A very impressive saga spanning multiple continents and eras. Nina Revskaya grows up as a superstar ballerina, rising to the highest ranks of soloist A very impressive saga spanning multiple continents and eras. Nina Revskaya grows up as a superstar ballerina, rising to the highest ranks of soloist at the Bolshoi ballet. She meets Viktor Elsin, a poet, and lives with him and her mother-in-law after they get married. Her childhood friend Vera, who grew up alongside her as a sister, also enters the ranks of the Bolshoi.
Relationships become more fraught and complicated later in life, when another friend, Gersh, is arrested in essentially what is a anti-Semitic purge, on charges disloyalty to the Stalinist state. Nina becomes suspicious of her closest friends(view spoiler)[; perhaps one of them was the one who actually turned in Gersh, who ends up in a psychiatric camp (hide spoiler)].
The current-day story is equally intriguing. Nina is an elderly woman living alone, reluctant to revisit aspects of her past. Her jewels are being handled by Drew, a younger woman, as part of a Christie's auction. Grigori, a literature scholar of Stalinist poetry, becomes entangled in Nina and Viktor's history as he searches for clues in Viktor's poetry about what exactly happened to them when Nina defected to the West.
There are many rich scenes and phrases in the novel: Nina encountering Stalin in a brief interaction as she performs for him; the excitement of the bidding of the jewels that Nina has donated (proceeds to benefit the Boston Ballet); the possibly evil mother-in-law every suspicious of Nina the daughter-in-law; images of cramped apartments in 50s Russia.
It's also fascinating and intriguing as a mystery - the reader gets to figure out exactly how the jewels (in particular a necklace / pendant that was lost) ended up (view spoiler)[in the hands of Grigori. (hide spoiler)]
Though the novel runs about 450 pages, I find that the book is a page-turner (as indicated in the inner dust jacket). The big reveal happens around 50 pages from the end, when Nina realizes that she may have made an incorrect assumption about Viktor, an decision that she would eventually regret.
The language of the text is extremely beautiful, but gently understated and also tinted with quiet despair. Setting the story in two time periods allows us the opportunity to get a glimpse of Stalinist Russia around the time of his impending death....more
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