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Story set immediately before and during the first year of the Siege of Leningrad - it focuses around 5 characters: a dissident writer Mikhail, his nursery-school teacher daughter Anna, his son Kolya (as his Doctor wife - the strong willed Vera - died in childbirth, Anna effectively is Kolya's mother) and Marina (a reclusive and discredited artist friend of Mikhail, who comes to live with them after the siege and who it becomes clear was a once lover of Mikhail) and Andrei (a Doctor who works on a volunteer force with Mikhail, visits Anna to tell her he is wounded but OK and then gradually becomes her lover and eventually moves into their appartment). Another two characters (literally in a fable from the Napoleonic attack on Russia told by her father) and figuratively throughout are hunger and the winter.

The book is mainly in the present tense which seems to fit well the immediacy of the story and the day-to-day (if not hour-to-hour nature of their existence and fight for survival). Anna is normally the main character (despite the book being written in the third person) so the occasional sections shifting to another character (in particular the passages switching to Pavlov - the logistical planner for Leningrad's hopelessly inadequate food supplies - can jar).

Similarly as the siege takes hold and food supplies dwindle and almost disappear the book and characters close in on themselves and their appartment and on simple survival and the need for sustenance and this fits the author's terse but poetic writing style.

A haunting tale which I found incredibly engrossing (at the time one of my very young children wasn't eating very well and I found it hard to not somehow think that this was a crucial matter of her health; also I was tired and felt reluctant to succumb to sleep because it might be like surrendering to the cold and not waking up again) as well as beautifully written. The story is extremely readable - easy to and best read in a few sittings.

Some of the details are terrible - such as the baby opposite who dies of malnutrition from its young mother's inadvertent ignorance and neglect, the bodies left dead in houses (given the cold there and the impossibility of burial). The description of cold and hunger and its physical and psychological effects (with Andrei acting as an excuse to introduce scientific detail) are shocking but compelling.

There are great reference to Russian literature (especially Pushkin), the author describes the Baltic seasons beautifully and gives a good insight into Stalinist Russia.