I wanted to like this book. All I knew about it was that it had something to do with a woman who worked in the Hermitage Museum in Russia, and that the book described much of the artwork. Something about the woman menorizing the paintings. Art museums are very interesting to me, and I thought this book would be too.

I didn’t like this book much at all, however. It was just too sad! It is fiction, but is about the Siege of Leningrad, something that actually took place. German planes continuously bombed the city, and the people slowly either starved or froze to death. Marina was a young woman who worked for the museum at that time. She becomes part of a crew of workers who are desperately trying to remove the artwork from the museum, and hide it in the basement, so it won’t get destroyed in the war. Her lover is sent off to be a soldier, and she hardly hears from him until years after the war is over. She lives in the cold, damp basement of the museum with her uncle, aunt, and all the rest of the workers and their families.

Her suffering is described in bits and pieces. The story jumps between the war in the past to the present, where Marina is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Sometimes she doesn’t recognise her family, which makes them sad and confused, and most of the time she doesn’t know where in time she is. Its awful! My grandmother had Alzheimers before she died, and this book describes what its like to watch a family member go through that all too clearly. All Marina has left to her by the end is her memory of the paintings she suffered to save.

I find that I can get depressed just fine on my own, without needing sad stories to help that along. Therefore, this isn’t a book I intend to ever read again. If you like sad stories, maybe this one will interest you. The artwork is described rather well, but, that, too, is sad. How depressing to watch a character see these paintings in her head, knowing that they are all packed up for no one to see! How sad to hear her think about the paintings of still lifes filled with fruits, nuts, and meats that are real enough to smell, while she and everyone around her is starving to death! This book is more than I can take.