givebooksgirl reviewed on
Helpful Score: 2
I love how the past and present intersect and trade off in, The Madonnas of Leningrad. Russian-born Marina is an elderly woman who has to be reminded about many things because her memory is slowly being poisoned by Alzheimers. Marina is a young girl who stays at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad during the German invasion to help evacuate the paintings and art. She is compassionate and tends to the needs of others while living in the basement of the museum. She sees, feels and smells death all around her. Marina is old again and her beloved husband, Dmitri, who was a soldier during the war, is helping her to dress. He is tender with his wife and his anguish at facing the stage of his wifes condition is as heartbreaking as the day he had to leave her to help stop the Nazis siege. Marina is young again and she is surviving horrific war conditions as her city is surrounded. We are there as her past and present are reconstructed in vivid detail and her grown daughter, who never really knew much about her own mothers life, discovers things about herself, through witnessing her parents unconditional and absolute love for one another.
