Customer Reviews

The Siege

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Set during the blockade of Leningrad in World War II, Ms. Dunmore's novel "The Siege" attacks and bombards our sensibilities as no other book in recent memory. Beginning with the Nazi attack of Russia on June 22, 1941, the story examines and portrays the ordeals of the Levin family as they struggle to stay alive and keep their humanity during the longest siege and blockade in modern warfare. Initially, the Levins are caught between the excesses of Stalin's purges and the fury of the German attack. Quickly, the enemy becomes the shelling, the starvation and the cold. Dunmore's prose travels deep within the emotions, fears and thoughts of the characrters to illuminate suffering as no other historical tract has rendered. The voices of all her characters speak to us and transfer us to an umimaginable time when madness and cruelly ruled. Dunmore gives the reader enough of the historical context of the Siege of Leningrad (Luga defenses, Pavlov's rationing, "road of life" across Ladoga, etc;) for our sense of time and place, but the book primarily examines the emotions and human politics of survival.

While her language is direct as a bullet, there is a smokey-poetic quality to it that curls around our senses and forces a painful understanding. Yet, there is no saccharine sentimentality to her narrative, nor are we seduced with maudlin pathos or pity. She punches us with her descriptions and compels us to look at suffering and survival and seek meaning where there seems to be only despair, self interest and cruelly. "The Siege" is at once troubling and uplifting; ugly and fair; compassionate and cruel. As deep as our hearts, it is a book for our souls.

On a personal note, I have stood at the mass graves of Piskarevskaya many times seeking some insight into the sacrifice. I have even written a screenplay ("The Large Hearts of Heroes") in an effort to understand both the historical and personal truths. But in the end I stand in the Cementery with my Russian friends, listening to the stilled voices frozen long ago and waiting for redemption.

I can't give it five stars, because while I very much enjoyed the book while reading it, whenever I stopped, I didn't want to start again. Probably that has something to do with the hopeless and depressing tone of most of the novel, and is therefore not a fair reason, but I like books that grab and won't let me go until I turn the last page. This one grabbed me, but I kept wanting to put it down anyway.

About the depression: don't let it put you off too much. THE SIEGE is extremely well written, and it's amazing power lies mainly in Dunmore's uncanny ability to detail the harsh effects of war (namely hunger and desperation) on ordinary people. There are small overtures to hope, especially near the end, but for the most part, Dunmore has set out to overwhelm and horrify and possibly frighten us, and she has succeeded, painfully. She even managed to make me feel guilty for having more than a piece of bread to eat every day, for never having known the desperation of boiling wallpaper paste and chewing on leather to extract what few nutrients it might yield. This is stark, almost hurtful, and amazingly good writing.

This is a very powerful novel with striking, deeply affecting prose descriptions of the suffering of the people of Leningrad during the two and a half year siege they underwent at the hands of the Germans in WWII. Most of the focus is on the love and sacrifices of a mother for her son. I was a bit surprised that there seemed to be little actual fighting depicted here but in reality it was mostly a long seige with much bombing. The will to live becomes a noble pursuit in itself, the decision that death will not be on the Germans terms. Of course, much of the plot of the novel is about situations that are forced on people by the enemy and also by their own totalitarian government---but the small, tragic, and occasionally triumphant choices that people do make give the novel added meaning and power--they are not merely swept up in the tide of events--what Anatoli Rybakov called the Heavy Sand of 20th Century Russian history. This is recommended reading as is the long section on the siege of Leningrad in Alexander Werth's great WWII history, Russia at War.

This is a very dramatic and emotional story. The reader really cares about Anna, little Kolya, and the rest of her family as they struggle to survive this horrific ordeal. I was particularly moved by the way Anna reflects on the things that she once took for granted - her father reading poetry, cloudberry jam, bread that is fresh and plentiful. The author presents the unspeakable conditions of the siege of Leningrad while always holding out the thin breath of survival in the characters and makes us count our blessings in the bargain.
I highly recommend this to any historical fiction reader.

The author effectively captures the Siege of Leningrad and allows the reader to experience it through the eyes of Anna, a young woman who with her father, younger brother, her father's mistress, and a young man from Siberia are caught in the Seige. Some survive, some don't.

The writing is clean and cold; sentences are short and direct. There is almost a lack of emotion throughtout the book (perhaps that is why some reviewers say they cannot connect with the characters), but the style of writing, I feel, is what makes "The Seige" so realistic. It was an unbelieveably terrible time for everyone; for the soldiers as well as the civilians. The author includes short chapters which provide a views from the "officials" or soldiers. This works to strengthen the story as told by Anna.

I'm not up on my WWII history and truthfully, knew nothing about this particular event of the War; much of WWII historical fiction centers on the Holocaust. This story certainly adds another perspective of what was truly a terrible time in history. Warning, the story is not pretty, but it is not unbearable nor is it depressing. There is a strength and respect for those that endured this horrible time.

For those interested in the Siege of Leningrad, check out The Madonnas of Leningrad: A Novel (P.S.)

"The Siege" is absolutely brilliant and Helen's Dunmore's masterpiece. How such a luminously crafted and finely imagined work of historical fiction can be overlooked in the annual book award stakes in favour of showier but less deserving titles is something presumably only those familiar with the internal politics of book critic awards can understand.

