DECEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
Yelena Shmulenson narrates the story of the Russian Revolution through the voice of a privileged young woman who awakens to the need for change. Shmulenson’s portrayal of Marina M. embodies all the confidence of a youth who is struggling with questions, fear, and doubts that assail her as she tries to find her place in a brutal, rapidly changing world. Shmulenson gives distinctive voices to all the speakers, helping the attentive listener keep the large cast of characters straight. She handles the many Russian names with the aplomb of a native speaker. Overall, Fitch immerses Marina’s story in accurate historical detail, and Shmulenson breathes life into it. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
The New York Times Book Review - Simon Sebag Montefiore
…a vast, ambitious historical tale in which the coming-of-age of a quintessential revolutionary heroine dovetails with the events of October 1917.
Publishers Weekly
09/11/2017
In a break with her contemporary fiction, Fitch (White Oleander) has written an epic bildungsroman about a girl who lives through the Russian Revolution. In 1916 Petrograd, 16-year-old Marina Dmitrievna Makarova is an aspiring poet from a well-to-do background. Through her eyes, readers see the deprivations caused by World War I, the ouster of the czar, and the rise of the Bolsheviks. She loses her virginity to a friend, Kolya Shurov, on leave from his regiment, and falls in love with an impoverished fellow poet, Gena Kuriakin. With her friends, Jewish Mina and radical Varvara, she is swept up in the first wave of revolutionary fervor, for which her father kicks her out of the house. After a series of misadventures, including sexual enslavement, passing herself off as a boy, and running off with Kolya (now an enemy of the state), Marina finally finds sanctuary at her family’s country estate, which has been taken over by a spiritualist cult. The resilient Marina has much in common with the modern heroines of the author’s previous books and is a protagonist worth following. However, even though the book is well researched, the overlong narrative peters out. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
"Marina's unlikely bildungsroman proves so gripping that it's hard to put down...Fitch depicts [the Revolution] with devastating accuracy and imaginative power...sprawling, majestic."—Ani Kokobobo, LA Review of Books
"Sprawling, immersive, and heavily researched."—Steph Cha, USA Today
"Marina is by turns adventurous, foolish, romantic, self-destructive and courageous in this extraordinary coming-of-age tale."—Jane Ciabbatari, BBC Culture
"This epic tale from the bestselling author of White Oleander follows Marina Makarova, a young woman living in St. Petersburg at the start of the Russian Revolution in 1916. Looking to escape from her privileged life, she joins the marches for worker's rights-and finds herself falling in love with the movement and a young radical. In this relatable coming-of-age novel, Marina grapples with a changing world and struggles to find her place in it."—Nora Horvath, Real Simple
"A captivating novel starring an unforgettable heroine, The Revolution of Marina M. shows you a side to the Russian Revolution you've never seen before."—Sadie Trombetta, Bustle
"It's a portrait of a moment in time — of a woman in time, in fact — that we don't often see, and you'll find yourself savoring each and every word of this breathtaking novel."—Chelsea Hassler, PopSugar
"Janet Fitch's novel shimmers with vital energy...[she] clearly did an astounding amount of research for the novel, which luxuriates in exotic period details...The Revolution of Marina M. is hard to put down...it is charming and lively and ultimately worth the time."—Trine Tsouderos, Chicago Tribune
"This is Janet Fitch at her finest."—Elizabeth Entenman, HelloGiggles
"Janet Fitch's The Revolution of Marina M., an epic tale of one young woman's story amid the drama and tragedy of the Russian Revolution, is just the thing to keep you both personally inspired and seasonally appropriate."—Mary Sollosi, Entertainment Weekly
"This new novel from the author of White Oleander is going to swallow you up entirely."—Melissa Ragsdale, Bustle
"This is an epic page-turner of a novel."—Mackenzie Dawson, NY Post
"A beautiful, cinematic novel...Hollywood, take note."—Alison K. Hill, Daily Bulletin
"Fitch narrows the Russian Revolution to one woman's perspective, crafting a gorgeous epic that's a must-read for historical fiction fans."—Frannie Jackson, Paste Magazine
"Fitch catches and holds our interest through 800 pages, rewarding us with rich and provocative stories, compelling characters and literary prose of the very highest order."—Jonathan Kirsch, Jewish Journal
"Incandescent. Fitch has expertly drawn the world of Russia in 1916 in flurries of white, like an exquisite snow globe, and then nudged it to the edge of a precipice, until in one jarring push, it falls. It crashes and each brilliant shard lifts and swirls. Poets, artists, profiteers, soldiers, cult leaders, sadists, idealists, blood, sex, hope all piecing together in a new life, a new country. The brilliant Janet Fitch has written yet another powerful, kaleidoscopic novel."—Cynthia Bond, author of Ruby
