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List Price: $13.99 | | Publisher: Harper Perennial
Salesrank: 3086
Released: February 20, 2007 |
| Our Price: $6.96 |
| Used Price: $2.98 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye.
Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation, bitter cold, and a relentless German onslaught, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, leaving the frames hanging empty on the walls to symbolize the artworks' eventual return. As the Luftwaffe's bombs pounded the proud, stricken city, Marina built a personal Hermitage in her mind—a refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. . . .
The Madonnas of Leningrad: A Novel Reviews:
great read 
2009-10-19 - This is a thought provoking book. To picture the protagonist in her youth and then to flash forward to the present is challenging but the method seems to give the reader a sense of what is happening to her mind. Worth reading!
How Art Helps People Survive
2009-09-08 - The Hermitage may be a better title for the book since Marina, the main character works at the Hermitage. She gives tours proudly and describes the majestic halls of an art museum as well as the priceless artwork contained within. It is here she falls in love with art, history, and public speaking. The Hermitage is also where her boyfriend finds her and, begging her to take time off, proposes to her. Even more, it is where she survives World War 2 by living in the basement with other employees and resorting to eating the glue off the frames to survive while haunting the empty galleries recalling the pictures which once hung there. The recollection of each painting becomes her purpose and helps her psychologically survive starvation, death, and loneliness.
Marina's time at the Hermitage is remembered by an older Marina, one who suffers from Alzheimer's. The story plays with the idea of memory with the central role it plays in helping Marina to survive, but in the way Marina's early life becomes real again as her present world escapes her.
Nice Little Novel
2009-08-14 - This book was a nice, quick read that will appeal to anyone interested in either art, history, or both. Dean has stripped the story down to the very basics, weaving a fascinating story about a Russian woman who survived the siege of Leningrad while bunkered down in a large museum with family, friends and other museum employees. The writing is smooth and polished, the story is entertaining, and the book flies by so fast that the reader almost experiences it as a dream, not unlike the whistful remembrances of the narrator.
exceptional writing
2009-06-25 - A book which captures the imagination. Characters are fictional, yes, however seem believable. Because the story is based on the history of Leningrad and the Hermitage,there is a dimension to the writing which is not often captured in most novels.
A good read 
2009-06-23 - I liked this book. It was a good, entertaining story. The art stuff, though, was a little boring to me.