"The Siege" is a story about a family who endured and partially survived the extremities of cold, hunger and other devastating hardships inflicted on the people of Leningrad when their city came under siege by the Germans in 1941. The horror of the opening transcript of German intent prepares us for what follows. The opening chapters describe the buzz of ordinary lives albeit under the tyranny of the country's own leadership. Nobody trusts anyone. Even neighbours stay away from those in suspect professions (eg, artists and journalists). But life was still good, you can smell the scent of flowers in the air and the natural aroma of fresh fruit and vegetables from the ground. All this will disappear when the Germans suddenly attack, supplies are cut off , the city is frozen solid, stocks run down and people are reduced to starvation and using their furniture and books as fuel for heating as winter encroaches. Scenes of how healthy adults and bonny children turn into emaciated skeletons, scrabble around for broken bits of wood, boil their leather belts for nutrients, etc will guarantee that you will never again leave any morsel of food uneatened on your dinner plate.

We experience the siege of Leningrad through the lives of Anna and her family (her doctor lover Andrei, invalid writer father, his actress mistress Marina and baby brother Kolya). Dunmore's touch of feminism shows through in her vivid characterisation. The womenfolk are warriors compared to the men. Anna's courage and fortitude, Marina's quiet strength and compatriot Evgenia's irrepressable will to live make them unforgettable characters. They tower above the rest. Anna's feelings towards her father (she knows she's the defacto head of the family after her mother's death), her continuing ambivalence towards Marina, etc are all beautifully nuanced, reflecting Dunmore's uncommon grasp of the politics of human relationship.

"The Siege" is a faultless, hugely powerful and emotionally resonant piece of work. Quite simply, it is contemporary literature at its finest and one of the best novels I have read in the past year.

Dunmore does manage to powerfully recount the lives of ordinary people during one of history's lesser known tragedies, as well as encompass some of the vast nature of the siege, and does a good job of fleshing out her characters. However the book relies too much on the drama of the events themselves to provide conflict and dramatic weight rather than the moral choices of the characters themselves.

The Siege itself, and the struggles of ordinary people, are important to remember and to recount, and more than a non-fiction book might, this book does give readers a window into a remarkable time - for this I do recommend it. But in the end, it's not as compelling, nor does it has as much depth, as I had hoped. I kept expecting something more to occur - some sort of story above and beyond the struggle for survival - but was disappointed.

If readers wish to know more about the Siege of Leningrad from an ordinary person's point of view, I highly recommend "Siege and Survival" by Elena Skrjabina, a survivor. This powerful and affecting diary is out of print, but should be in libraries or used.

Dunmore has taken the enormity of the ghastly siege on Leningrad and made it hauntingly, painfully real. Her descriptions are written with the sensual accuracy of a poet -- the ache of hunger and the burn of the cold come alive here in a way that could make you lose your breath. Her war isn't the rah-rah/flag-waving spectacle Americans are used to reading about and seeing in the movies -- her war is full of fear and hurt, hope and loss. A marvel.

Helen Dunmore's marvelous novel (surely her best*) begins with Spring in 1941: "And then, just when it seemed as if summer would forget about Leningrad this year, everything changed. Ice broke loose from the compacted mass around the Strelka. Seagulls preened on the floes as the current swept them under bridges, and down the widening Neva to the sea." It will end with Spring a year later, but by that time a large part of the Leningrad population will have died of cold or malnutrition, as the German armies hold the city in a relentless siege.

Dunmore begins gently, almost lyrically, in a small dacha outside the city. Not that everyday life is easy. Her protagonist, 23-year-old Anna Mikhailova Levin, has had to abandon her studies as an artist to look after her baby brother Kolya, when her mother died in childbirth five years before. Her father, a writer, has been blacklisted by the Soviet Writers' Union, so Anna must work in a daycare nursery to support them, suffering under a boss whose strict adherence to socialist doctrines does not disguise her dislike of children. It is a period when nobody dare speak openly, for fear of denunciation and arrest. But Russia still has a pact with Germany and war seems far off.

By the end of summer, all has changed. Germany invades Russia, and Leningrad is marked for destruction. The city's food warehouses are firebombed, its supply lines are cut, and strict food rationing is imposed. The citizens are mobilized to dig ditches, build defenses, work in factories, but slowly everything grinds to a halt; everyone now has one business only, survival. Anna holes up in a tiny apartment with Kolya, her father, and two others from outside the family: one is Marina Petrovna, a blacklisted actress and her father's old friend; the other, Andrei, is a young medical student, and Anna's first love. For love blooms against all odds; there may be little romance in two fully-dressed unwashed emaciated bodies huddling together for warmth, but there is something deeper: responsibility and caring. And the political climate changes also: "Words are regaining their meanings, after years of masquerade. Hunger means hunger, terror means terror, enemy means enemy. It is not like trying to read mirror writing any more. Everything gets clearer day by day, as siege and winter eat into their lives. The coils of Soviet life are losing their strength. There's only the present left, and it has burned away both past and future."

Dunmore's ability to paint simultaneously a vast canvas and an intimate portrait has naturally been compared to Tolstoy. But as the situation worsens and many succumb to the inevitable while others find an impossible will to survive, I thought more of John Steinbeck's GRAPES OF WRATH. Dunmore does not quite reach his spiritual transcendence, but she has the same deep belief in the human spirit. Spring does come, and the authorities find ways to get some food in and inhabitants out. The siege will continue for eighteen more months, but its grip has been loosened. The survivors have rediscovered their humanity.

*The others I have read and reviewed, in my personal order of preference, are: ZENNOR IN DARKNESS, A SPELL OF WINTER, and TALKING TO THE DEAD.

I've always read as much as I could find concerning the holocoust, and this was a good find for me, focusing on the same Nazi WWII power takeover, but in a different locale. The setting is Leningrad Russia. The story concerns a family and the hardships they and the other citizens encounter in their daily struggles to survive, even managing to find love along the way.