Books & Poetry

Debra Dean’s debut novel centres on a woman’s quest to preserve her sanity in the face of the horrors of World War II. The narrative flickers between her wartime plight in besieged Russia and her degeneration through Alzheimer’s in her dotage. It’s a remarkable story, though it never quite moves you as it should.

When the Luftwaffe’s bombs fall on Leningrad, Marina takes refuge in the museum where she works as a guide. She busies herself storing away the institution’s precious artefacts to safeguard them against damage. Once the food supplies run dry, she and her fellow refugees suffer the indignities of starvation and hypothermia. To bolster herself, she constructs a ‘memory palace’, mentally cataloguing the works of art that dotted the museum’s halls and walkways and hung from the emptied frames.

Miraculously, she survives and bears children. We are reintroduced to her in old age, as her memories are being snatched away by Alzheimer’s. ‘I am emptying!’ she cries at a family wedding she attends with her husband and middle-aged children.

This is a thoroughly researched, well-meaning stab at literary fiction. But it falls short of the kind of heartfelt conviction and heart-twanging emotion needed to propel it into the major league.