and deeply
satisfying, “The Madonnas of Leningrad” succeeds at the
near-impossible double task of tearing at the heart and stirring the
mind. Debra Dean’s first novel is a mature work which devoted
readers will savor. Not a word is wasted and the images linger long
after the story is told. The narrative seamlessly joins the 1941
siege of Leningrad and today’s Pacific Northwest through the
fragmented memories of Marina, an old Russian-American woman
bewildered by Alzheimer’s disease...
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Seattle Times – March 17, 2006 -- "The Madonnas of
Leningrad": In a world of dreams lie reality and survival -- By
Ellen Emry Heltzel -- Memory and the imagination are the gifts that
keep on giving in "The Madonnas of Leningrad," an exceptional debut
novel by Seattle writer Debra Dean. In this bifurcated story, an
aging Russian immigrant living in Seattle loses her grip on the
present and yields to the past, specifically the most intense period
of her life: the years of deprivation and fear known as the siege of
Leningrad. To her family, the old woman is succumbing to dementia.
But to Marina Buriakov, the reward for her forgetfulness is the
opportunity to revisit, room by room and painting by painting...
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Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- Friday, March 17,
2006 -- A divine debut by a Seattle writer -- By ANDREA HOAG --
Rare is the novel that creates that blissful forgot-you-were-reading
experience. This sort of transcendence is rarer still when the novel
in question is an author's debut, but that is precisely what Debra
Dean has achieved with her image-rich book, "The Madonnas of
Leningrad" (William Morrow, 240 pages, $23.95). In addition to
nabbing the coveted No. 1 Book Sense pick for April, Dean's first
foray into long fiction also earned her enough early praise to
prompt her publisher to schedule a coast-to-coast book tour, another
rarity for a first novel...
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San Francisco Chronicle – March 12, 2006 --
Slipping back into her memory palace -- Tale follows a siege
survivor from WWII Russia to modern U.S.
The Madonnas of Leningrad By Debra Dean -- reviewed by Amy Klein
-- ...“The Madonnas of Leningrad” follows Marina, a Russian woman,
at two points of her life: in America, as an elderly woman marrying
off her granddaughter, and as a young woman in the Soviet Union,
where much of the compelling action takes place. The year is 1941,
and the Nazis are laying siege to Leningrad. Marina, a young woman,
has been working as a docent for two years at the Hermitage museum,
into which residents of the city will soon move...
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Library Journal Starred Review -- February 15,
2006 -- Dean, Debra. The Madonnas of Leningrad. Morrow. Mar.
2006. c.240p. ISBN 0-06-082530-8 [ISBN 978-0-06-082530-0]. $23.95.
Fiction -- As a young woman, Marina became a docent, guiding Soviet
citizens through the treasures of the Hermitage Museum. Through the
900-day siege of Leningrad beginning in 1941, her knack for
describing in great detail the images of the works of Italian
Renaissance painter Titian and Flemish Baroque painter Rubens helped
her survive when thousands of others died. Later, she and her
husband fled westward...
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Bookloons.com – February 2006 -- The Madonnas
of Leningrad by Debra Dean, William Morrow, 2006 (2006) Hardcover --
Reviewed by Mary Ann Smyth -- The hauntingly beautiful but tragic
tale of The Madonnas of Leningrad deserves to be read twice. Once
for the story line, then again for its beautiful use of words.
Marina is a docent in the Hermitage just at the beginning of the
siege of Leningrad during World War II. The vast museum has begun
packing and storing the great works of art in its four hundred
rooms, to protect the irreplaceable items - items that Stalin has
said belong to the Russian people...
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Booklist Starred Review – January 03, 2006 --
Dean, Debra. THE MODONNAS OF LENINGRAD -- Her granddaughter’s
wedding should be a time of happiness for Marina Buriakov. But the
Russian émigré’s descent into Alzheimer’s has her and her family
experiencing more anxiety than joy. As the details of her
present-day life slip mysteriously away, Marina’s recollections of
her early years as a docent at the State Hermitage Museum become
increasingly vivid. When Leningrad came under siege at the beginning
of World War II, museum workers—whose families were provided shelter
in the building’s basement...
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Historical Novel Society (UK) – January, 2006 -- The Madonnas of Leningrad,
Debra Dean -- This superb first novel by author Debra Dean tells
the story of Marina, a young tour guide at the Hermitage Museum
during the siege of Leningrad in World War II. After her fiancé,
Dmitri, is drafted into the army, Marina moves with her aunt and
uncle into a shelter in the basement of the museum. By day, she
helps to pack up art treasures to send them out of the city for
safekeeping, while at night she stands watch on the museum’s
rooftop, on the lookout for German bombers. As the horrors of the
siege grow...
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Publishers Weekly – November 28, 2005 -- The
Madonnas of Leningrad, Debra Dean, Wm. Morrow March 2006 --
Russian emigré Marina Buriakov, 82, is preparing for her
granddaughter's wedding near Seattle while fighting a losing battle
against Alzheimer's. Stuggling to remember whom Katie is marrying
(and indeed that there is to be a marriage at all), Marina does
remember her youth as a Hermitage Museum docent as the siege of
Leningrad began; it is into these memories that she disappears.
After frantic packing, the Hermitage's collection is transported to
a safe hiding place until the end of the war...
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