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Roman Clodia's Reviews > The Siege
The Siege
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Such a harrowing read as Dunmore gives us an insight into what it was like to live through the first winter of the siege of Leningrad. In another author's hands this might have been lush with romantic melodrama, but Dunmore keeps it clean and cold, allowing the details to speak for themselves: Kolya's childish whining as he cannot understand why he can't have another spoonful of precious hoarded jam; the quiet yet deep relationship between Anna and Andrei who fall in love in the most inauspicious of circumstances; the visceral cold as temperatures drop and water freezes in rooms with no power; the effect on human nature: the frightening competition for almost non-existent resources, the moments of compassion and friendship; the look and feel and smell of bodies slowly starving.
Through it all, what emerges is the will and determination of some people to survive: a paean to Leningrad and the human spirit.
by
...The Fuehrer has decided to have Leningrad wiped from the face of the earth.
Such a harrowing read as Dunmore gives us an insight into what it was like to live through the first winter of the siege of Leningrad. In another author's hands this might have been lush with romantic melodrama, but Dunmore keeps it clean and cold, allowing the details to speak for themselves: Kolya's childish whining as he cannot understand why he can't have another spoonful of precious hoarded jam; the quiet yet deep relationship between Anna and Andrei who fall in love in the most inauspicious of circumstances; the visceral cold as temperatures drop and water freezes in rooms with no power; the effect on human nature: the frightening competition for almost non-existent resources, the moments of compassion and friendship; the look and feel and smell of bodies slowly starving.
Through it all, what emerges is the will and determination of some people to survive: a paean to Leningrad and the human spirit.
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Reading Progress
September 8, 2017
– Shelved
January 15, 2018
–
Started Reading
January 17, 2018
–
40.0%
January 19, 2018
–
45.0%
"'...and now there are no more road or railway links to the rest of Russia. The only way out is over the still, grey water of Lake Ladoga. Leningrad is surrounded.'"
January 19, 2018
–
65.0%
"'Words are regaining their meanings, after years of masquerade. Hunger means hunger, terror means terror, enemy means enemy. It's not like trying to read mirror-writing any more.'"
January 22, 2018
–
80.0%
"' We should all be frightened of one another these days. And we should be frightened of ourselves.'"
January 22, 2018
–
Finished Reading
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Mark
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rated it 5 stars
Jan 21, 2018 10:18AM
Isn't it this the most absorbing visceral narrative as you positively feel the drop in temperature and the family's increasing hunger and the destructive colective paranoia in the face of the dead weight of bureaucratic ineptitude - a fantastic epic novel
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Definitely - especially as it's been snowing today! I inadvertently read the sequel to this (The Betrayal) so have the added pleasure of now knowing how Anna and Andrei met.
"Dunmore keeps it clean and cold" - love it. You've shunted it up the to read list. Thanks.
I think you'll like this: Dunmore has the precision and clarity that you found missing in Bowen.
Thanks Roman Clodia. Clarity is a quality I appreciate in a writer.