"The Revolution of Marina M. takes us deep inside the Russian Revolution and lets us witness it through a pair of remarkable eyes. Marina is a female Zhivago - a poet who uses her intelligence, her passion, and her love of language to interpret and survive the political turmoil around her. Janet Fitch is a wonderful writer and this might be her best book."—David Ebershoff,author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife
"There's brilliance in this book: concept, structure, style. If the horrors associated with the Russian revolution freeze your blood, remember the fire and brimstone of our own Civil War. Read this novel for the passion of the main character, a girl becoming woman and poet with ten times the vitality and intellect of Scarlett O'Hara."—Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife and Abundance,a Novel of Marie-Antoinette
"Ambitious, vivid, engrossing. Fitch puts flesh and bones on one of the most tumultuous times in human history, a vast canvas filled with the rising up the oppressed, naïve hope, abrupt reversals and crushing betrayals. The novel is a virtuoso rendition of the time, buoyed by Fitch's impeccable research and her bold, unforgettable prose."—Susan Sherman, author of If You Are There and TheLittle Russian
"In this lusty and intelligent novel, Fitch brilliantly entwines the blooming of a teenage girl with the bursting of a country, and tells their story with such intensity and urgency you can nearly hear the thundering hoofbeats of time and feel the shaking through the pages. This is an epic deserving comparison to the Russian masterworks — not for its size, but for its scope, not for its subject, but for the sweep with which it meets it. Rarely have I ever known history to come so fully, fiercely alive."—Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea
"An achingly lyric chronicle of the Russian Revolution seen through the eyes of one of its daughters of privilege as she skirts the peripheries of her own adulthood. Fundamentally though, it is a story of the insurgent politics of a woman's heart — whom and how she loves, what governs, betrays, or becomes her. The beauty of this book broke me open. Janet Fitch is stunningly, startlingly talented."—Jill Alexander Essbaum, author of Hausfrau
"The resilient Marina has much in common with the modern heroines of the author's previous books and is a protagonist worth following."—Publishers Weekly
"Fitch captures the epic grandeur of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, situating her characters in the pages of authentic history. Yet she also infuses her protagonists with transgressive sexual energy...vividly portraying Marina's sexual awakenings as she falls in and out of love.... Readers of Tolstoy, Boris Pasternak, and Margaret Mitchell will thrill to this narrative of women in love during the cataclysm of war."—Barbara Conaty, Library Journal
"Fitch's novel presents a richly described, on-the-street view of the revolution's transformative, often violent throes.... she provides an excellent sense of history's unpredictability and shows how the desperate pursuit of survival leads to morally compromising decisions...Fitch's cinematic storytelling and Marina's vibrant personality are standout elements in this dramatic novel."—Sarah Johnson, Booklist
Library Journal
07/01/2017
Marking the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution comes Fitch's third adult novel. Can it achieve the blockbuster status of her White Oleander and Paint It Black? Teenager Marina Makarova is blessed with privilege and a talent for writing poetry. She hangs with literary futurists in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and buys into their views of the failing tsarist regime. As successive governments crumble and the German war machine advances, she lives in the heart of the city's collapse. Her survival instincts pushed to just short of death, she finds her inner shapeshifter and wriggles out of trouble to fight another day. In the sweep and heft of her tribute to St. Petersburg's suffering during the years 1916–19, Fitch captures the epic grandeur of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, situating her characters in the pages of authentic history. Yet she also infuses her protagonists with transgressive sexual energy á la E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey, vividly portraying 16-year-old Marina's sexual awakenings as she falls in and out of love. As a college student, Fitch concentrated on Russian studies, and she treats the facts with a historian's respect. Especially well done is the story line dealing with the vicious Cheka, the Soviet secret police. VERDICT Readers of Tolstoy, Boris Pasternak, and Margaret Mitchell will thrill to this narrative of women in love during the cataclysm of war. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]—Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA
