"It as though she has been transported into a two-dimensional world, a book perhaps, and she exists only on this page. When the page turns, whatever was on the previous page disappears from her view."

And thus begins Debra Dean's The Madonnas of Leningrad, a book I picked up on a whim at a thrift shop and absolutely devoured in less than 24 hours.

Y'all, this book was incredible. The basic premise is an older woman, suffering from dementia, attending a family wedding while her mind is ravaged from within - remembering very little of the present and getting increasingly lost in the past when her beloved Leningrad was ravaged from the outside during the Siege of Leningrad. The plot was inspired by a PBS special which detailed the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (give it up for PBS, y'all!). The author was particularly intrigued by the fact that the staff and their families lived in the cellar of the Museum during the siege and that one of the former guides used to give tours of the museum, pointing to empty frames and describing the safely-hidden-away artwork in detail.

I find myself wary of historical fiction books with a small page count, nervous of being drawn into a story and there not being enough. At just under 230 pages, I had some trepidation going in to The Madonnas of Leningrad - which thankfully was completely unfounded. I was mesmerized by this story, even as I was loath to turn another page, confronted with yet another heartbreaking reality of war - especially the things the civilians of Leningrad endured during the 872-day siege. Normally I find myself drawn to more expansive plots and characters in a book, but something about Debra Dean's prose hit me just right. I couldn't have asked for anything else from this story.

In conclusion, I leave you with the novel's epigraph: 
"But now I know while beauty lives
So long will live my power to grieve."
-Alexander Pushkin