Giuseppe Fierro Fierro itibaren Vikno, Ivano-Frankivs'ka oblast, Ukrayna
Hieno kuvaus Suomen ensimmäisten teollisuuspatruunoiden joukkoon lukeutuneesta G. A. Serlachiuksesta.
Dickens/Austen meet Tolkien. For anyone interested in Celtic fairy tales.
didn't like the ending. it wasn't relieving. throughout the book, all this hatred and tension is built up towards Miranda with no release at the end.
In a great deal of pain, physically and emotionally, and confined to a wheelchair, an aged ballerina Nina Revskaya is living in Boston and is auctioning off her collection of valuable jewelry to benefit the Boston Ballet Foundation. Having defected from Stalin's Russia many years prior, Nina is harboring many secrets from her life as a ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet. The story travels between past and present as well as between the lives of Nina and two other characters, Drew Brooks an associate from the auction house and Grigori Solodin, a recent widower and professor of Russian who is looking for clues into his own past and believes he has a connection to Nina Revskaya through a beautiful amber pendant that he owns. The story shares a lot of obviously well-researched details about what life was like for a Russian ballerina rising through the ranks in a demanding dance troop during a very tumultuous time in history. The author also paints a picture of desperate times when families lived in one room apartments, stood in lines for almost all daily necessities and people routinely disappeared for saying the wrong things about the government and those in power. It was interesting to learn more about this part of history. I enjoyed the author's writing a lot. The ending felt somewhat abrupt, especially because to me the book seemed to drag on a little in the middle. All in all, an enjoyable read.