Sashenka by Simon Sebag Montefiore Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“I’m a Russian. Without the Motherland, I’d be nothing.”- Sashenka, Simon Sebag Montefiore

Winter, 1916: In St Petersburg, Russia on the brink of revolution. Outside the Smolny Institute for Noble Young Ladies, an English governess is waiting for her young charge to be released from school. But so are the Tsar’s secret police… Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and her dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her part in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction. Twenty years on, Sashenka has a powerful husband with whom she has two children. Around her people are disappearing, but her own family is safe. But she's about to embark on a forbidden love affair which will have devastating consequences. Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century, until a young historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a heart-breaking tale of passion and betrayal, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism - and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice.

When looking at my February TBR, I realized I only had one book about Eastern Europe on the list. I needed to rectify that immediately. So I picked up Sashenka by Simon Sebag Montefiore because I recognized the name, having read One Night in Winter back in January. Prior to that, I recognized him as the author of several works about Russian history, particularly the Stalinist era and, most recently, the history of the Romanovs. 

My first impressions were as follows: ugly cover, intimidating. The thing's a little over 500 pages, but looks so much bigger. It took me a little while to get into it; the writing was rough at first, the author very obviously being more used to writing nonfiction than novels. But we are tossed right into the action, and introduced right away to Sashenka, a girl who apparently has "too big a bosom" and an "over wide mouth". I suppose having a huge bosom may be a problem to some, but I am not blessed with that particular issue so I can't comment on it. She's a young communist, apparently, having been converted by her Uncle Mendel. I found the first part to this book probably the most engrossing. The utterly unsugarcoated portrayal of the Russian Court in its final years was fascinating. Montefiore has no qualms about going into the debauchery of the court. 

The tragedy of 20th century Russia is shown well in Sashenka. The country went from drug-abusing, swinging, influence-peddling Imperial Russia ruled by an incompetent monarch to Stalinist Russia, with torture, censorship, and complete government oppression. Montefiore shows both these by showing the nightlife of Sashenka's mother, Ariadna, and later, scenes where they show Sashenka being interrogated by the KGB. This is just an observation, but I've noticed that male authors are more apt to focus and go into detail about the actual mechanics of sex and things like torture or the nitty-gritty, hard to think about things than female authors. That's not necessarily a judgement, again, just an observation. I say this because it is made really obvious in this book. It takes a lot to shock me, but one of the things that really hit me hard was Benya Golden's description of the horrors at the Orphanage for Children of Soviet Traitors (or something along those lines). Another strength I found was that this book was really well researched.

However, I did think that the third part was completely unnecessary. I would have been just fine without discovering what happened to Sashenka and her children. Maybe it's because I had a hard time caring. I did like certain characters, like Satinov (probably because I remembered him from One Night in Winter) and her uncle, but characters and character development is definitely not Montefiore's strong point.

I think I feel the same way about this book as I did about One Night in Winter. Good, but not excellent. I didn't love those books the way I loved Anthony Marra's work or Darragh McKeon's All That is Solid Melts into Air. Perhaps his writing translates better to nonfiction, but if you want an engrossing tale about Russian history mostly throughout the turbulent first half of the 20th century, I would recommend picking up this book.

7.5 of out 10