In 2013 I read 75 books!!
Kate Furnivall is a new author to me and so I started reading this book with some trepidations, but I loved it And even better she has written lots more so that pleases me no end. I see a year ahead with loads of good books to read
This was a
tale of romance, magic and struggle against tyranny, set in Russia in the
mid-1930s. Sofia and Anna have both been imprisoned in a Siberian Labour camp:
Anna for her aristocratic background, Sofia for being the daughter of a priest
and the niece of a farmer who did too well and thus incurred the State's
suspicion. Early in their acquaintance, Anna saves Sofia's life and Sofia vows
to do the same for her if needed. So when Anna becomes seriously ill with
tuberculosis, Sofia decides to do what seems impossible - to escape the labour
camp, and find the one person she believes can bring Anna back to health:
Vassily, Anna's childhood sweetheart, who she last saw the day that her father
and his parents were shot by the Bolsheviks, many years before. Being blessed
with incredible good luck, Sofia escapes the camp and survives a long tramp
with virtually no food, until she reaches the small village of Tivil, where she
has been tipped off that Vassily is living under an assumed name. She is taken
in by a gypsy, Rafik, who has the extraordinary gift of being able to influence
people's thoughts and hypnotize them into doing his bidding, and who trusts her
from the start. Settled in Rafik's home, Sofia begins to search for Vassily.
And thus begins a complicated tale of treachery, mistaken identity, betrayal,
true love and magic.
All credit to Furnival, she can tell a 'rattling good yarn', and keep her reader's interest going from start to finish. There was also some interesting material about life in Russia under the Communists . But I wondered if Furnival softened some of the horrors of the Stalinist regime. However, it's not a book that I found bore thinking about too much - if one did try to read it with much concentration, or pondered much on the plot, it began to seem very implausible. For example, if Anna was dying of tuberculosis at the start of the novel, how did she survive for so long (and manage to carry on working, and at one point have strength to attack and kill someone)? If Sofia had been starving in Siberia for so long, would everyone really have been taken aback by her beauty and composure? Why wasn't Sofia more frightened, after all she'd been through? Why did she and Mikhail fall so quickly in love? Why did Mikhail suddenly become so swashbuckling? What was Fomenko actually up to? And I felt that Rafik the hypnotizing gypsy tended to turn up in the nick of time rather too often, and that the supernatural elements in the novel seemed to sit slightly uneasily with the rest - I know that superstition and belief in magic are very much part of Russian folk culture, but it was rather clumsily handled here, particularly the material about 'the magic stone' But in spite of these short comings it was a good read and I liked it a lot, so much so that I am now reading another book by her, this time set in Malaya.
All credit to Furnival, she can tell a 'rattling good yarn', and keep her reader's interest going from start to finish. There was also some interesting material about life in Russia under the Communists . But I wondered if Furnival softened some of the horrors of the Stalinist regime. However, it's not a book that I found bore thinking about too much - if one did try to read it with much concentration, or pondered much on the plot, it began to seem very implausible. For example, if Anna was dying of tuberculosis at the start of the novel, how did she survive for so long (and manage to carry on working, and at one point have strength to attack and kill someone)? If Sofia had been starving in Siberia for so long, would everyone really have been taken aback by her beauty and composure? Why wasn't Sofia more frightened, after all she'd been through? Why did she and Mikhail fall so quickly in love? Why did Mikhail suddenly become so swashbuckling? What was Fomenko actually up to? And I felt that Rafik the hypnotizing gypsy tended to turn up in the nick of time rather too often, and that the supernatural elements in the novel seemed to sit slightly uneasily with the rest - I know that superstition and belief in magic are very much part of Russian folk culture, but it was rather clumsily handled here, particularly the material about 'the magic stone' But in spite of these short comings it was a good read and I liked it a lot, so much so that I am now reading another book by her, this time set in Malaya.
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