I'm kind of obsessed with this book. This was NOT an easy read. I started reading it in April of last year, and like so many things, it got derailed. I decided to pick it back up in December, figuring I could finish it by the end of the year, but had to start over because I had no idea what was happening.

The first chapter of this book absolutely captivated me both times I read it. The musing about the narrator not really knowing her father and the description of Palace Ukraina just hit all my buttons of fascinating exploration of character while also giving me insight into Ukrainian history, which is why I picked up the book in the first place.

And then it abruptly shifts from first person narration including second person pronouns to third person in chapter 2, and it felt like gears suddenly thrown out of alignment. A good portion of the experience of reading this book was a sense of utter confusion about who the narrator was (since each chapter often shifts in time and/or first/third person) and whether what was happening was real. I stuck with it because the *words* that were used in the writing itself were truly phenomenal, I have highlighted the Kindle copy of this book more than I think I've done, particularly for a fiction story, maybe ever. And I'm so so so glad I stuck with it because around 70% of the way through, it all starts to coalesce into focus and all of the confusion melts away and the ending makes it all worth it.

I definitely struggled in particular with my unfamiliarity with the names in this story, because I think I would have drawn connections and patterns more rapidly if I had more context, but what an extraordinary job this translator has done. I deeply wish that I could magically gain not just the language knowledge but also the cultural knowledge to read this book in Ukrainian so that I could really appreciate its full impact, but, I still really really enjoyed it and gained much more understanding of Ukrainian history than I had before reading it.